prompt:
Chapter: It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright
bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are
not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport
in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to
fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings,
to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble
churches opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling against the
embankment of the road.

Over the river men were at work with spades and sieves on the sandy
foreshore, and on the river was a boat, also diligently employed for
some mysterious end. An electric tram came rushing underneath the
window. No one was inside it, except one tourist; but its platforms were
overflowing with Italians, who preferred to stand. Children tried to
hang on behind, and the conductor, with no malice, spat in their faces
to make them let go. Then soldiers appeared--good-looking, undersized
men--wearing each a knapsack covered with mangy fur, and a great-coat
which had been cut for some larger soldier. Beside them walked officers,
looking foolish and fierce, and before them went little boys, turning
somersaults in time with the band. The tramcar became entangled in their
ranks, and moved on painfully, like a caterpillar in a swarm of ants.
One of the little boys fell down, and some white bullocks came out of
an archway. Indeed, if it had not been for the good advice of an old man
who was selling button-hooks, the road might never have got clear.

Over such trivialities as these many a valuable hour may slip away,
and the traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of
Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing
but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it. So it was as
well that Miss Bartlett should tap and come in, and having commented on
Lucy's leaving the door unlocked, and on her leaning out of the window
before she was fully dressed, should urge her to hasten herself, or the
best of the day would be gone. By the time Lucy was ready her cousin
had done her breakfast, and was listening to the clever lady among the
crumbs.

A conversation then ensued, on not unfamiliar lines. Miss Bartlett
was, after all, a wee bit tired, and thought they had better spend the
morning settling in; unless Lucy would at all like to go out? Lucy would
rather like to go out, as it was her first day in Florence, but, of
course, she could go alone. Miss Bartlett could not allow this. Of
course she would accompany Lucy everywhere. Oh, certainly not; Lucy
would stop with her cousin. Oh, no! that would never do. Oh, yes!

At this point the clever lady broke in.

"If it is Mrs. Grundy who is troubling you, I do assure you that you
can neglect the good person. Being English, Miss Honeychurch will be
perfectly safe. Italians understand. A dear friend of mine, Contessa
Baroncelli, has two daughters, and when she cannot send a maid to school
with them, she lets them go in sailor-hats instead. Every one takes
them for English, you see, especially if their hair is strained tightly
behind."

Miss Bartlett was unconvinced by the safety of Contessa Baroncelli's
daughters. She was determined to take Lucy herself, her head not being
so very bad. The clever lady then said that she was going to spend a
long morning in Santa Croce, and if Lucy would come too, she would be
delighted.

"I will take you by a dear dirty back way, Miss Honeychurch, and if you
bring me luck, we shall have an adventure."

Lucy said that this was most kind, and at once opened the Baedeker, to
see where Santa Croce was.

"Tut, tut! Miss Lucy! I hope we shall soon emancipate you from Baedeker.
He does but touch the surface of things. As to the true Italy--he does
not even dream of it. The true Italy is only to be found by patient
observation."

This sounded very interesting, and Lucy hurried over her breakfast, and
started with her new friend in high spirits. Italy was coming at last.
The Cockney Signora and her works had vanished like a bad dream.

Miss Lavish--for that was the clever lady's name--turned to the right
along the sunny Lung' Arno. How delightfully warm! But a wind down
the side streets cut like a knife, didn't it? Ponte alle
Grazie--particularly interesting, mentioned by Dante. San
Miniato--beautiful as well as interesting; the crucifix that kissed
a murderer--Miss Honeychurch would remember the story. The men on the
river were fishing. (Untrue; but then, so is most information.) Then
Miss Lavish darted under the archway of the white bullocks, and she
stopped, and she cried:

"A smell! a true Florentine smell! Every city, let me teach you, has its
own smell."

"Is it a very nice smell?" said Lucy, who had inherited from her mother
a distaste to dirt.

"One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one comes for
life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!" bowing right and left. "Look at that
adorable wine-cart! How the driver stares at us, dear, simple soul!"

So Miss Lavish proceeded through the streets of the city of Florence,
short, fidgety, and playful as a kitten, though without a kitten's
grace. It was a treat for the girl to be with any one so clever and so
cheerful; and a blue military cloak, such as an Italian officer wears,
only increased the sense of festivity.

"Buon giorno! Take the word of an old woman, Miss Lucy: you will
never repent of a little civility to your inferiors. That is the
true democracy. Though I am a real Radical as well. There, now you're
shocked."

"Indeed, I'm not!" exclaimed Lucy. "We are Radicals, too, out and out.
My father always voted for Mr. Gladstone, until he was so dreadful about
Ireland."

"I see, I see. And now you have gone over to the enemy."

"Oh, please--! If my father was alive, I am sure he would vote Radical
again now that Ireland is all right. And as it is, the glass over our
front door was broken last election, and Freddy is sure it was the
Tories; but mother says nonsense, a tramp."

"Shameful! A manufacturing district, I suppose?"

"No--in the Surrey hills. About five miles from Dorking, looking over
the Weald."

Miss Lavish seemed interested, and slackened her trot.

"What a delightful part; I know it so well. It is full of the very
nicest people. Do you know Sir Harry Otway--a Radical if ever there
was?"

"Very well indeed."

"And old Mrs. Butterworth the philanthropist?"

"Why, she rents a field of us! How funny!"

Miss Lavish looked at the narrow ribbon of sky, and murmured: "Oh, you
have property in Surrey?"

"Hardly any," said Lucy, fearful of being thought a snob. "Only thirty
acres--just the garden, all downhill, and some fields."

Miss Lavish was not disgusted, and said it was just the size of her
aunt's Suffolk estate. Italy receded. They tried to remember the last
name of Lady Louisa someone, who had taken a house near Summer Street
the other year, but she had not liked it, which was odd of her. And just
as Miss Lavish had got the name, she broke off and exclaimed:

"Bless us! Bless us and save us! We've lost the way."

Certainly they had seemed a long time in reaching Santa Croce, the tower
of which had been plainly visible from the landing window. But Miss
Lavish had said so much about knowing her Florence by heart, that Lucy
had followed her with no misgivings.

"Lost! lost! My dear Miss Lucy, during our political diatribes we have
taken a wrong turning. How those horrid Conservatives would jeer at us!
What are we to do? Two lone females in an unknown town. Now, this is
what I call an adventure."

Lucy, who wanted to see Santa Croce, suggested, as a possible solution,
that they should ask the way there.

"Oh, but that is the word of a craven! And no, you are not, not, NOT to
look at your Baedeker. Give it to me; I shan't let you carry it. We will
simply drift."

Accordingly they drifted through a series of those grey-brown streets,
neither commodious nor picturesque, in which the eastern quarter of the
city abounds. Lucy soon lost interest in the discontent of Lady
Louisa, and became discontented herself. For one ravishing moment Italy
appeared. She stood in the Square of the Annunziata and saw in the
living terra-cotta those divine babies whom no cheap reproduction can
ever stale. There they stood, with their shining limbs bursting from
the garments of charity, and their strong white arms extended against
circlets of heaven. Lucy thought she had never seen anything more
beautiful; but Miss Lavish, with a shriek of dismay, dragged her
forward, declaring that they were out of their path now by at least a
mile.

The hour was approaching at which the continental breakfast begins, or
rather ceases, to tell, and the ladies bought some hot chestnut paste
out of a little shop, because it looked so typical. It tasted partly
of the paper in which it was wrapped, partly of hair oil, partly of the
great unknown. But it gave them strength to drift into another Piazza,
large and dusty, on the farther side of which rose a black-and-white
facade of surpassing ugliness. Miss Lavish spoke to it dramatically. It
was Santa Croce. The adventure was over.

