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Updated: May 11, 2025
And as he sat there in the summer moonlight, with her head on his knee, he tried to recapitulate the successive steps that had landed them on Streffy's lake-front. On Lansing's side, no doubt, it dated back to his leaving Harvard with the large resolve not to miss anything.
Susy was there, fresh and gay, a rose in her breast and the sun in her hair: her head was bowed over Bradshaw, but she waved a fond hand across the breakfast things, and presently looked up to say: "Yes, I believe we can just manage it." "Manage what?" "To catch the train at Milan if we start in the motor at ten sharp." He stared. "The motor? What motor?" "Why, the new people's Streffy's tenants.
"I don't see what there is to be solemn about. The cigars are not Streffy's either... you may be sure he got them out of some bounder. And there's nothing he'd hate more than to have them passed on to another." "Nonsense. If they're not Streffy's they're much less mine. Hand them over, please, dear." "Just as you like.
His lazy strokes were carrying him slowly shoreward; but the hour was so exquisite that a few yards from the landing he laid hold of the mooring rope of Streffy's boat and floated there, following his dream.... It was a bore to be leaving; no doubt that was what made him turn things inside-out so uselessly. Venice would be delicious, of course; but nothing would ever again be as sweet as this.
"Dearest, do put a couple of cigars into your pocket as a tip for Ottaviano." Lansing stared. "Why, what on earth are you doing with Streffy's cigars?" "Packing them, of course.... You don't suppose he meant them for those other people?" She gave him a look of honest wonder. "I don't know whom he meant them for but they're not ours...." She continued to look at him wonderingly.
Nick was not surprised to learn that it was becoming the fashion, that summer, to pop down to Venice and take a look at the Lansings. Streffy had set the example, and Streffy's example was always followed. And then Susy's marriage was still a subject of sympathetic speculation. People knew the story of the wedding cheques, and were interested in seeing how long they could be made to last.
The great bunches of golden roses that he and Susy had gathered the day before were dropping their petals on the marble embroidery of the floor, pale camellias floated in the alabaster tazzas between the windows, haunting scents of the garden blew in on him with the breeze from the lake. Never had Streffy's little house seemed so like a nest of pleasures.
Day after day he sprawled for hours on the Lido sands, his arms folded under his head, listening to Streffy's nonsense and watching Susy between sleepy lids; but he betrayed no desire to see her alone, or to draw her into talk apart from the others. More than ever he seemed content to be the gratified spectator of a costly show got up for his private entertainment.
She had always been alive to the value of her inherited scruples: her reasoned opinions were unusually free, but with regard to the things one couldn't reason about she was oddly tenacious. And yet she had taken Streffy's cigars!
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