The Aspern Papers: In Three Parts. Part Third

VIII.

As it turned out, the provision had not been needed, for three hours later, just as I had finished my dinner, Miss Bordereau’s niece appeared, unannounced, in the open doorway of the room in which my simple repasts were served. I remember well that I felt no surprise at seeing her ; which is not a proof that I did n’t believe in her timidity. It was immense, but in a case in which there was a particular reason for boldness it never would have prevented her from running up to my rooms. I saw that she was now quite full of a particular reason ; it threw her forward — made her seize me, as I rose to meet her, by the arm.

“ My aunt is very ill ; I think she is dying ! ”

“ Never in the world,” I answered, with a certain bitterness. “ Don’t you be afraid ! ”

“ Do go for a doctor — do, do ! Olimpia is gone for the one we always have, but she does n’t come back ; I don’t know what has happened to her. I told her that if he was not at home she was to follow him where he had gone ; but apparently she is following him all over Venice. I don’t know what to do — she looks so as if she were sinking.”

“ May I see her, may I judge ?” I asked. “ Of course I shall be delighted to bring some one ; but had n’t we better send my man instead, so that I may stay with you ? ”

Miss Tita assented to this, and I dispatched my servant for the best doctor in the neighborhood. I hurried downstairs with her, and on the way she told me that an hour after I quitted them, in the afternoon, Miss Bordereau had had an attack of pain in her chest, a terrible difficulty in breathing. This had subsided, but had left her so exhausted that she did n’t come up : she seemed all gone. I repeated that she was not gone, that she would n’t go yet ; whereupon Miss Tita gave me a sharper sidelong glance than she had ever directed at me, and said. “ Really, what do mean ? I suppose you don’t accuse her of making believe ! ” I forget what reply I made to this, but I grant that in my heart I thought the old woman was quite capable of such a manœuvre. Miss Tita wanted to know what I had done to her : her aunt had told her that I had made her angry. I declared I had done nothing — I had been exceedingly careful ; to which my companion rejoined that Miss Bordereau had assured her she had had a scene with me, and the scene had upset her. I answered, with some resentment, that it was a scene of her own making — that I did n’t know what she was angry with me for unless for not seeing my way to give a thousand pounds for the portrait of Jeffrey Aspern. “ And did she show you that ? Oh, gracious — oh, deary me ! ” groaned Miss Tita, who appeared to feel that the situation was getting out of her control and that the elements of her fate were thickening around her. I said that I would give anything to possess it, yet that I had n’t a thousand pounds ; but I stopped when we came to the door of Miss Bordereau’s room. I had an immense curiosity to pass it, but I thought it my duty to represent to Miss Tita that if I made the invalid angry she ought perhaps to be spared the sight of me. " The sight of you ? Do you think she can see ? ” my companion demanded, almost with indignation. I did think so, but did n’t say it, and I softly followed my conductress.

I remember that what I said to her, as I stood for a moment beside the old woman’s bed, was, “ Does she never show you her eyes, then ? Have you never seen them ?” Miss Bordereau had been divested of her green shade, but (it was not my fortune to behold Juliana in her nightcap) the upper half of her face was covered by the fall of a piece of rather dingy lace-like muslin, a sort of extemporized hood, which had been wound round her head and descended to the end of her nose, leaving nothing visible but her white withered cheeks and puckered mouth, closed tightly and, as it were, consciously. Miss Tita gave me a glance of surprise, evidently not seeing a reason for my impatience. “ You mean that she always wears something ? She does it to preserve them.”

“ Because they are so fine ? ”

“ Oh, to-day, to-day ! ” And Miss Tita shook her head, speaking very low. “ But they used to be magnificent ! ”

. “ Yes, indeed, we have Aspern’s word for that.” And as I looked again at the old woman’s wrappings I could imagine that she had not wished to allow people a reason to say that the great poet had overdone it. But I did n’t waste my time in considering Miss Bordereau, who was so motionless as to suggest that no human attention could ever help her more. I turned my eyes all over the room, rummaging the closets, the chests of drawers, the tables, with them. Miss Tita met them quickly, and read, I think, what was in them ; but she did n’t answer it, turning away restlessly, anxiously, so that I felt rebuked, deservedly, for a preoccupation that was almost profane in the presence of our dying companion. All the same, I took another look, endeavoring to pick out mentally the place to try first, for a person who should wish to put his hand on Miss Bordereau’s papers directly after her death. The room was a confusion ; it was not, it seemed to me, particularly well ordered. There were clothes hanging over chairs, odd-looking, shabby bundles here and there, and various pasteboard boxes piled together, battered, bulging and discolored, which might have been fifty years old. Miss Tita, after a moment, noticed the direction of my eyes again, and, as if she guessed how I judged the air of the place (as if I had any business to judge it at all), said, perhaps to defend herself from the imputation of complicity in such untidiness —

“ She likes it this way ; we can’t move things. There are old bandboxes she has had most of her life.” Then she added, half taking pity on my real thought, “ Those things were there ; ” and she pointed to a small, low trunk, which stood under a sofa, where there was just room for it. It appeared to be a queer, superannuated receptacle, of painted wood, with elaborate handles and shriveled straps and with the color (it had last been endued with a coat of light green) much rubbed off. It evidently had traveled with Juliana in the olden time — in the days of her adventures, which it had shared. It would have made a strange figure arriving at a modern hotel.

“ Were there — they are n’t now ? ” I asked, startled by Miss Tita’s implication.

She was going to answer, but at that moment the doctor came in—the doctor whom the little maid had been sent to fetch and whom she had at last overtaken. My servant, going on his own errand, had met her near the house, guiding her companion, and, in the sociable Venetian spirit, retracing his steps with them, had also come up to the threshold of Miss Bordereau’s room, where I saw him peeping over the doctor’s shoulder. I motioned him away, the more instantly that the sight of his prying face reminded me that I myself had almost as little to do there — an admonition confirmed by the sharp way the little doctor looked at me, appearing to take me for a rival who had the field before him. He was a short, dusky gentleman, with a quick, clever eye and the tall hat of his profession ; and he gave me at first more attention than he gave the patient. I bowed to him and left him with the women, going down to smoke a cigar in the garden. I was nervous ; I could n’t go further ; I could n’t leave the place. I don’t know exactly what I thought might happen, but it seemed to me important to be there. I wandered about in the alleys — the warm night had come on — smoking cigar after cigar, and looking at the light in Miss Bordereau’s windows. They were open now, I could see ; the situation was different. Sometimes the light moved, but not quickly ; it did n’t suggest the hurry of a crisis. Was the old woman dying, or was she already dead ? Had the doctor said that there was nothing to be done, at her tremendous age, but to let her quietly pass away ; or had he simply announced, with a look a little more conventional, that the end of the end had come ? Were the other two women moving about to perform the offices that follow in such a case ? It made me uneasy not to be nearer, as if I thought the doctor himself might carry away the papers with him. I bit my cigar hard as it came over me again that perhaps there were now no papers to carry !