"Stop a minute; let those two people go on, or I shall have to speak to
them. I do detest conventional intercourse. Nasty! they are going into
the church, too. Oh, the Britisher abroad!"

"We sat opposite them at dinner last night. They have given us their
rooms. They were so very kind."

"Look at their figures!" laughed Miss Lavish. "They walk through my
Italy like a pair of cows. It's very naughty of me, but I would like
to set an examination paper at Dover, and turn back every tourist who
couldn't pass it."

"What would you ask us?"

Miss Lavish laid her hand pleasantly on Lucy's arm, as if to suggest
that she, at all events, would get full marks. In this exalted mood they
reached the steps of the great church, and were about to enter it when
Miss Lavish stopped, squeaked, flung up her arms, and cried:

"There goes my local-colour box! I must have a word with him!"

And in a moment she was away over the Piazza, her military cloak
flapping in the wind; nor did she slacken speed till she caught up an
old man with white whiskers, and nipped him playfully upon the arm.

Lucy waited for nearly ten minutes. Then she began to get tired. The
beggars worried her, the dust blew in her eyes, and she remembered that
a young girl ought not to loiter in public places. She descended slowly
into the Piazza with the intention of rejoining Miss Lavish, who was
really almost too original. But at that moment Miss Lavish and her
local-colour box moved also, and disappeared down a side street, both
gesticulating largely. Tears of indignation came to Lucy's eyes partly
because Miss Lavish had jilted her, partly because she had taken her
Baedeker. How could she find her way home? How could she find her way
about in Santa Croce? Her first morning was ruined, and she might never
be in Florence again. A few minutes ago she had been all high spirits,
talking as a woman of culture, and half persuading herself that she
was full of originality. Now she entered the church depressed and
humiliated, not even able to remember whether it was built by the
Franciscans or the Dominicans. Of course, it must be a wonderful
building. But how like a barn! And how very cold! Of course, it
contained frescoes by Giotto, in the presence of whose tactile values
she was capable of feeling what was proper. But who was to tell
her which they were? She walked about disdainfully, unwilling to be
enthusiastic over monuments of uncertain authorship or date. There was
no one even to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved
the nave and transepts, was the one that was really beautiful, the one
that had been most praised by Mr. Ruskin.

Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of
acquiring information, she began to be happy. She puzzled out the
Italian notices--the notices that forbade people to introduce dogs into
the church--the notice that prayed people, in the interest of health and
out of respect to the sacred edifice in which they found themselves,
not to spit. She watched the tourists; their noses were as red as their
Baedekers, so cold was Santa Croce. She beheld the horrible fate that
overtook three Papists--two he-babies and a she-baby--who began their
career by sousing each other with the Holy Water, and then proceeded to
the Machiavelli memorial, dripping but hallowed. Advancing towards it
very slowly and from immense distances, they touched the stone with
their fingers, with their handkerchiefs, with their heads, and then
retreated. What could this mean? They did it again and again. Then Lucy
realized that they had mistaken Machiavelli for some saint, hoping
to acquire virtue. Punishment followed quickly. The smallest he-baby
stumbled over one of the sepulchral slabs so much admired by Mr. Ruskin,
and entangled his feet in the features of a recumbent bishop. Protestant
as she was, Lucy darted forward. She was too late. He fell heavily upon
the prelate's upturned toes.

"Hateful bishop!" exclaimed the voice of old Mr. Emerson, who had darted
forward also. "Hard in life, hard in death. Go out into the sunshine,
little boy, and kiss your hand to the sun, for that is where you ought
to be. Intolerable bishop!"

The child screamed frantically at these words, and at these dreadful
people who picked him up, dusted him, rubbed his bruises, and told him
not to be superstitious.

"Look at him!" said Mr. Emerson to Lucy. "Here's a mess: a baby hurt,
cold, and frightened! But what else can you expect from a church?"

The child's legs had become as melting wax. Each time that old Mr.
Emerson and Lucy set it erect it collapsed with a roar. Fortunately an
Italian lady, who ought to have been saying her prayers, came to the
rescue. By some mysterious virtue, which mothers alone possess, she
stiffened the little boy's back-bone and imparted strength to his knees.
He stood. Still gibbering with agitation, he walked away.

"You are a clever woman," said Mr. Emerson. "You have done more than
all the relics in the world. I am not of your creed, but I do believe in
those who make their fellow-creatures happy. There is no scheme of the
universe--"

He paused for a phrase.

"Niente," said the Italian lady, and returned to her prayers.

"I'm not sure she understands English," suggested Lucy.

In her chastened mood she no longer despised the Emersons. She was
determined to be gracious to them, beautiful rather than delicate,
and, if possible, to erase Miss Bartlett's civility by some gracious
reference to the pleasant rooms.

"That woman understands everything," was Mr. Emerson's reply. "But what
are you doing here? Are you doing the church? Are you through with the
church?"

"No," cried Lucy, remembering her grievance. "I came here with Miss
Lavish, who was to explain everything; and just by the door--it is too
bad!--she simply ran away, and after waiting quite a time, I had to come
in by myself."

"Why shouldn't you?" said Mr. Emerson.

"Yes, why shouldn't you come by yourself?" said the son, addressing the
young lady for the first time.

"But Miss Lavish has even taken away Baedeker."

"Baedeker?" said Mr. Emerson. "I'm glad it's THAT you minded. It's worth
minding, the loss of a Baedeker. THAT'S worth minding."

Lucy was puzzled. She was again conscious of some new idea, and was not
sure whither it would lead her.

"If you've no Baedeker," said the son, "you'd better join us." Was this
where the idea would lead? She took refuge in her dignity.

"Thank you very much, but I could not think of that. I hope you do not
suppose that I came to join on to you. I really came to help with the
child, and to thank you for so kindly giving us your rooms last night. I
hope that you have not been put to any great inconvenience."

"My dear," said the old man gently, "I think that you are repeating what
you have heard older people say. You are pretending to be touchy; but
you are not really. Stop being so tiresome, and tell me instead what
part of the church you want to see. To take you to it will be a real
pleasure."

Now, this was abominably impertinent, and she ought to have been
furious. But it is sometimes as difficult to lose one's temper as it
is difficult at other times to keep it. Lucy could not get cross. Mr.
Emerson was an old man, and surely a girl might humour him. On the other
hand, his son was a young man, and she felt that a girl ought to be
offended with him, or at all events be offended before him. It was at
him that she gazed before replying.

"I am not touchy, I hope. It is the Giottos that I want to see, if you
will kindly tell me which they are."

The son nodded. With a look of sombre satisfaction, he led the way to
the Peruzzi Chapel. There was a hint of the teacher about him. She felt
like a child in school who had answered a question rightly.

The chapel was already filled with an earnest congregation, and out of
them rose the voice of a lecturer, directing them how to worship Giotto,
not by tactful valuations, but by the standards of the spirit.

"Remember," he was saying, "the facts about this church of Santa Croce;
how it was built by faith in the full fervour of medievalism, before
any taint of the Renaissance had appeared. Observe how Giotto in these
frescoes--now, unhappily, ruined by restoration--is untroubled by the
snares of anatomy and perspective. Could anything be more majestic, more
pathetic, beautiful, true? How little, we feel, avails knowledge and
technical cleverness against a man who truly feels!"

