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“I believe it was my photographs that you threw away.”
“I didn’t know what to do with them,” he cried, and his voice was that of an anxious boy. Her heart warmed towards him for the first time. “They were covered with blood. There! I’m glad I’ve told you; and all the time we were making conversation I was wondering what to do with them.” He pointed down-stream. “They’ve gone.” The river swirled under the bridge, “I did mind them so, and one is so foolish, it seemed better that they should go out to the sea—I don’t know; I may just mean that they frightened me.” Then the boy verged into a man. “For something tremendous has happened; I must face it without getting muddled. It isn’t exactly that a man has died.”
Something warned Lucy that she must stop him.
“It has happened,” he repeated, “and I mean to find out what it is.”
“Mr. Emerson—”
He turned towards her frowning, as if she had disturbed him in some abstract quest.
“I want to ask you something before we go in.”
They were close to their pension. She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship. She moved her elbows before saying:
“I have behaved ridiculously.”
He was following his own thoughts.
“I was never so much ashamed of myself in my life; I cannot think what came over me.”
“I nearly fainted myself,” he said; but she felt that her attitude repelled him.
“Well, I owe you a thousand apologies.”
“Oh, all right.”
“And—this is the real point—you know how silly people are gossiping—ladies especially, I am afraid—you understand what I mean?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“I mean, would you not mention it to any one, my foolish behaviour?”
“Your behaviour? Oh, yes, all right—all right.”
“Thank you so much. And would you—”
She could not carry her request any further. The river was rushing below them, almost black in the advancing night. He had thrown her photographs into it, and then he had told her the reason. It struck her that it was hopeless to look for chivalry in such a man. He would do her no harm by idle gossip; he was trustworthy, intelligent, and even kind; he might even have a high opinion of her. But he lacked chivalry; his thoughts, like his behaviour, would not be modified by awe. It was useless to say to him, “And would you—” and hope that he would complete the sentence for himself, averting his eyes from her nakedness like the knight in that beautiful picture. She had been in his arms, and he remembered it, just as he remembered the blood on the photographs that she had bought in Alinari’s shop. It was not exactly that a man had died; something had happened to the living: they had come to a situation where character tells, and where childhood enters upon the branching paths of Youth.
“Well, thank you so much,” she repeated, “How quickly these accidents do happen, and then one returns to the old life!”
“I don’t.”
Anxiety moved her to question him.
His answer was puzzling: “I shall probably want to live.”
“But why, Mr. Emerson? What do you mean?”
“I shall want to live, I say.”
Leaning her elbows on the parapet, she contemplated the River Arno, whose roar was suggesting some unexpected melody to her ears.
Q
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