I wandered about for an hour — for an hour and a half. I looked out for Miss Tita at one of the windows, having a vague idea that she might come there to give me some sign. Would n’t she see the red tip of my cigar moving about in the dark and feel that I wanted eminently to know what the doctor had said ? I am afraid it is a proof that my anxieties had made me gross that I should have taken in some degree for granted that, at such an hour, in the midst of the greatest change that could take place in her life, they were uppermost also in poor Miss Tita’s mind. My servant came down and spoke to me, and he knew nothing save that the doctor had gone, after a visit of half an hour. If he had stayed half an hour, then Miss Bordereau was still alive : it could n’t have taken so much time as that to establish the contrary. I sent the man out of the house ; there were moments when the sense of his curiosity annoyed me, and this was one of them. He had been watching my cigar-tip from an upper window, if Miss Tita had n’t ; he could n’t know what I was after and I could n’t tell him, though I was conscious he had fantastic private theories about me which he thought fine and which I, had I known them, should have thought offensive.

I went up-stairs at last, but I ascended no higher than the sala. The door of Miss Bordereau’s apartment was open, showing, from the parlor, the dimness of a poor candle. I went towards it with a light tread, and at the same moment Miss Tita appeared and stood looking at me as I approached. “ She ’s better — she ’s better,” she said, even before I had asked. “ The doctor has given her something ; she woke up, came back to life, while he was there. He says there is no danger.”

“ No danger ? Surely he thinks her condition strange ! ”

“ Yes, because she had been excited. It affects her awfully.”

“ It will do so again then, because she excites herself. She did so this afternoon.”

“ Yes ; she must n’t come out any more,” said Miss Tita, with one of her lapses into a deeper placidity.

“ What is the use of making such a remark as that, if you begin to rattle her about again the first time she bids you ? ”

“ I won’t — I won’t do it any more.”

“ You must learn to resist her.” I went on.

“ Oh, yes, I shall ; I shall do so better if you tell me it ’s right.”

“You must n’t do it for me ; you must do it for yourself. It all comes back to you, if you are frightened.”

“ Well, I am not frightened now,” said Miss Tita, cheerfully. “ She is very quiet,”

“ Is she conscious again — does she speak ?”

“ No, she does n’t speak, but she takes my hand. She holds it fast.”

“ Yes,” I rejoined, “ I can see what force she still has by the way she grabbed that picture this afternoon. But if she holds you fast,” I added. “ how comes it that you are here ? ”

Miss Tita hesitated a moment, and though her face was in deep shadow (she had her back to the light in the parlor and I had put down my own candle far off, near the door of the sala), I thought I saw her smile ingenuously. “ I came on purpose — I heard your step.”

“ Why, I came on tiptoe, as inaudibly as possible.”

“ Well, I heard you,” said Miss Tita.

“ And is your aunt alone now ? ”

“ Oh, no ; Olimpia is sitting there.”

On my side I hesitated. “ Shall we then step in there ? ” And I nodded at the parlor ; I wanted more and more to be on the spot.

“ We can’t talk there — she will hear us.”

I was on the point of replying that in that case we would sit silent, but I was too conscious that this would n’t do, as there was something I desired immensely to ask her. So I proposed that we should walk a little in the sala, keeping more at the other end, where we should n’t disturb the old lady. Miss Tita assented unconditionally ; the doctor was coming again, she said, and she would be there to meet him at the door. We strolled through the fine, superfluous hall, where, on the marble floor — particularly as at first we said nothing — our footsteps were more audible than I had expected. When we reached the other end — the wide window, inveterately closed, connecting with the balcony that overhung the canal — I suggested that we should remain there, as she would see the doctor arrive still better. I opened the window and we passed out on the balcony, where the air of the canal seemed even heavier, hotter, than that of the sala. The place was hushed and void ; the quiet neighborhood had gone to sleep. A lamp, here and there, over the narrow black water, glimmered in double ; the voice of a man going homeward, singing, with his jacket on his shoulder and his hat on his ear, came to us from a distance. This did n’t prevent the scene from being very comme il faut, as Miss Bordereau had called it the first time I saw her. Presently a gondola passed along the canal, with its slow rhythmical plash, and as we listened we watched it in silence. It did n’t stop, it did n’t carry the doctor ; and after it had gone on I said to Miss Tita —

“ And where are they now — the things that were in the trunk ? ”

“ In the trunk ? ”

“ That green box you pointed out to me in her room. You said her papers had been there ; you seemed to imply that she had transferred them.”

“ Oh, yes ; they are not in the trunk,” said Miss Tita.

“ May I ask if you have looked ? ”

“ Yes, I have looked, for you.”

“ How for me, dear Miss Tita ? Do you mean you would have given them to me if you had found them ? ” I asked, almost trembling.

She delayed to reply, and I waited. Suddenly she broke out, " I don’t know what I would do — what I would n’t ! ”

“ Would you look again — somewhere else ? ”

She had spoken with a strange, unexpected emotion, and she went on in the same tone : " I can’t — I can’t — while she lies there. It is n’t decent.”

“ No, it is n’t decent,” I replied, gravely. " Let the poor lady rest in peace.” And the words, on my lips, were not hypocritical, for I felt reprimanded and ashamed.

Miss Tita added in a moment, as if she had guessed this and were sorry for me, but at the same time wished to explain that I did drive her on, or at least did insist too much, " I can’t deceive her that way. I can’t deceive her — perhaps on her death-bed.”

“ Heaven forbid I should ask you, though I have been guilty myself ! ”

“ You have been guilty ? ”

“ I have sailed under false colors.” I felt now as if I must tell her that I had given her an invented name, on account of my fear that her aunt would have heard of me and would refuse to take me in. I explained this, and also that I had really been a party to the letter written to them by John Cumnor months before.

She listened with great attention, looking at me with parted lips, and when I had made my confession she said, " Then your real name — what is it ? ” She repeated it over twice when I had told her, accompanying it with the exclamation " Gracious, gracious ! ” Then she added, " I like your own best.”

“ So do I,” I said, laughing. " Ouf ! it ’s a relief to get rid of the other.”

“ So it was a regular plot — a kind of conspiracy ? ”

“ Oh, a conspiracy — we were only two,” I replied, leaving out Mrs. Prest, of course.