"No!" exclaimed Mr. Emerson, in much too loud a voice for church.
"Remember nothing of the sort! Built by faith indeed! That simply means
the workmen weren't paid properly. And as for the frescoes, I see no
truth in them. Look at that fat man in blue! He must weigh as much as I
do, and he is shooting into the sky like an air balloon."

He was referring to the fresco of the "Ascension of St. John." Inside,
the lecturer's voice faltered, as well it might. The audience shifted
uneasily, and so did Lucy. She was sure that she ought not to be with
these men; but they had cast a spell over her. They were so serious and
so strange that she could not remember how to behave.

"Now, did this happen, or didn't it? Yes or no?"

George replied:

"It happened like this, if it happened at all. I would rather go up to
heaven by myself than be pushed by cherubs; and if I got there I should
like my friends to lean out of it, just as they do here."

"You will never go up," said his father. "You and I, dear boy, will
lie at peace in the earth that bore us, and our names will disappear as
surely as our work survives."

"Some of the people can only see the empty grave, not the saint, whoever
he is, going up. It did happen like that, if it happened at all."

"Pardon me," said a frigid voice. "The chapel is somewhat small for two
parties. We will incommode you no longer."

The lecturer was a clergyman, and his audience must be also his flock,
for they held prayer-books as well as guide-books in their hands. They
filed out of the chapel in silence. Amongst them were the two little old
ladies of the Pension Bertolini--Miss Teresa and Miss Catherine Alan.

"Stop!" cried Mr. Emerson. "There's plenty of room for us all. Stop!"

The procession disappeared without a word.

Soon the lecturer could be heard in the next chapel, describing the life
of St. Francis.

"George, I do believe that clergyman is the Brixton curate."

George went into the next chapel and returned, saying "Perhaps he is. I
don't remember."

"Then I had better speak to him and remind him who I am. It's that Mr.
Eager. Why did he go? Did we talk too loud? How vexatious. I shall go
and say we are sorry. Hadn't I better? Then perhaps he will come back."

"He will not come back," said George.

But Mr. Emerson, contrite and unhappy, hurried away to apologize to the
Rev. Cuthbert Eager. Lucy, apparently absorbed in a lunette, could hear
the lecture again interrupted, the anxious, aggressive voice of the old
man, the curt, injured replies of his opponent. The son, who took every
little contretemps as if it were a tragedy, was listening also.

"My father has that effect on nearly everyone," he informed her. "He
will try to be kind."

"I hope we all try," said she, smiling nervously.

"Because we think it improves our characters. But he is kind to people
because he loves them; and they find him out, and are offended, or
frightened."

"How silly of them!" said Lucy, though in her heart she sympathized; "I
think that a kind action done tactfully--"

"Tact!"

He threw up his head in disdain. Apparently she had given the wrong
answer. She watched the singular creature pace up and down the chapel.
For a young man his face was rugged, and--until the shadows fell upon
it--hard. Enshadowed, it sprang into tenderness. She saw him once again
at Rome, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, carrying a burden of
acorns. Healthy and muscular, he yet gave her the feeling of greyness,
of tragedy that might only find solution in the night. The feeling soon
passed; it was unlike her to have entertained anything so subtle. Born
of silence and of unknown emotion, it passed when Mr. Emerson returned,
and she could re-enter the world of rapid talk, which was alone familiar
to her.

"Were you snubbed?" asked his son tranquilly.

"But we have spoilt the pleasure of I don't know how many people. They
won't come back."

"...full of innate sympathy...quickness to perceive good in
others...vision of the brotherhood of man..." Scraps of the lecture on
St. Francis came floating round the partition wall.

"Don't let us spoil yours," he continued to Lucy. "Have you looked at
those saints?"

"Yes," said Lucy. "They are lovely. Do you know which is the tombstone
that is praised in Ruskin?"

He did not know, and suggested that they should try to guess it. George,
rather to her relief, refused to move, and she and the old man wandered
not unpleasantly about Santa Croce, which, though it is like a barn,
has harvested many beautiful things inside its walls. There were also
beggars to avoid and guides to dodge round the pillars, and an old lady
with her dog, and here and there a priest modestly edging to his
Mass through the groups of tourists. But Mr. Emerson was only half
interested. He watched the lecturer, whose success he believed he had
impaired, and then he anxiously watched his son.

"Why will he look at that fresco?" he said uneasily. "I saw nothing in
it."

"I like Giotto," she replied. "It is so wonderful what they say about
his tactile values. Though I like things like the Della Robbia babies
better."

"So you ought. A baby is worth a dozen saints. And my baby's worth the
whole of Paradise, and as far as I can see he lives in Hell."

Lucy again felt that this did not do.

"In Hell," he repeated. "He's unhappy."

"Oh, dear!" said Lucy.

"How can he be unhappy when he is strong and alive? What more is one
to give him? And think how he has been brought up--free from all the
superstition and ignorance that lead men to hate one another in the name
of God. With such an education as that, I thought he was bound to grow
up happy."

She was no theologian, but she felt that here was a very foolish old
man, as well as a very irreligious one. She also felt that her mother
might not like her talking to that kind of person, and that Charlotte
would object most strongly.

"What are we to do with him?" he asked. "He comes out for his holiday to
Italy, and behaves--like that; like the little child who ought to have
been playing, and who hurt himself upon the tombstone. Eh? What did you
say?"

Lucy had made no suggestion. Suddenly he said:

"Now don't be stupid over this. I don't require you to fall in love with
my boy, but I do think you might try and understand him. You are nearer
his age, and if you let yourself go I am sure you are sensible. You
might help me. He has known so few women, and you have the time.
You stop here several weeks, I suppose? But let yourself go. You are
inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself
go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand,
and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By
understanding George you may learn to understand yourself. It will be
good for both of you."

To this extraordinary speech Lucy found no answer.

"I only know what it is that's wrong with him; not why it is."

"And what is it?" asked Lucy fearfully, expecting some harrowing tale.

"The old trouble; things won't fit."

"What things?"

"The things of the universe. It is quite true. They don't."

"Oh, Mr. Emerson, whatever do you mean?"

In his ordinary voice, so that she scarcely realized he was quoting
poetry, he said:

  "'From far, from eve and morning,
   And yon twelve-winded sky,
   The stuff of life to knit me
   Blew hither: here am I'

George and I both know this, but why does it distress him? We know that
we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life
is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But
why should this make us unhappy? Let us rather love one another, and
work and rejoice. I don't believe in this world sorrow."

Miss Honeychurch assented.

"Then make my boy think like us. Make him realize that by the side of
the everlasting Why there is a Yes--a transitory Yes if you like, but a
Yes."

Suddenly she laughed; surely one ought to laugh. A young man melancholy
because the universe wouldn't fit, because life was a tangle or a wind,
or a Yes, or something!

"I'm very sorry," she cried. "You'll think me unfeeling, but--but--"
Then she became matronly. "Oh, but your son wants employment. Has he no
particular hobby? Why, I myself have worries, but I can generally forget
them at the piano; and collecting stamps did no end of good for my
brother. Perhaps Italy bores him; you ought to try the Alps or the
Lakes."

The old man's face saddened, and he touched her gently with his hand.
This did not alarm her; she thought that her advice had impressed him
and that he was thanking her for it. Indeed, he no longer alarmed her
at all; she regarded him as a kind thing, but quite silly. Her feelings
were as inflated spiritually as they had been an hour ago esthetically,
before she lost Baedeker. The dear George, now striding towards them
over the tombstones, seemed both pitiable and absurd. He approached, his
face in the shadow. He said:

"Miss Bartlett."

