Does that seem a very cruel, far-off date? Others have the wish to
stay even longer, and it would be no fairness to hurry them beyond a
certain degree of reasonableness with my particular reason for
impatience, seeing, moreover, that in your love I have every help for
remaining patient. It is too much to hope, I suppose, that the "truce"
sets you free now, and that you could meet us here after all, and prolong
our stay indefinitely? I know one besides myself who would be glad, and
would welcome an outside excuse dearly.
For, oh, the funniness of near and dear things! Arthur's heart is laid
up with a small love affair, and it is the comicalest of internal
maladies. He is screwing up courage to tell me all about it, and I write
in haste before my mouth is sealed by his confidences. I fancy I know
the party, an energetic little mortal whom we met at Lucerne, where
Arthur lingered while we came on to Florence. She talked vaguely of
being in Venice some time this autumn; and the vagueness continues.
Arthur, in consequence, roams round disconsolately with no interest but
in hotel books. And for fear lest we should gird up his loins and drag
him away with us out of Paradisal possibilities, he is forever praising
Venice as a resting-place, and saying he wants to be nowhere else. The
bathing just keeps him alive; but when put to it to explain what charms
him since pictures do not, and architecture only slightly, he says in
exemplary brotherly fashion that he likes to see me completing my
education and enthusiasms,--and does not realize with how foreign an
air that explanation sits upon his shoulders.
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