He was able to identify in his bodily response to all that charged the decaying wonder of Venice with opulent personality, the source of his boyish dreams.

It was no woman, he told himself, who had gone off with the bystanders while he had been engaged with the dragons of poverty and obligation, but merely the appreciations of beauty.

There had never been any woman, there was never going to be.

He began to plan how he should explain his discovery and the bearing of it, to Miss Dassonville.

It would be a pity if she were making the same mistake about it.