"Oh, good gracious me!" said Lucy, suddenly collapsing and again seeing
the whole of life in a new perspective. "Where? Where?"

"In the nave."

"I see. Those gossiping little Miss Alans must have--" She checked
herself.

"Poor girl!" exploded Mr. Emerson. "Poor girl!"

She could not let this pass, for it was just what she was feeling
herself.

"Poor girl? I fail to understand the point of that remark. I think
myself a very fortunate girl, I assure you. I'm thoroughly happy, and
having a splendid time. Pray don't waste time mourning over me. There's
enough sorrow in the world, isn't there, without trying to invent it.
Good-bye. Thank you both so much for all your kindness. Ah, yes! there
does come my cousin. A delightful morning! Santa Croce is a wonderful
church."

She joined her cousin.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Chapter 2 opens the following day. Lucy awakens to a beautiful view of Florence, but Charlotte enters her room and scolds her for leaning out of the window while not yet fully dressed. At breakfast, they are given advice by a clever older lady named Miss Eleanor Lavish. Miss Lavish offers to take Lucy to see the Santa Croce church, taking her by a "dirty back way" so that they can have an adventure. She tells Lucy to ignore her Baedeker Guidebook and to discover Italy for herself. Miss Lavish and Lucy get lost on the way to Santa Croce, but Miss Lavish considers this to be an adventure, exclaiming with delight about the "Florentine smell" and quaint local color. One doesn't come to italy for niceness," she explains, "one comes for life. Greeting the locals, Miss Lavish confesses that she is a "real Radical" and that she believes in "civility to. inferiors. Arriving at the church, Miss Lavish spies the Emersons and waits until they are in the church so that she will not have to speak to them. She laughs at the men, comparing them to "a pair of cows. Lucy defends them. Just then, Miss Lavish spies someone she knows, and abandons Lucy. Lucy is left to explore the church alone and without her Baedeker. She knows she is supposed to find the church beautiful, but really, she finds it ugly, cold, and barnlike. She wanders about, unable to appreciate any of the art without a guide to tell her which pieces are supposed to be the best. Suddenly, Lucy sees a little Italian boy trip on a tombstone and fall down. She hurries to help the crying child. Mr. Emerson also helps the boy, exclaiming loudly that a little child should be out in the sunshine, and not in a church, where he is bound to be "hurt, cold, and frightened. Once the child is restored to his mother, the Emersons, seeing Lucy alone, invite her to join them on a tour of the church. The Emersons, seeing Lucy alone, invite her to tour the church with them. Out of propriety, she refuses, but Mr. Emerson sees through her, and tells her to stop pretending to be touchy. Lucy is shocked by his directness, but agrees to tour the church with them. While looking at the famous frescoes painted by Giotto, they overhear a clergyman, Reverend Cuthbert Eager, who is giving a tour, speak about how "beautiful and true" the paintings are. Mr. Emerson loudly disagrees. Referring to a painting of the "Ascension of St. John," he exclaims, "Look at that fat man in blue. He must weigh as much as I do, and he is shooting into the sky like an air balloon. The Reverend Eager abruptly takes his group out of the chapel, and Mr. Emerson, who had not meant any offense, is mortified at having spoiled the group's tour. He runs off to apologize, leaving Lucy alone with George, who explains that the incident is typical for his father, who speaks out in an effort to help people and is misunderstood. George makes Lucy uncomfortable. He looks healthy and strong, but gives Lucy the feeling of greyness and tragedy. Later, Mr. Emerson informs Lucy that his son is unhappy. He asks if she will help George, help pull him out of his sorrow and realize that "by the side of the everlasting Why there is Yes. Lucy responds somewhat pedantically that George should find a hobby. Mr. Emerson looks saddened by her lack of deeper understanding. Just then, Miss Bartlett appears in the church and Lucy rushes away to join her cousin


prompt:
Chapter: It so happened that Lucy, who found daily life rather chaotic, entered
a more solid world when she opened the piano. She was then no longer
either deferential or patronizing; no longer either a rebel or a slave.
The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept
those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The
commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without
effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and
thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate
his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions.
Perhaps he cannot; certainly he does not, or does so very seldom. Lucy
had done so never.

She was no dazzling executante; her runs were not at all like strings of
pearls, and she struck no more right notes than was suitable for one
of her age and situation. Nor was she the passionate young lady, who
performs so tragically on a summer's evening with the window open.
Passion was there, but it could not be easily labelled; it slipped
between love and hatred and jealousy, and all the furniture of the
pictorial style. And she was tragical only in the sense that she was
great, for she loved to play on the side of Victory. Victory of what and
over what--that is more than the words of daily life can tell us. But
that some sonatas of Beethoven are written tragic no one can gainsay;
yet they can triumph or despair as the player decides, and Lucy had
decided that they should triumph.

A very wet afternoon at the Bertolini permitted her to do the thing she
really liked, and after lunch she opened the little draped piano. A few
people lingered round and praised her playing, but finding that she
made no reply, dispersed to their rooms to write up their diaries or
to sleep. She took no notice of Mr. Emerson looking for his son, nor of
Miss Bartlett looking for Miss Lavish, nor of Miss Lavish looking for
her cigarette-case. Like every true performer, she was intoxicated by
the mere feel of the notes: they were fingers caressing her own; and by
touch, not by sound alone, did she come to her desire.

Mr. Beebe, sitting unnoticed in the window, pondered this illogical
element in Miss Honeychurch, and recalled the occasion at Tunbridge
Wells when he had discovered it. It was at one of those entertainments
where the upper classes entertain the lower. The seats were filled with
a respectful audience, and the ladies and gentlemen of the parish, under
the auspices of their vicar, sang, or recited, or imitated the drawing
of a champagne cork. Among the promised items was "Miss Honeychurch.
Piano. Beethoven," and Mr. Beebe was wondering whether it would be
Adelaida, or the march of The Ruins of Athens, when his composure
was disturbed by the opening bars of Opus III. He was in suspense all
through the introduction, for not until the pace quickens does one know
what the performer intends. With the roar of the opening theme he knew
that things were going extraordinarily; in the chords that herald the
conclusion he heard the hammer strokes of victory. He was glad that she
only played the first movement, for he could have paid no attention to
the winding intricacies of the measures of nine-sixteen. The audience
clapped, no less respectful. It was Mr. Beebe who started the stamping;
it was all that one could do.

"Who is she?" he asked the vicar afterwards.

"Cousin of one of my parishioners. I do not consider her choice of a
piece happy. Beethoven is so usually simple and direct in his appeal
that it is sheer perversity to choose a thing like that, which, if
anything, disturbs."

"Introduce me."

"She will be delighted. She and Miss Bartlett are full of the praises of
your sermon."

"My sermon?" cried Mr. Beebe. "Why ever did she listen to it?"

When he was introduced he understood why, for Miss Honeychurch,
disjoined from her music stool, was only a young lady with a quantity of
dark hair and a very pretty, pale, undeveloped face. She loved going to
concerts, she loved stopping with her cousin, she loved iced coffee and
meringues. He did not doubt that she loved his sermon also. But before
he left Tunbridge Wells he made a remark to the vicar, which he now
made to Lucy herself when she closed the little piano and moved dreamily
towards him:

"If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very
exciting both for us and for her."

Lucy at once re-entered daily life.

"Oh, what a funny thing! Some one said just the same to mother, and she
said she trusted I should never live a duet."