She hesitated, and I thought she was perhaps going to say that we had been very base. But she remarked, after a moment, in a candid, wondering way, " How much you must want them! ”

“ Oh, I do, passionately ! ” I conceded, smiling. And this chance made me go on, forgetting my compunction of a moment before : " How can she possibly have changed their place herself ? How can she walk ? How can she arrive at that sort of muscular exertion ? How can she lift and carry things ? ”

“ Oh, when one wants and when one has so much will ! ” said Miss Tita, as if she had thought over my question already herself and had simply had no choice but that answer — the idea that in the dead of night, or at some moment when the coast was clear, the old woman had been capable of a miraculous effort.

“ Have you questioned Olimpia ? Has n’t she helped her — has n’t she done it for her ? ” I asked ; to which Miss Tita replied, promptly and positively, that their servant had had nothing to do with the matter, though without admitting definitely that she had spoken to her. It was as if she were a little shy, a little ashamed now, of letting me see how much she had entered into my uneasiness and had me on her mind. Suddenly she said to me, without any immediate relevance —

“ I feel as if you were a new person, now that you have got a new name.”

“ It is n’t a new one ; it is a very good old one, thank heaven ! ”

She looked at me a moment. " I do like it better.”

“ Oh, if you did n’t I would almost go on with the other ! ”

“ Would you, really ? ”

I laughed again, but for all answer to this inquiry I said, “ Of course, if she can rummage about that way, she can perfectly have burnt them.”

“ You must wait — you must wait,” Miss Tita observed, with a sigh ; and her tone did n’t minister to my patience, for it seemed, after all, to accept that wretched possibility. I would teach myself to wait, I declared, nevertheless ; because in the first place I could n’t do otherwise, and in the second I had her promise, given me the other night, that she would help me.

“ Of course, if the papers are gone that’s no use, " she said ; not as if she wished to recede, but only to be conscientious.

“ Naturally. But if you could only find out ! ” I groaned, quivering again.

“ I thought you said you would wait.”

“ Oh, you mean wait even for that ? ” “ For what, then ? ”

“ Oh, nothing,” I replied, rather foolishly, being ashamed to tell her what had been implied in my submission to delay — the idea that she would do more than merely find out. I don’t know whether she guessed this ; at all events, she appeared to become aware of the necessity for being a little more rigid.

“ I did n’t promise to deceive, did I ? I don’t think I did.”

“ It does n’t much matter whether you did or not, for you could n’t ! ”

I don’t think Miss Tita would have contested this, even had she not been diverted by our seeing the doctor’s gondola shoot into the little canal and approach the house. I noted that he came as fast as if he believed that Miss Bordereau was still in danger. We looked down at him while he disembarked, and then went back into the sala to meet him. When he came up, however, I naturally left Miss Tita to go off with him alone, only asking her leave to come back later for news.

I went out of the house and took a long walk, as far as the Piazza, where my restlessness did n’t diminish. I could n’t sit down (it was very late now, but there were people still at the little tables in front of the cafés) ; I could only walk round and round, which I did half a dozen times. I was uncomfortable, but it gave me a certain pleasure to have told Miss Tita who I really was. At last I took my way home again, slowly, and getting all but inextricably lost, as I did whenever I went out in Venice ; so that it was considerably past midnight when I reached my door. The sala, up-stairs, was as dark as usual, and my lamp, as I crossed it, found nothing satisfactory to show me. I was disappointed, for I had notified Miss Tita that I would come back for a report, and I thought she might have left a light there as a sign. The door of the ladies’ apartment was closed ; which seemed an intimation that my faltering friend had gone to bed, tired of waiting for me. I stood in the middle of the place, considering, hoping she would hear me and perhaps peep out, saying to myself too that she would n’t go to bed with her aunt in a state so critical ; she would sit up and watch — she would be in a chair, in her dressinggown. I went nearer the door ; I stopped there and listened. I heard nothing at all, and at last I tapped gently. No answer came, and after another minute I turned the handle. There was no light in the room, and this ought to have prevented me from going in, but it did n’t. If I have candidly narrated the indiscretions, the indelicacies, the brutalities, of which my desire to possess myself of Jeffrey Aspern’s papers had rendered me capable, I need n’t shrink from confessing this last act of violence. I think it was the worst thing I did ; yet there were extenuating circumstances. I was deeply, though doubtless not disinterestedly, anxious for more news of the old lady, and Miss Tita had given me, as it were, a rendezvous which it might have been a point of honor with me to keep. It may be said that her leaving the place dark was a positive sign that she released me, and to this I can only reply that I did n’t want to be released.

The door of Miss Bordereau’s room was open, and I could see, beyond it, the faintness of a taper. There was no sound, and my footstep caused no one to stir. I came further into the room — I lingered there, with my lamp in my hand. I wanted to give Miss Tita a chance to come to me, if she were with her aunt, as she must be. I made no noise to call her, but I waited to see if she would n’t notice my light. She did n’t, and I explained this (I found afterwards I was right) by the idea that she had fallen asleep. If she had fallen asleep her aunt was not on her mind, and my explanation ought to have led me to go out as I had come. I must repeat again that it did n’t, for I found myself at the same moment thinking of something else. I had no definite purpose, no bad intention, but I felt myself held to the spot by an acute, though absurd, sense of opportunity. For what, I could n’t have said, inasmuch as it was not in my mind that I might commit a theft. Even if it had been, I was confronted with the evident fact that Miss Bordereau did n’t leave her secretary, her cupboard, and the drawers of her tables gaping. I had no keys, no tools, and no ambition to smash her furniture, None the less it came to me that I was now, perhaps alone, unmolested, at the hour of temptation and secrecy, nearer to the tormenting treasure than I had ever been. I held up my lamp, let the light play on the different objects, as if it could tell me something. Still there came no movement from the other room. If Miss Tita was sleeping, she was sleeping sound. Was she doing so — generous creature — on purpose to leave me the field ? Did she know I was there, and was she just keeping quiet to see what I would do — what I could do ? But what could I do, when it came to that ? She herself knew even better than I how little.

