Clearly he was amused--as amused as a man could be who was so little ever surprised, and that made him almost applausive.

It was not that his spirits were visibly high--he would never, in the concert of pleasure, touch the big drum by so much as a knuckle: he had a mortal dislike to the high, ragged note, to what he called random ravings.

He thought Miss Archer sometimes of too precipitate a readiness.

It was pity she had that fault, because if she had not had it she would really have had none; she would have been as smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the palm.

If he was not personally loud, however, he was deep, and during these closing days of the Roman May he knew a complacency that matched with slow irregular walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, among the small sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles.