Four months before the year of Carlo's bounty was up, Aldo made up his mind that he must hustle after all. They had settled in Milan; then nothing had happened. Carlo would never change his mind. Valeria had shown him her banking account, and proved to him that there was nothing Nancy could have beyond her skimpy forty thousand francs; Lady Sainsborough, the elderly English person in Naples who had taken such a fancy to him, had not answered his last two letters, and had probably altered her will; so there was nothing to do or to hope for. He must hustle.

He did so. He wrote a third letter to Lady Sainsborough. Then he decided to ask Carlo to make room for him in his silk mills, which Carlo refused to do.

Then he looked up Nancy's publishers, and asked them if they would advance a substantial sum on the unwritten book, which they also refused to do. So having done all he could, he decided not to hustle any more, but to let events take their course.

Nancy did not help him at all. She was selfishly engrossed in her book, and sat in her room all day, with hair pinned tightly back and wild and lucent eyes. Whenever he came into the room she put up her hand without turning round—a gesture he could not bear—and went on with her writing. If he disregarded the gesture, she looked up at him with those wild, light eyes, and he felt hurried, and forgot what he wanted to say. So he muddled along with her forty thousand francs, and read the papers, played the piano, and went out to the CaffÈ Biffi every evening until it was time to go to the Patriottica for a game of billiards.

There he frequently saw Nino sitting glumly with the corners of his mouth turned down; and they turned down further when Aldo came in, so that Aldo positively hated the sight of him. Besides, Carlo, who had refused to do anything for Aldo, had actually taken Nino into partnership; and, just to irritate and show off, Nino was working vulgarly, like a nigger, twelve or fourteen hours a day. The gratified Carlo was to be seen with Nino in the evenings walking through the Galleria arm-in-arm with him as if they were brothers, with that absurd Zio Giacomo trotting alongside, grinning like an old hen, while he, Aldo, Carlo's own brother, had to mooch about alone, smoking cheap cigarettes, or else to run alongside of Giacomo like an outsider, and listen for the thousandth time to the recital of the prodigal Nino's reform and rehabilitation.

He went to Clarissa and complained; but she was unsympathetic. She rubbed her left-hand nails against her right-hand palm and looked out of the window. He had expected her to pass a white, jewelled hand lightly over his bowed head and say, "Povero bello! Poor beauteous one!" as she had sometimes done a year or so ago; but when he bowed his head she continued rubbing the nails of her left hand against her right-hand palm and looking out of the window.

He felt that a great deal depended upon her friendship, and it was almost out of a sense of duty to Nancy that he grasped her hand and kissed it in his best and softest manner. "Oh, don't be a snail, Aldo," said Clarissa, taking her hand away. Then she looked down at him and shook her head: "I am thankful I married Carlo."

This was untrue, of course, said Aldo to himself; but, added to the other things, it rankled. When he left her he understood that Clarissa considered him as much Nancy's property as the pair of antique silver candle-sticks she had given to Nancy for a wedding-present, and that never would she take them back or light the candles in them again.

Nancy had written one-third of The Book. It was a great book—a book the world would speak of. Like the portent of Jeanne of Orleans, a vision had fallen upon her young, white heart and set it aflame. She felt genius like an eagle beating great wings against her temples. Inspiration, nebulous and wan, stretched thin arms to her, and young ideas went shouting through her brain. Then the phrase, like a black-and-white flower, rolled back its thundering petals, and the masterpiece was born.