I stopped in front of the secretary, looking at it very idiotically ; for what had it to say to me, after all ? In the first place it was locked, and in the second it almost surely contained nothing in which I was interested. Ten to one the papers had been destroyed ; and even if they had not been destroyed the old woman would n’t have put them in such a place as that, after removing them from the green trunk — would n’t have transferred them, if she had the idea of their safety on her brain, from the better hiding-place to the worse. The secretary was more conspicuous, more accessible, in a room in which she could no longer mount guard. It opened with a key, but there was a little brass handle, like a button, as well ; I saw this as I played my lamp over it. I did something more than this at that moment : I caught a glimpse of the possibility that Miss Tita wished me really to understand. If she did n’t wish me to understand, if she wished me to keep away, why had n’t she locked the door of communication between the sitting-room and the sala ? That would have been a definite sign that I was to leave them alone. If I did n’t leave them alone she meant me to come for a purpose — a purpose now indicated by the quick, fantastic idea that, to oblige me, she had unlocked the secretary. She had n’t left the key, but the lid would probably move if I touched the button. This theory fascinated me, and I bent over, very close, to judge. I did n’t propose to do anything, not even — not in the least — to let down the lid ; I only wanted to test my theory, to see if the cover would move. I touched the button with my hand — a mere touch would tell me ; and as I did so (it is very awkward for me to relate it), I looked over my shoulder. It was a chance, an instinct, for I had n’t heard anything. I almost let my luminary drop, and certainly I stepped back, straightening myself up at what I saw. Miss Bordereau stood there in her nightdress, in the doorway of her room, watching me ; her hands were raised, she had lifted the everlasting curtain that covered half her face, and for the first, the last, the only time I saw her extraordinary eyes. They glared at me ; they made me horribly ashamed. I never shall forget her strange little, bent, white tottering figure, with its lifted head, her attitude, her expression ; neither shall I forget the tone in which, as I turned, looking at her, she hissed out passionately, furiously —

“ Ah, you publishing scoundrel ! ”

I don’t know what I stammered, to excuse myself, to explain ; but I went towards her, to tell her I meant no harm. She waved me off with her old hands, retreating before me with horror ; and the next thing I knew she had fallen back, with a quick spasm, as if death had descended on her, into Miss Tita’s arms.

IX.

I left Venice the next morning, as soon as I learnt that the old lady had not succumbed, as I feared at the moment, to the shock I had given her — the shock I may also say she had given me. How in the world could I have supposed her capable of getting out of bed by herself ? I did n’t see Miss Tita before going ; I only saw the donna, whom I entrusted with a note for her younger mistress. In this note I mentioned that I should be absent but for a few days. I went to Treviso, to Bassano, to Castelfranco ; I took walks and drives, and looked at musty old churches with ill-lighted pictures, and spent hours

seated smoking at the doors of cafés, where there were flies and yellow curtains, on the shady side of sleepy little squares. In spite of these pastimes, which were mechanical and perfunctory, I did n’t enjoy my journey ; there was too strong a taste of the disagreeable in my life. It had been devilish awkward, as the young men say, to be found by Miss Bordereau, in the dead of night, examining the fastening of her bureau ; and it had not been less so to have to believe for a good many hours afterward that it was highly probable I had killed her. In writing to Miss Tita, I attempted to minimize these irregularities ; but as she gave me no word of answer, I could n’t know what impression I made upon her. It rankled in my mind that I had been called a publishing scoundrel, for certainly I did publish and certainly I had not been very delicate. There was a moment when I stood convinced that the only way to make up for this latter fault was to take myself away altogether on the instant : to sacrifice my hopes and relieve the two poor women forever of the oppression of my intercourse. Then I reflected that I had better try a short absence first, for I must already have had a sense (unexpressed and dim) that in disappearing completely it would not be only my own hopes that I should condemn to extinction. It would perhaps be sufficient if I stayed away long enough to give the elder lady time to think she was rid of me. That she would wish to be rid of me, after this (if I was not rid of her), was now not to be doubted : that nocturnal scene would have cured her of the disposition to put up with my company for the sake of my money. I said to myself that after all I could n’t abandon Miss Tita, and I continued to say this even while I observed that she quite failed to comply with my earnest request (I had given her two or three addresses, at little towns, paste restante) that she would let me know how she was getting on. I would have made my servant write to me but that he could n’t manage a pen. It seemed to me there was a kind of scorn in Miss Tita’s silence (little disdainful as she had ever been), so that I was uncomfortable and sore. I had scruples about going back, and yet I had others about not doing so, for I wanted to put myself on a better footing. The end of it was that I did return to Venice on the twelfth day ; and as my gondola gently bumped against Miss Bordereau’s steps a certain palpitation of suspense told me that I had done myself a violence in holding off so long.

I had faced about so abruptly that I had not telegraphed to my servant. He was therefore not at the station to meet me, but he poked out his head from an upper window when I reached the house.

“ They have put her into the earth, la vecchia,” he said to me, in the lower hall, while he shouldered my valise ; and he grinned and almost winked, as if he knew I should be pleased at the news.

“ She ’s dead ! ” I exclaimed, giving him a very different look.

“ So it appears, since they have buried her.”

“ It ’s all over ? When was the funeral ? ”

“ The other yesterday. But a funeral you could scarcely call it, signore ; it was a little passeggio of two gondolas. Poveretta ! ” the man continued, referring apparently to Miss Tita.

I wanted to know about Miss Tita — how she was and where she was — but I asked him no more questions till we had got up-stairs. Now that the fact had met me I did n’t like it ; especially I did n’t like the idea that poor Miss Tita had had to manage by herself, after the end. What did she know about arrangements, about the steps to take in such a case ? Poveretta indeed ! I could only hope that the doctor had given her assistance, and that she had not been neglected by the old friends of whom she had told me, the little band of the faithful whose fidelity consisted in coming to the house once a year. I elicited from my servant that two old ladies and an old gentleman had, in fact, rallied round Miss Tita and had supported her (they had come for her in a gondola of their own) during the journey to the cemetery, the little red-walled island of tombs which lies to the north of the town, on the way to Murano. It appeared from these circumstances that the Misses Bordereau were Catholics, a discovery I had n’t made, as the old woman could n’t go to church, and her niece, so far as I perceived, either did n’t or went only to early mass, in the parish, before I was stirring. Certainly even the priests respected their seclusion ; I had never caught the whisk of the curato’s skirt. That evening, an hour later, I sent my servant down with five words written on a card, to ask Miss Tita if she would see me for a few moments. She was not in the house, where he had sought her, he told me when he came back, but in the garden, walking about to refresh herself and gathering flowers. He had found her there and she would be very happy to see me.