"Doesn't Mrs. Honeychurch like music?"

"She doesn't mind it. But she doesn't like one to get excited over
anything; she thinks I am silly about it. She thinks--I can't make
out. Once, you know, I said that I liked my own playing better than any
one's. She has never got over it. Of course, I didn't mean that I played
well; I only meant--"

"Of course," said he, wondering why she bothered to explain.

"Music--" said Lucy, as if attempting some generality. She could not
complete it, and looked out absently upon Italy in the wet. The whole
life of the South was disorganized, and the most graceful nation in
Europe had turned into formless lumps of clothes.

The street and the river were dirty yellow, the bridge was dirty grey,
and the hills were dirty purple. Somewhere in their folds were concealed
Miss Lavish and Miss Bartlett, who had chosen this afternoon to visit
the Torre del Gallo.

"What about music?" said Mr. Beebe.

"Poor Charlotte will be sopped," was Lucy's reply.

The expedition was typical of Miss Bartlett, who would return cold,
tired, hungry, and angelic, with a ruined skirt, a pulpy Baedeker, and
a tickling cough in her throat. On another day, when the whole world was
singing and the air ran into the mouth, like wine, she would refuse to
stir from the drawing-room, saying that she was an old thing, and no fit
companion for a hearty girl.

"Miss Lavish has led your cousin astray. She hopes to find the true
Italy in the wet I believe."

"Miss Lavish is so original," murmured Lucy. This was a stock remark,
the supreme achievement of the Pension Bertolini in the way of
definition. Miss Lavish was so original. Mr. Beebe had his doubts, but
they would have been put down to clerical narrowness. For that, and for
other reasons, he held his peace.

"Is it true," continued Lucy in awe-struck tone, "that Miss Lavish is
writing a book?"

"They do say so."

"What is it about?"

"It will be a novel," replied Mr. Beebe, "dealing with modern Italy.
Let me refer you for an account to Miss Catharine Alan, who uses words
herself more admirably than any one I know."

"I wish Miss Lavish would tell me herself. We started such friends. But
I don't think she ought to have run away with Baedeker that morning in
Santa Croce. Charlotte was most annoyed at finding me practically alone,
and so I couldn't help being a little annoyed with Miss Lavish."

"The two ladies, at all events, have made it up."

He was interested in the sudden friendship between women so apparently
dissimilar as Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish. They were always in each
other's company, with Lucy a slighted third. Miss Lavish he believed
he understood, but Miss Bartlett might reveal unknown depths of
strangeness, though not perhaps, of meaning. Was Italy deflecting
her from the path of prim chaperon, which he had assigned to her at
Tunbridge Wells? All his life he had loved to study maiden ladies;
they were his specialty, and his profession had provided him with ample
opportunities for the work. Girls like Lucy were charming to look at,
but Mr. Beebe was, from rather profound reasons, somewhat chilly in his
attitude towards the other sex, and preferred to be interested rather
than enthralled.

Lucy, for the third time, said that poor Charlotte would be sopped. The
Arno was rising in flood, washing away the traces of the little carts
upon the foreshore. But in the south-west there had appeared a dull haze
of yellow, which might mean better weather if it did not mean worse. She
opened the window to inspect, and a cold blast entered the room, drawing
a plaintive cry from Miss Catharine Alan, who entered at the same moment
by the door.

"Oh, dear Miss Honeychurch, you will catch a chill! And Mr. Beebe here
besides. Who would suppose this is Italy? There is my sister actually
nursing the hot-water can; no comforts or proper provisions."

She sidled towards them and sat down, self-conscious as she always was
on entering a room which contained one man, or a man and one woman.

"I could hear your beautiful playing, Miss Honeychurch, though I was in
my room with the door shut. Doors shut; indeed, most necessary. No one
has the least idea of privacy in this country. And one person catches it
from another."

Lucy answered suitably. Mr. Beebe was not able to tell the ladies of
his adventure at Modena, where the chambermaid burst in upon him in his
bath, exclaiming cheerfully, "Fa niente, sono vecchia." He contented
himself with saying: "I quite agree with you, Miss Alan. The Italians
are a most unpleasant people. They pry everywhere, they see everything,
and they know what we want before we know it ourselves. We are at their
mercy. They read our thoughts, they foretell our desires. From the
cab-driver down to--to Giotto, they turn us inside out, and I resent
it. Yet in their heart of hearts they are--how superficial! They have no
conception of the intellectual life. How right is Signora Bertolini, who
exclaimed to me the other day: 'Ho, Mr. Beebe, if you knew what I suffer
over the children's edjucaishion. HI won't 'ave my little Victorier
taught by a hignorant Italian what can't explain nothink!'"

Miss Alan did not follow, but gathered that she was being mocked in an
agreeable way. Her sister was a little disappointed in Mr. Beebe, having
expected better things from a clergyman whose head was bald and who
wore a pair of russet whiskers. Indeed, who would have supposed that
tolerance, sympathy, and a sense of humour would inhabit that militant
form?

In the midst of her satisfaction she continued to sidle, and at last
the cause was disclosed. From the chair beneath her she extracted
a gun-metal cigarette-case, on which were powdered in turquoise the
initials "E. L."

"That belongs to Lavish." said the clergyman. "A good fellow, Lavish,
but I wish she'd start a pipe."

"Oh, Mr. Beebe," said Miss Alan, divided between awe and mirth. "Indeed,
though it is dreadful for her to smoke, it is not quite as dreadful as
you suppose. She took to it, practically in despair, after her
life's work was carried away in a landslip. Surely that makes it more
excusable."

"What was that?" asked Lucy.

Mr. Beebe sat back complacently, and Miss Alan began as follows: "It was
a novel--and I am afraid, from what I can gather, not a very nice novel.
It is so sad when people who have abilities misuse them, and I must say
they nearly always do. Anyhow, she left it almost finished in the Grotto
of the Calvary at the Capuccini Hotel at Amalfi while she went for a
little ink. She said: 'Can I have a little ink, please?' But you know
what Italians are, and meanwhile the Grotto fell roaring on to the
beach, and the saddest thing of all is that she cannot remember what she
has written. The poor thing was very ill after it, and so got tempted
into cigarettes. It is a great secret, but I am glad to say that she is
writing another novel. She told Teresa and Miss Pole the other day that
she had got up all the local colour--this novel is to be about modern
Italy; the other was historical--but that she could not start till she
had an idea. First she tried Perugia for an inspiration, then she came
here--this must on no account get round. And so cheerful through it all!
I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in everyone,
even if you do not approve of them."

Miss Alan was always thus being charitable against her better judgement.
A delicate pathos perfumed her disconnected remarks, giving them
unexpected beauty, just as in the decaying autumn woods there sometimes
rise odours reminiscent of spring. She felt she had made almost too many
allowances, and apologized hurriedly for her toleration.

"All the same, she is a little too--I hardly like to say unwomanly, but
she behaved most strangely when the Emersons arrived."

Mr. Beebe smiled as Miss Alan plunged into an anecdote which he knew she
would be unable to finish in the presence of a gentleman.

