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. He was pleased with everything; he had never
before been pleased with so many things at once. Old impressions,
old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening, going home to his
room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet to which he prefixed
the title of "Rome Revisited." A day or two later he showed this piece
of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel, explaining to her that it
was an Italian fashion to commemorate the occasions of life by a
tribute to the muse.
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