I went down, and passed half an hour with poor Miss Tita. She had always had a look of musty mourning (as if she were wearing out old robes of sorrow that would n’t come to an end), and in this respect there was no appreciable change in her appearance. But she evidently had been crying, crying a great deal — simply, satisfyingly, refreshingly, with a sort of youthful, retarded sense of loneliness and fear of change. But she had none of the formalism or the self-consciousness of grief, and I was almost surprised to see her standing there, in the first dusk, with her hands full of flowers, smiling at me with her reddened eyes. Her white face, in the frame of her mantilla, looked longer, leaner, than usual. I had had an idea that she would be a good deal disgusted with me — would consider that I ought to have been on the spot to advise her, to help her ; and (though I was sure there was no rancor in her composition, and no great conviction of the importance of her affairs) I had prepared myself for a difference in her manner, for some little injured look, half familiar, half estranged, which should say to my conscience, “ Well, you are a nice person to have professed ” — But historic truth compels me to declare that Tita Bordereau’s countenance expressed unqualified pleasure in seeing her late aunt’s lodger. That touched him extremely, and he thought it simplified his situation, until he found it did n’t. I was as kind to her that evening as I knew how to be, and I walked about the garden with her for half an hour. There was no explanation of any sort between us, and I did n’t ask her why she had n’t answered my letter. Still less did I repeat what I had said to her in that communication ; if she chose to let me suppose that she had forgotten the position in which Miss Bordereau surprised me that night, and the effect of the discovery on the old woman, I was quite willing to take it that way : I was grateful to her for not treating me as if I had killed her aunt.

We strolled and strolled, and really not much passed between us save the recognition of her bereavement, conveyed in my manner and in a sort of air that she had of depending on me now, since I let her see that I took an interest in her. Miss Tita had none of the pride that makes a person wish to preserve the look of independence ; she did n’t in the least pretend that she knew at present what would become of her. I did n’t touch particularly on that, however, for I certainly was not prepared to say that I would take charge of her. I was cautious ; not ignobly, I think, for I felt that her knowledge of life was so small that in her simple vision there would be no reason why — since

I seemed to pity her — I should n’t look after her. She told me how her aunt had died, very peacefully at the last, and how everything had been done afterwards by the care of her good friends (fortunately, thanks to me, she said, smiling, there was money in the house ; and she repeated that when once the Italians like you they are your friends for life) ; and when we had gone into this she asked me about my giro, my impressions, the places I had seen. I told her what I could, making it up partly, I am afraid, as in my preoccupation I had n’t seen much ; and after she had heard me she exclaimed, quite as if she had forgotten her aunt and her sorrow, “ Dear, dear, how much I should like to do such things, to take a little journey ! ” It came over me for the moment that I ought to propose some tour, say I would take her anywhere she liked ; and I remarked, at any rate, that some excursion — to give her a change — might be managed : we would think of it, talk it over. I said never a word to her about the Aspern documents ; asked no question as to what she had ascertained or what had otherwise happened with regard to them before Miss Bordereau’s death. It was not that I did n’t want tremendously to know, but that I thought it more decent not to betray my anxiety so soon after the catastrophe. I hoped she herself would say something, but she did n’t, and I thought that natural at the time. Later, however, that night, it occurred to me that her silence was somewhat strange ; for if she had talked of my movements, of anything so detached as the Giorgione at Castelfranco, she might have alluded to what she could easily remember was in my mind. It was not to be supposed that the emotion produced by her aunt’s death had blotted out the recollection that I was interested in that lady’s relics, and I fidgeted, afterwards, as it came to me that her reticence might very possibly mean simply that nothing had been found. We separated in the garden (it was she who said she must go in) ; now that she was alone in the rooms I felt that (judged, at any rate, by Venetian ideas) I was on rather a different footing in regard to visiting her there. As I shook hands with her for good-night I asked her if she had any general plan — had thought over what she had better do. “ Oh, yes, oh, yes, but I have n’t settled anything yet,” she replied, quite cheerfully. Was her cheerfulness explained by the impression that I would settle for her ?

I was glad the next morning that we had neglected practical questions, for this gave me a pretext for seeing her again immediately. There was a very practical question to be touched upon. I owed it to her to let her know formally that of course I did n’t expect her to keep me on as a lodger, and also to show some interest in her own tenure, what she might have on her hands in the way of a lease. I was not destined, however, as it happened, to converse with her for more than an instant on either of these points. I sent her no message ; I simply went down to the sala and walked to and fro there. I knew she would come out ; she would very soon discover I was there. Somehow, I did n’t want to be shut up with her ; gardens and big halls seemed better places to talk. It was a splendid morning, with something in the air that told of the waning of the long Venetian summer ; a freshness from the sea which stirred the flowers in the garden and made a pleasant draught in the house, less shuttered and darkened now than when the old woman was alive. It was the beginning of autumn, of the end of the golden months. With this it was the end of my experiment — or would be in the course of half an hour, when I should really have learned that the papers had been reduced to ashes. After that there would be nothing left for me but to depart ; for, seriously (and as it struck me in the morning light), I could n’t linger there to act as guardian to a piece of middle-aged female helplessness. If she had n’t saved the papers, wherein should I be obliged to her ? I think I winced a little as I asked myself how much, if she had saved them, I should have to recognize and, as it were, to repay such a courtesy. Might n’t that circumstance, after all, saddle me with a guardianship ? If this idea did n’t make me more uncomfortable as I walked up and down, it was because I was convinced I had nothing to look to. If the old woman had n’t destroyed everything before she pounced upon me in the parlor, she had done so afterwards.

It took Miss Tita rather longer than I had expected to guess that I was there ; but when at last she came out she looked at me without surprise. I said to her that I had been waiting for her, and she asked why I had n’t let her know. I was glad the next day that I had checked myself before remarking that I had wished to see if a friendly intuition would n’t tell her : it became a satisfaction to me that I had not indulged in that rather tender joke. What I did say was virtually the truth — that I was too nervous, since I expected her now to settle my fate.

“ Your fate ? ” said Miss Tita, giving me a queer look ; and as she spoke I noticed a rare change in her. She was different from what she had been the evening before — less natural, less quiet. She had been crying the day before, and she was not crying now, and yet she struck me as less confident. It was as if something had happened to her during the night, or at least as if she had thought of something that troubled her — something in particular that affected her relations with me, made them more embarrassing and complicated. Had she simply perceived that her aunt’s not being there now altered my position ?

“ I mean about our papers. Are there any ? You must know now.”

“ Yes, there are a great many ; more than I supposed.” I was struck with the way her voice trembled as she told me this.

“ Do you mean that you have got them in there — and that I may see them ? ”

“I don’t think you can see them,” said Miss Tita, with a strange expression of entreaty in her eyes, as if the dearest hope she had in the world now was that I would n’t take them from her. But how could she expect me to make such a sacrifice as that, after all that had passed between us ? What had I come back to Venice for but to see them ? My delight at learning they were still in existence was such that if the poor woman had gone down on her knees to beseech me never to mention them again I would have treated the proceeding as a bad joke. “ I have got them, but I can’t show them,” she added.

“ Not even to me ? Ah, Miss Tita ! ” I groaned, with a voice of infinite remonstrance and reproach.