"I don't know, Miss Honeychurch, if you have noticed that Miss Pole, the
lady who has so much yellow hair, takes lemonade. That old Mr. Emerson,
who puts things very strangely--"

Her jaw dropped. She was silent. Mr. Beebe, whose social resources were
endless, went out to order some tea, and she continued to Lucy in a
hasty whisper:

"Stomach. He warned Miss Pole of her stomach-acidity, he called it--and
he may have meant to be kind. I must say I forgot myself and laughed; it
was so sudden. As Teresa truly said, it was no laughing matter. But the
point is that Miss Lavish was positively ATTRACTED by his mentioning
S., and said she liked plain speaking, and meeting different grades of
thought. She thought they were commercial travellers--'drummers' was the
word she used--and all through dinner she tried to prove that England,
our great and beloved country, rests on nothing but commerce. Teresa was
very much annoyed, and left the table before the cheese, saying as she
did so: 'There, Miss Lavish, is one who can confute you better than I,'
and pointed to that beautiful picture of Lord Tennyson. Then Miss
Lavish said: 'Tut! The early Victorians.' Just imagine! 'Tut! The early
Victorians.' My sister had gone, and I felt bound to speak. I said:
'Miss Lavish, I am an early Victorian; at least, that is to say, I
will hear no breath of censure against our dear Queen.' It was horrible
speaking. I reminded her how the Queen had been to Ireland when she did
not want to go, and I must say she was dumbfounded, and made no reply.
But, unluckily, Mr. Emerson overheard this part, and called in his deep
voice: 'Quite so, quite so! I honour the woman for her Irish visit.' The
woman! I tell things so badly; but you see what a tangle we were in
by this time, all on account of S. having been mentioned in the first
place. But that was not all. After dinner Miss Lavish actually came up
and said: 'Miss Alan, I am going into the smoking-room to talk to those
two nice men. Come, too.' Needless to say, I refused such an unsuitable
invitation, and she had the impertinence to tell me that it would
broaden my ideas, and said that she had four brothers, all University
men, except one who was in the army, who always made a point of talking
to commercial travellers."

"Let me finish the story," said Mr. Beebe, who had returned.

"Miss Lavish tried Miss Pole, myself, everyone, and finally said:
'I shall go alone.' She went. At the end of five minutes she returned
unobtrusively with a green baize board, and began playing patience."

"Whatever happened?" cried Lucy.

"No one knows. No one will ever know. Miss Lavish will never dare to
tell, and Mr. Emerson does not think it worth telling."

"Mr. Beebe--old Mr. Emerson, is he nice or not nice? I do so want to
know."

Mr. Beebe laughed and suggested that she should settle the question for
herself.

"No; but it is so difficult. Sometimes he is so silly, and then I do not
mind him. Miss Alan, what do you think? Is he nice?"

The little old lady shook her head, and sighed disapprovingly. Mr.
Beebe, whom the conversation amused, stirred her up by saying:

"I consider that you are bound to class him as nice, Miss Alan, after
that business of the violets."

"Violets? Oh, dear! Who told you about the violets? How do things get
round? A pension is a bad place for gossips. No, I cannot forget how
they behaved at Mr. Eager's lecture at Santa Croce. Oh, poor Miss
Honeychurch! It really was too bad. No, I have quite changed. I do NOT
like the Emersons. They are not nice."

Mr. Beebe smiled nonchalantly. He had made a gentle effort to introduce
the Emersons into Bertolini society, and the effort had failed. He was
almost the only person who remained friendly to them. Miss Lavish, who
represented intellect, was avowedly hostile, and now the Miss Alans,
who stood for good breeding, were following her. Miss Bartlett, smarting
under an obligation, would scarcely be civil. The case of Lucy was
different. She had given him a hazy account of her adventures in Santa
Croce, and he gathered that the two men had made a curious and possibly
concerted attempt to annex her, to show her the world from their own
strange standpoint, to interest her in their private sorrows and joys.
This was impertinent; he did not wish their cause to be championed by a
young girl: he would rather it should fail. After all, he knew nothing
about them, and pension joys, pension sorrows, are flimsy things;
whereas Lucy would be his parishioner.

Lucy, with one eye upon the weather, finally said that she thought the
Emersons were nice; not that she saw anything of them now. Even their
seats at dinner had been moved.

"But aren't they always waylaying you to go out with them, dear?" said
the little lady inquisitively.

"Only once. Charlotte didn't like it, and said something--quite
politely, of course."

"Most right of her. They don't understand our ways. They must find their
level."

Mr. Beebe rather felt that they had gone under. They had given up their
attempt--if it was one--to conquer society, and now the father was
almost as silent as the son. He wondered whether he would not plan a
pleasant day for these folk before they left--some expedition, perhaps,
with Lucy well chaperoned to be nice to them. It was one of Mr. Beebe's
chief pleasures to provide people with happy memories.

Evening approached while they chatted; the air became brighter; the
colours on the trees and hills were purified, and the Arno lost its
muddy solidity and began to twinkle. There were a few streaks of
bluish-green among the clouds, a few patches of watery light upon the
earth, and then the dripping facade of San Miniato shone brilliantly in
the declining sun.

"Too late to go out," said Miss Alan in a voice of relief. "All the
galleries are shut."

"I think I shall go out," said Lucy. "I want to go round the town in the
circular tram--on the platform by the driver."

Her two companions looked grave. Mr. Beebe, who felt responsible for her
in the absence of Miss Bartlett, ventured to say:

"I wish we could. Unluckily I have letters. If you do want to go out
alone, won't you be better on your feet?"

"Italians, dear, you know," said Miss Alan.

"Perhaps I shall meet someone who reads me through and through!"

But they still looked disapproval, and she so far conceded to Mr. Beebe
as to say that she would only go for a little walk, and keep to the
street frequented by tourists.

"She oughtn't really to go at all," said Mr. Beebe, as they watched
her from the window, "and she knows it. I put it down to too much
Beethoven."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Chapter 3 opens on a rainy afternoon at the Bertolini. Mr. Beebe watches Lucy play the piano and is impressed. He recalls having seen her play once before, back in England. As Lucy finishes, he remarks, "If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting--both for us and for her. Mr. Beebe and Lucy discuss Miss Lavish, who is gone on an outing with Charlotte. Mr. Beebe thinks Charlotte and Miss Lavish an unlikely pair, as Miss Bartlett appears so stodgy and Miss Lavish so unrestrained. He wonders whether Italy is having an effect on Miss Bartlett, loosening up the prim chaperone. Miss Catherine Alan, the old lady who is on holiday with her sister Teresa, enters the room, complaining about the impoliteness of the Italians. Mr. Beebe teases her gently, showing that he finds as much to criticize about the English as the Italians. From Miss Alan, Lucy learns that Miss Lavish is writing a new novel about modern Italy. Miss Alan comments that Miss Lavish acted very strangely when the Emersons arrived. When Mr. Emerson committed a faux pas by mentioning the word "stomach" at dinner , Miss Lavish was immediately intrigued by him, saying she enjoyed his plain speaking. However, shortly afterward she had become offended by something he said or did--nobody knew what--and refused to talk to him ever since. Hearing this story, Lucy begs to know whether Mr. Emerson is "nice or not nice. Miss Alan concludes that he is not nice; Mr. Beebe asks Lucy to decide for herself. She decides that they are nice. Mr. Beebe feels sorry for the Emersons and decides to plan an outing that includes them. Although evening is approaching, Lucy decides to venture out in Florence alone. Mr. Beebe and Miss Alan express their disapproval, but Lucy promises she will just go out for a little walk in the area frequented by tourists. Mr. Beebe blames Lucy's rebellious spirit on "too much Beethoven


prompt:
Chapter: Mr. Beebe was right. Lucy never knew her desires so clearly as after
music. She had not really appreciated the clergyman's wit, nor the
suggestive twitterings of Miss Alan. Conversation was tedious; she
wanted something big, and she believed that it would have come to her on
the wind-swept platform of an electric tram. This she might not attempt.
It was unladylike. Why? Why were most big things unladylike? Charlotte
had once explained to her why. It was not that ladies were inferior
to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire
others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by
means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But
if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then
despised, and finally ignored. Poems had been written to illustrate this
point.

