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 not 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.
But I was not destined, 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 preferred not 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 go to the station; for seriously (and as it struck me
in the morning light) I could not linger there to act as guardian
to a piece of middle-aged female helplessness. If she had not saved
the papers wherein should I be indebted 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 reward such a courtesy.
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