She colored, and the tears came back to her eyes ; I saw that it cost her a kind of anguish to take such a stand, but that a dreadful sense of duty had descended upon her. It made me quite sick to find myself confronted with that particular obstacle ; all the more that it appeared to me I had been extremely encouraged to leave it out of account. I almost considered that Miss Tita had assured me that if she had no greater impediment than that — ! “ You don’t

mean to say you made her a death-bed promise ? It was precisely against your doing anything of that sort that I thought I was safe. Oh, I had rather she had burned the papers outright than that ! ”

“ No, it is n’t a promise,” said Miss Tita.

“ Pray what is it, then ? ”

She hesitated, and then she said, “ She tried to burn them, but I prevented it. She had hid them in her bed.”

“ In her bed ? ”

“ Between the mattresses. That ’s where she put them when she took them out of the trunk. I can’t understand how she did it, because Olimpia did n’t help her. She tells me so, and I believe her. My aunt only told her afterwards, so that she should n’t touch the bed — anything but the sheets. So it was badly made,” added Miss Tita, simply.

“ I should think so ! And how did she try to burn them ? ”

“ She did n’t try much ; she was too weak, those last days. But she told me — she charged me. Oh, it was terrible ! She could n’t speak after that night ; she could only make signs.”

“ And what did you do ? ”

“ I took them away. I locked them up.”

“ In the secretary ? ”

“ Yes, in the secretary,” said Miss Tita, coloring again.

“ Did you tell her you would burn them ? ”

“ No, I did n’t — on purpose.”

“ On purpose to gratify me ? ”

“ Yes, only for that.”

“ And what good will you have done me if after all you won’t show them ?

“ Oh, none ; I know that — I know that.”

“ And did she believe you had destroyed them ? ”

“ I don’t know what she believed at the last. I could n’t tell — she was too far gone.”

“ Then, if there was no promise and no assurance, I can’t see what ties you.”

“ Oh, she hated it so — she hated it so ! She was so jealous. But here’s the portrait — you may have that,” Miss Tita announced, and took the little picture, wrapped up in the same manner in which her aunt had wrapped it, out of her pocket.

“ I may have it — do you mean you give it to me ? ” I asked, staring, as it passed into my hand.

“ Oh, yes.”

“ But it ’s worth money — a large sum,”

“ Well ! ” said Miss Tita, still with her strange look.

I did n’t know what to make of it, for it could scarcely mean that she wanted to bargain like her aunt. She spoke as if she wished to make me a present. “I can’t take it from you as a gift,” I said, “ and yet I can’t afford to pay you for it according to the ideas Miss Bordereau had of its value. She rated it at a thousand pounds.”

“ Could n’t we sell it ? ” asked Miss Tita.

“ God forbid ! I prefer the picture to the money.”

“ Well then, keep it.”

“ You are very generous.”

“ So are you.”

“ I don’t know why you should think so,” I replied ; and this was a truthful speech, for the singular creature appeared to have some very fine reference in her mind, which I did n’t in the least seize.

“ Well, you have made a great difference for me,” said Miss Tita.

I looked at Jeffrey Aspern’s face in the little picture, partly in order not to look at that of my interlocutress, which had begun to give me pain, even to frighten me a little — it was so self-conscious, so unnatural. I made no answer to this last declaration, but I privately consulted Jeffrey Aspern’s delightful eyes with my own (they were so young and brilliant, and yet so wise, so full of vision) ; I asked him what on earth was the matter with Miss Tita. He seemed to smile at me with friendly mockery, as if he were amused at my case. I had got into a pickle for him — as if he needed it ! He was unsatisfactory, for the only moment since I had known him. Nevertheless, now that I held the little picture in my hand I felt that it would be a precious possession. “ Is this a bribe to make me give up the papers ? ” I asked in a moment, perversely. “ Much as I value it, if I were to be obliged to choose, the papers are what I should prefer. Ah, but ever so much ! ”

“ How can you choose — how can you choose ? ” Miss Tita asked, slowly, lamentably.

“ I see ! Of course there is nothing to be said, if you regard the interdiction that rests upon you as quite insurmountable. In this case, it must seem to you that to part with them would be an impiety of the worst kind, a simple sacrilege ! ”

Miss Tita shook her head, with all her dolefulness. “ You would understand if you had known her. I ’m afraid.” she quavered, suddenly — “I ’m afraid ! She was terrible when she was angry.”

“ Yes, I saw something of that, that night. She was terrible. Then I saw her eyes. Lord, they were fine ! ”

“ I see them — they stare at me in the dark ! ” said Miss Tita.

“ You are nervous, with all you have been through.”

“ Oh. yes, very — very ! ”

“ You must n’t mind ; that will pass away,” I said, kindly. Then I added, resignedly, for it really seemed to me that I must accept the situation, “ Well, so it is, and it can’t be helped. I must renounce.” Miss Tita, at this, looking at me, gave a low, soft moan, and I went on : “ I only wish to heaven she had destroyed them ; then there would be nothing more to say. And I can’t understand why, with her ideas, she did n’t.”

“ Oh, she lived on them ! ” said Miss Tita.

“ You can imagine whether that makes me want less to see them,” I answered, smiling. “ But don’t let me stand here as if I had it in my soul to tempt you to do anything base. Naturally, you will understand, I give up my rooms. I leave Venice immediately.” And I took up my hat, which I had placed on a chair. We were still there, rather awkwardly, on our feet, in the middle of the sala. She had left the door of the apartments open behind her, but she had not led me that way.

A kind of spasm came into her face as she saw me take my hat. “ Immediately — do you mean to-day ? ” The tone of the words was tragical — they were a cry of desolation.

“ Oh, no ; not so long as I can be of the least service to you.”

“ Well, just a day or two more — just two or three days,” she panted. Then controlling herself, she added, in another manner, “ She wanted to say something to me — the last day — something very particular, but she could n’t.”

“ Something very particular ? ”

“ Something more about the papers.”

“ And did you guess — have you any idea ? ”

“ No. I have thought — but I don’t know. I have thought all kinds of things.”

“ And for instance ? ”

“ Well, that if you were a relation it would be different.”

“ If I were a relation ? ”

“ If you were not a stranger. Then it would be the same for you as for me. Anything that is mine — would be yours, and you could do what you like. I could n’t prevent you — and you would have no responsibility.”

She brought out this droll explanation with a little nervous rush, as if she were speaking words she had got by heart. They gave me an impression of subtlety, and at first I did n’t follow. But after a moment her face helped me to see further, and then a light came into my mind. It was embarrassing, and I bent my head over Jeffrey Aspern’s portrait. What an odd expression was in his face ! “ Get out of it as you can, my dear fellow ! ” I put the picture into the pocket of my coat and said to Miss Tita, “ Yes, I ’ll sell it for you. I sha’n’t get a thousand pounds, by any means, but I shall get something good.”