There is much that is immortal in this medieval lady. The dragons have
gone, and so have the knights, but still she lingers in our midst. She
reigned in many an early Victorian castle, and was Queen of much early
Victorian song. It is sweet to protect her in the intervals of business,
sweet to pay her honour when she has cooked our dinner well. But alas!
the creature grows degenerate. In her heart also there are springing
up strange desires. She too is enamoured of heavy winds, and vast
panoramas, and green expanses of the sea. She has marked the kingdom
of this world, how full it is of wealth, and beauty, and war--a radiant
crust, built around the central fires, spinning towards the receding
heavens. Men, declaring that she inspires them to it, move joyfully over
the surface, having the most delightful meetings with other men, happy,
not because they are masculine, but because they are alive. Before the
show breaks up she would like to drop the august title of the Eternal
Woman, and go there as her transitory self.

Lucy does not stand for the medieval lady, who was rather an ideal to
which she was bidden to lift her eyes when feeling serious. Nor has
she any system of revolt. Here and there a restriction annoyed her
particularly, and she would transgress it, and perhaps be sorry that she
had done so. This afternoon she was peculiarly restive. She would really
like to do something of which her well-wishers disapproved. As she might
not go on the electric tram, she went to Alinari's shop.

There she bought a photograph of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus." Venus,
being a pity, spoilt the picture, otherwise so charming, and Miss
Bartlett had persuaded her to do without it. (A pity in art of course
signified the nude.) Giorgione's "Tempesta," the "Idolino," some of
the Sistine frescoes and the Apoxyomenos, were added to it. She felt
a little calmer then, and bought Fra Angelico's "Coronation," Giotto's
"Ascension of St. John," some Della Robbia babies, and some Guido
Reni Madonnas. For her taste was catholic, and she extended uncritical
approval to every well-known name.

But though she spent nearly seven lire, the gates of liberty seemed
still unopened. She was conscious of her discontent; it was new to her
to be conscious of it. "The world," she thought, "is certainly full
of beautiful things, if only I could come across them." It was not
surprising that Mrs. Honeychurch disapproved of music, declaring that it
always left her daughter peevish, unpractical, and touchy.

"Nothing ever happens to me," she reflected, as she entered the Piazza
Signoria and looked nonchalantly at its marvels, now fairly familiar to
her. The great square was in shadow; the sunshine had come too late to
strike it. Neptune was already unsubstantial in the twilight, half god,
half ghost, and his fountain plashed dreamily to the men and satyrs who
idled together on its marge. The Loggia showed as the triple entrance of
a cave, wherein many a deity, shadowy, but immortal, looking forth
upon the arrivals and departures of mankind. It was the hour of
unreality--the hour, that is, when unfamiliar things are real. An older
person at such an hour and in such a place might think that sufficient
was happening to him, and rest content. Lucy desired more.

She fixed her eyes wistfully on the tower of the palace, which rose
out of the lower darkness like a pillar of roughened gold. It seemed
no longer a tower, no longer supported by earth, but some unattainable
treasure throbbing in the tranquil sky. Its brightness mesmerized her,
still dancing before her eyes when she bent them to the ground and
started towards home.

Then something did happen.

Two Italians by the Loggia had been bickering about a debt. "Cinque
lire," they had cried, "cinque lire!" They sparred at each other, and
one of them was hit lightly upon the chest. He frowned; he bent towards
Lucy with a look of interest, as if he had an important message for her.
He opened his lips to deliver it, and a stream of red came out between
them and trickled down his unshaven chin.

That was all. A crowd rose out of the dusk. It hid this extraordinary
man from her, and bore him away to the fountain. Mr. George Emerson
happened to be a few paces away, looking at her across the spot where
the man had been. How very odd! Across something. Even as she caught
sight of him he grew dim; the palace itself grew dim, swayed above her,
fell on to her softly, slowly, noiselessly, and the sky fell with it.

She thought: "Oh, what have I done?"

"Oh, what have I done?" she murmured, and opened her eyes.

George Emerson still looked at her, but not across anything. She had
complained of dullness, and lo! one man was stabbed, and another held
her in his arms.

They were sitting on some steps in the Uffizi Arcade. He must have
carried her. He rose when she spoke, and began to dust his knees. She
repeated:

"Oh, what have I done?"

"You fainted."

"I--I am very sorry."

"How are you now?"

"Perfectly well--absolutely well." And she began to nod and smile.

"Then let us come home. There's no point in our stopping."

He held out his hand to pull her up. She pretended not to see it. The
cries from the fountain--they had never ceased--rang emptily. The whole
world seemed pale and void of its original meaning.

"How very kind you have been! I might have hurt myself falling. But now
I am well. I can go alone, thank you."

His hand was still extended.

"Oh, my photographs!" she exclaimed suddenly.

"What photographs?"

"I bought some photographs at Alinari's. I must have dropped them out
there in the square." She looked at him cautiously. "Would you add to
your kindness by fetching them?"

He added to his kindness. As soon as he had turned his back, Lucy arose
with the running of a maniac and stole down the arcade towards the Arno.

"Miss Honeychurch!"

She stopped with her hand on her heart.

"You sit still; you aren't fit to go home alone."

"Yes, I am, thank you so very much."

"No, you aren't. You'd go openly if you were."

"But I had rather--"

"Then I don't fetch your photographs."

"I had rather be alone."

He said imperiously: "The man is dead--the man is probably dead; sit
down till you are rested." She was bewildered, and obeyed him. "And
don't move till I come back."

In the distance she saw creatures with black hoods, such as appear in
dreams. The palace tower had lost the reflection of the declining day,
and joined itself to earth. How should she talk to Mr. Emerson when he
returned from the shadowy square? Again the thought occurred to her,
"Oh, what have I done?"--the thought that she, as well as the dying man,
had crossed some spiritual boundary.

He returned, and she talked of the murder. Oddly enough, it was an easy
topic. She spoke of the Italian character; she became almost garrulous
over the incident that had made her faint five minutes before. Being
strong physically, she soon overcame the horror of blood. She rose
without his assistance, and though wings seemed to flutter inside her,
she walked firmly enough towards the Arno. There a cabman signalled to
them; they refused him.

"And the murderer tried to kiss him, you say--how very odd Italians
are!--and gave himself up to the police! Mr. Beebe was saying that
Italians know everything, but I think they are rather childish. When my
cousin and I were at the Pitti yesterday--What was that?"

He had thrown something into the stream.

"What did you throw in?"

"Things I didn't want," he said crossly.

"Mr. Emerson!"

"Well?"

"Where are the photographs?"

He was silent.

"I believe it was my photographs that you threw away."

"I didn't know what to do with them," he cried, and his voice was that
of an anxious boy. Her heart warmed towards him for the first time.
"They were covered with blood. There! I'm glad I've told you; and all
the time we were making conversation I was wondering what to do with
them." He pointed down-stream. "They've gone." The river swirled under
the bridge, "I did mind them so, and one is so foolish, it seemed better
that they should go out to the sea--I don't know; I may just mean that
they frightened me." Then the boy verged into a man. "For something
tremendous has happened; I must face it without getting muddled. It
isn't exactly that a man has died."