She looked at me with tears in her eyes, but she seemed to try to smile as she remarked, “ We can divide the money.”

“ No, no, it shall be all yours.” Then I went on, “ I think I know what your poor aunt wanted to say. She wanted to give directions that her papers should be buried with her.”

Miss Tita appeared to consider this suggestion for a moment ; after which she declared, with striking decision, “ Oh, no, she would n’t have thought that safe ! ”

“ It seems to me nothing could be safer.”

“ She had an idea that when people want to publish, they are capable ” — And she paused, blushing.

“ Of violating a tomb ? Good heaven, what must she have thought of me ! ”

“ She was not just, she was not generous ! ” cried Miss Tita, with sudden passion.

The light that had come into my mind a moment before increased. “ Ah, don’t say that, for we are a dreadful race.” Then I pursued, “ If she left a will, that may give you some idea.”

“ I have found nothing of the sort — she destroyed it. She was very fond of me,” Miss Tita added, incongruously. “ She wanted me to be happy. And if any person should be kind to me — she wanted to speak of that.”

I was almost awe-stricken at the astuteness with which the good lady found herself inspired, halting, illogical and, I may add, transparent astuteness as it was. “ Depend upon it she did n’t want to make any provision that would be agreeable to me.”

“ No, not to you, but to me. She knew I should like it if you could carry out your idea. Not because she cared for you, but because she did think of me,” Miss Tita went on, with her unexpected, persuasive volubility. “ You could see them — you could use them.” She stopped, seeing that I perceived the sense of that conditional — stopped long enough for me to give some sign which I did n’t give. She must have been conscious, however, that though my face showed the greatest embarrassment that was ever painted on a human countenance it was not set as a stone, it was also full of compassion. It was a comfort to me a long time afterwards to consider that she could n’t have seen in me the smallest symptom of disrespect. “ I don’t know what to do ; I ’m too tormented, I ’m too ashamed ! ” she continued, with vehemence. Then, turning away from me and burying her face in her hands, she burst into a flood of tears. If she did n’t know what to do, it may be imagined whether I did any better. I stood there dumb, watching her, while her sobs resounded in the great empty hall. In a moment she was facing me again, with her streaming eyes. “ I would give you everything — and she would understand, where she is — she would forgive me ! ”

“ Ah, Miss Tita — ah, Miss Tita,” I stammered, for all reply. I did n’t know what to do, as I say, but at a venture I made a wild, vague movement, in consequence of which I found myself at the door. I remember standing there and saying, “ It would n’t do — it would n’t do ! " pensively, awkwardly, grotesquely, while I looked away to the opposite end of the sala, as if there were a beautiful view there. The next thing I remember is that I was down-stairs and out of the house. My gondola was there, and my gondolier, reclining on the cushions, sprang up as soon as he saw me. I jumped in, and to his usual “ Dove commanda ? ” I replied, in a tone that made him stare, “ Anywhere, anywhere ; out into the lagoon ! ”

He rowed me away and I sat there

prostrate, groaning softly to myself, with my hat pulled over my face. What in the name of the preposterous did she mean, if she did n’t mean to offer me her hand ? That was the price — that was the price ! And did she think I wanted it, poor deluded, infatuated, extravagant lady ? My gondolier, behind me, must have seen my ears red, as I wondered, sitting there under the fluttering tenda, with my hidden face, noticing nothing as we passed — wondered whether her delusion, her infatuation, had been my own reckless work. Did she think I had made love to her, even to get the papers ? I had n’t, I had n’t ; I repeated that over to myself for an hour, for two hours, till I was wearied if not convinced. I don’t know where my gondolier took me ; we floated aimlessly about on the lagoon, with slow, rare strokes. At last I became conscious that we were near the Lido, far up, on the right hand, as you turn your back to Venice, and I made him put me ashore. I wanted to walk, to move, to shed some of my bewilderment. I crossed the narrow strip and got to the sea-beach — I took my way toward Malamocco. But presently I flung myself down again on the warm sand, in the breeze, on the coarse, dry grass. It took it out of me to think I had been so much at fault, that I had unwittingly but none the less deplorably trifled. But I had n’t given her cause — distinctly I had n’t. I had said to Mrs. Prest that I would make love to her ; but it had been a joke without consequences, and I had never said it to Tita Bordereau. I had been as kind as possible, because I really liked her ; but since when had that become a crime, where a woman of such an age and such an appearance was concerned ? I don’t remember clearly the succession of events and feelings during this long day of confusion, which I spent entirely in wandering about, without going home, until late at night ; it only comes back to me that there were moments when I pacified ray conscience and others when I lashed it into pain. I did n’t laugh all day — that I do recollect ; the case did n’t seem to me amusing. It would have been better perhaps if it had. At any rate, whether I had given cause or not it went without saying that I could n’t pay the price. I could n’t accept. I could n’t, for a bundle of old papers, marry a ridiculous, pathetic, provincial old woman. It was a proof that she did n’t think the idea would come to me, her having determined to suggest it herself, in that practical, argumentative, heroic way, in which the timidity, however, had been so much more striking than the boldness that her reasons appeared to come first, and her feelings afterward.

As the day went on I grew to wish that I had never heard of Aspern’s papers, and I cursed the extravagant curiosity that had put John Cumnor on the scent of them. We had more than enough material without them, and my predicament was the just punishment of that most fatal of human follies, our not having known when to stop. It was very well to say it was no predicament, that the way out was simple, that I had only to leave Venice by the first train in the morning, after writing a note to Miss Tita, to be placed in her hand as soon as I had got clear of the house ; for it was a strong sign that I was embarrassed that when I tried to make up the note in my mind in advance (I would put it on paper as soon as I got home, before going to bed), I could n’t think of anything but “ How can I thank you for the rare confidence you have placed in me ? ” That would never do ; it sounded exactly as if an acceptance were to follow. Of course I might go away without writing a word, but that would be brutal, and my idea was still to exclude brutal solutions. As my confusion cooled I was lost in wonder at the importance I had attached to Miss Bordereau’s tattered scraps ; the thought

of them became odious to me, and I was as vexed with the old witch for the superstition that had prevented her from destroying them as I was with myself for having already spent more money than I could afford in attempting to control their fate. I forget what I did, where I went after leaving the Lido, and at what hour or with what recovery of composure I made my way back to my boat. I only know that in the afternoon, when the air was aglow with the sunset, I was standing before the church of Saints John and Paul and looking up at the small, square-jawed face of Bartolommeo Colleoni, the terrible condottiere who sits so sturdily astride of his huge bronze horse, on the high pedestal on which Venetian gratitude maintains him. The statue is incomparable, the finest of all mounted figures, unless that of Marcus Aurelius, who rides benignant before the Roman Capitol, be finer : but I was not thinking of that ; I only found myself staring at the triumphant captain as if he had an oracle on his lips. The western light shines into all his grimness at that hour of the day and makes it wonderfully personal. But he continued to look far over my head, at the red immersion of another day — he had seen so many go down into the lagoon, through the centuries — and if he was thinking of battles and stratagems they were of a different quality from any I had to tell him of. He could n’t direct me what to do, gaze up at him as I might. Was it before this, or after, that I wandered about, for an hour in the small canals, to the continued stupefaction of my gondolier, who had never seen me so restless and yet so void of a purpose and could extract from me no order but, “ Go anywhere — everywhere — all over the place ! ” He reminded me that I had n’t lunched, and expressed therefore, respectfully, the hope that I would dine earlier. He had had long periods of leisure during the day, when I had left the boat and rambled, so that I was not obliged to consider him, and I told him that that day, for a change, I meant to eat no dinner. It was an effect of poor Miss Tita’s proposal, not altogether auspicious, that I had quite lost my appetite. I don’t know why it happened that on this occasion I was more than ever struck with that queer air of sociability, of cousinship and family life, which makes up half the expression of Venice. Without streets and vehicles, the uproar of wheels, the brutality of horses, and with its little winding ways where people crowd together, where voices sound as in the corridors of a house, where the human step circulates as if it skirted the angles of furniture and shoes never wear out, the place has the character of an immense collective apartment, in which Piazza San Marco is the most ornamented corner, and palaces and churches, for the rest, play the part of great divans of repose, tables of entertainment, expanses of decoration. And somehow the splendid common domicile, familiar, domestic, and resonant, also resembles a theatre, with actors clicking over bridges, and, in straggling processions, tripping along fondamentas. As you sit in your gondola the footways that in certain parts edge the canals assume to the eye the importance of a stage, meeting it at the same angle, and the Venetian figures, moving to and fro against the battered scenery of their little houses of comedy, strike you as members of an endless dramatic company.

I went to bed that night very tired, and without being able to compose a letter to Miss Tita. Was this failure the reason why I became conscious the next morning, as soon as I awoke, of a determination to see the poor lady again, the first moment she would receive me ? That had something to do with it, but what had still more was the fact that during my sleep a very odd revulsion had taken place in my spirit. I became aware of this almost as soon as I opened my eyes ; it made me jump out of my bed with the movement of a man who remembers that he has left the housedoor ajar or a candle burning under a shelf. Was I still in time to save my goods ? That question was in my heart, for what had now come to pass was that in the unconscious cerebration of sleep I had swung back to a passionate appreciation of Miss Bordereau’s papers. They were now more precious than ever, and a kind of ferocity had come into my desire to possess them. The condition Miss Tita had attached to the possession of them no longer appeared an obstacle worth thinking of, and for an hour, that morning, my repentant imagination brushed it aside. It was absurd that I should be able to invent nothing ; absurd to renounce so easily and turn away, helpless, from the idea that the only way to get hold of the papers was to unite myself to her for life. I would n’t unite myself and yet I would have them. I must add that by the time I sent down to ask if she would see me I had n’t invented an alternative, though, to do so, I had had all the time that I was dressing. This failure was humiliating, yet what could the alternative be ? Miss Tita sent back word that I might come ; and as I descended the stairs and crossed the sala to her door — this time she received me in her aunt’s forlorn parlor — I hoped she would n’t think my errand was to tell her I accepted her hand. She certainly would have made, the day before, the reflection that I declined it.

As soon as I came into the room I saw that she had drawn this inference, but I also saw something which had not been in my forecast. Poor Miss Tita’s sense of her failure had produced an extraordinary alteration in her, but I had been too full of the grossness of my desire to think of that. Now I perceived it ; I can’t tell how it startled me. She stood there, in the middle of the room, with a face of mildness bent upon me, and her look of forgiveness, of absolution, made her angelic. It beautified her : she was younger ; she was not a ridiculous old woman. This optical trick gave her a sort of phantasmagoric brightness, and while I was still the victim of it I heard a whisper somewhere, in the depths of my conscience : “ Why not, after all — why not ? ” It seemed to me I was ready to pay the price. Still more distinctly, however, than the whisper, I heard Miss Tita’s own voice. I was so struck with the different effect she made upon me that at first I was not clearly aware of what she was saying ; then I perceived she had bade me good-by — she said something about hoping I should be very happy.

“ Good-by — good-by ? ” I repeated, with an inflection interrogative and probably foolish.

I saw she did n’t feel the interrogation, she only heard the words ; she had strung herself up to accepting our separation and they fell upon her ear as a proof. “ Are you going to-day ? ” she asked. “ But it does n’t matter, for whenever you go I sha’n’t see you again. I don’t want to.” And she smiled strangely, but with an infinite gentleness. She had never doubted that I had left her the day before in horror. How could she, since I had not come back before night to contradict, even as a simple form, such an idea ? And now she had the force of soul — Miss Tita with force of soul was a new conception — to smile at me in her humiliation.

“ What shall you do — where shall you go ? ” I asked.

“ Oh, I don’t know. I have done the great thing. I have destroyed the papers.”

“ Destroyed them ? ” I faltered.

“ Yes ; what was I to keep them for ? I burnt them last night, one by one, in the kitchen.”

“ One by one ? ” I repeated, mechanically.

“ It took a long time — there were so many.” The room seemed to go round me as she said this, and a real darkness for a moment descended upon my eyes. When it passed, Miss Tita was there still, but the transfiguration was over and she had changed back to a plain, dingy, elderly person. It was in this character she spoke, as she said, “ I can’t stay with you longer, I can’t ; ” and it was in this character that she turned her back upon me, as I had turned mine upon her twenty-four hours before, and moved to the door of her room. Here she did what I had not done when I quitted her — she paused long enough to give me one look. I have never forgotten it, and I sometimes still suffer from it, though it was not resentful. No, there was no resentment, nothing hard or vindictive, in poor Miss Tita ; for when, later, I sent her, in exchange for the portrait of Jeffrey Aspern, a larger sum of money than I had hoped to be able to gather for her, writing to her that I had sold the picture, she kept it, with thanks ; she did n’t send it back. I wrote to her that I had sold the picture, but I admitted to Mrs. Prest, at the time (I met her in London, in the autumn), that it hangs above my writingtable. When I look at it my distress at the loss of the letters becomes almost intolerable.

Henry James.