Something warned Lucy that she must stop him.

"It has happened," he repeated, "and I mean to find out what it is."

"Mr. Emerson--"

He turned towards her frowning, as if she had disturbed him in some
abstract quest.

"I want to ask you something before we go in."

They were close to their pension. She stopped and leant her elbows
against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at
times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have
suggested to us eternal comradeship. She moved her elbows before saying:

"I have behaved ridiculously."

He was following his own thoughts.

"I was never so much ashamed of myself in my life; I cannot think what
came over me."

"I nearly fainted myself," he said; but she felt that her attitude
repelled him.

"Well, I owe you a thousand apologies."

"Oh, all right."

"And--this is the real point--you know how silly people are
gossiping--ladies especially, I am afraid--you understand what I mean?"

"I'm afraid I don't."

"I mean, would you not mention it to any one, my foolish behaviour?"

"Your behaviour? Oh, yes, all right--all right."

"Thank you so much. And would you--"

She could not carry her request any further. The river was rushing below
them, almost black in the advancing night. He had thrown her photographs
into it, and then he had told her the reason. It struck her that it was
hopeless to look for chivalry in such a man. He would do her no harm by
idle gossip; he was trustworthy, intelligent, and even kind; he might
even have a high opinion of her. But he lacked chivalry; his thoughts,
like his behaviour, would not be modified by awe. It was useless to say
to him, "And would you--" and hope that he would complete the sentence
for himself, averting his eyes from her nakedness like the knight in
that beautiful picture. She had been in his arms, and he remembered it,
just as he remembered the blood on the photographs that she had bought
in Alinari's shop. It was not exactly that a man had died; something
had happened to the living: they had come to a situation where character
tells, and where childhood enters upon the branching paths of Youth.

"Well, thank you so much," she repeated, "How quickly these accidents do
happen, and then one returns to the old life!"

"I don't."

Anxiety moved her to question him.

His answer was puzzling: "I shall probably want to live."

"But why, Mr. Emerson? What do you mean?"

"I shall want to live, I say."

Leaning her elbows on the parapet, she contemplated the River Arno,
whose roar was suggesting some unexpected melody to her ears.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Chapter 4 begins as Lucy wanders outside of the pension alone. She longs for adventure, not gossip with Miss Alan or witty exchanges with Mr. Beebe. What she really wants is to take a ride on the electric tram, but knowing that it would be considered unladylike, Lucy decides to buy some photographs instead. Still feeling rebellious, she purposely chooses, among others, a nude of Venus by Botticelli, knowing her cousin won't approve. Entering the Piazza Signoria, Lucy still feels restless, thinking "Nothing ever happens to me. Suddenly, something does happen. Two Italians bickering over a debt begin sparring, and one stabs the other. The stabbed man looks directly at Lucy, seeming to want to speak to her, but then blood trickles from his lips and he falls. Lucy faints, and is caught and carried away by George Emerson, who also witnessed the scene. Once Lucy revives herself, she is embarrassed and tries to return to the pension by herself, but George won't allow it. He fetches her photographs, which she dropped in the square, and the two walk back together, talking about the murder. As they reach the Arno River, George suddenly throws the photographs in the water, admitting that they were covered with blood, and that he hadn't known what to do with them. Lucy's heart warms toward George, as she sees his vulnerability for the first time, and feels something between them. She asks George not to say anything to the others at the pension about the way she fainted. He agrees. Lucy adds that it is strange, how something like this happens and then people return to the old life, but George says he can't return to his old life now. Deeply affected by the incident, the melancholy George has regained his desire to live.


prompt:
Chapter: The drawing-room curtains at Windy Corner had been pulled to meet, for
the carpet was new and deserved protection from the August sun. They
were heavy curtains, reaching almost to the ground, and the light
that filtered through them was subdued and varied. A poet--none was
present--might have quoted, "Life like a dome of many coloured glass,"
or might have compared the curtains to sluice-gates, lowered against
the intolerable tides of heaven. Without was poured a sea of radiance;
within, the glory, though visible, was tempered to the capacities of
man.

Two pleasant people sat in the room. One--a boy of nineteen--was
studying a small manual of anatomy, and peering occasionally at a bone
which lay upon the piano. From time to time he bounced in his chair and
puffed and groaned, for the day was hot and the print small, and the
human frame fearfully made; and his mother, who was writing a letter,
did continually read out to him what she had written. And continually
did she rise from her seat and part the curtains so that a rivulet of
light fell across the carpet, and make the remark that they were still
there.

"Where aren't they?" said the boy, who was Freddy, Lucy's brother. "I
tell you I'm getting fairly sick."

"For goodness' sake go out of my drawing-room, then?" cried Mrs.
Honeychurch, who hoped to cure her children of slang by taking it
literally.

Freddy did not move or reply.

"I think things are coming to a head," she observed, rather wanting
her son's opinion on the situation if she could obtain it without undue
supplication.

"Time they did."

"I am glad that Cecil is asking her this once more."

"It's his third go, isn't it?"

"Freddy I do call the way you talk unkind."

"I didn't mean to be unkind." Then he added: "But I do think Lucy might
have got this off her chest in Italy. I don't know how girls manage
things, but she can't have said 'No' properly before, or she wouldn't
have to say it again now. Over the whole thing--I can't explain--I do
feel so uncomfortable."

"Do you indeed, dear? How interesting!"

"I feel--never mind."

He returned to his work.

"Just listen to what I have written to Mrs. Vyse. I said: 'Dear Mrs.
Vyse.'"

"Yes, mother, you told me. A jolly good letter."

"I said: 'Dear Mrs. Vyse, Cecil has just asked my permission about
it, and I should be delighted, if Lucy wishes it. But--'" She stopped
reading, "I was rather amused at Cecil asking my permission at all. He
has always gone in for unconventionality, and parents nowhere, and so
forth. When it comes to the point, he can't get on without me."

"Nor me."

"You?"

Freddy nodded.

"What do you mean?"

"He asked me for my permission also."

She exclaimed: "How very odd of him!"

"Why so?" asked the son and heir. "Why shouldn't my permission be
asked?"

"What do you know about Lucy or girls or anything? What ever did you
say?"

"I said to Cecil, 'Take her or leave her; it's no business of mine!'"

"What a helpful answer!" But her own answer, though more normal in its
wording, had been to the same effect.

"The bother is this," began Freddy.

Then he took up his work again, too shy to say what the bother was. Mrs.
Honeychurch went back to the window.

"Freddy, you must come. There they still are!"

"I don't see you ought to go peeping like that."

"Peeping like that! Can't I look out of my own window?"

But she returned to the writing-table, observing, as she passed her
son, "Still page 322?" Freddy snorted, and turned over two leaves. For a
brief space they were silent. Close by, beyond the curtains, the gentle
murmur of a long conversation had never ceased.

"The bother is this: I have put my foot in it with Cecil most awfully."
He gave a nervous gulp. "Not content with 'permission', which I did
give--that is to say, I said, 'I don't mind'--well, not content with
that, he wanted to know whether I wasn't off my head with joy. He
practically put it like this: Wasn't it a splendid thing for Lucy and
for Windy Corner generally if he married her? And he would have an
answer--he said it would strengthen his hand."

"I hope you gave a careful answer, dear."

"I answered 'No'" said the boy, grinding his teeth. "There! Fly into a
stew! I can't help it--had to say it. I had to say no. He ought never to
have asked me."

"Ridiculous child!" cried his mother. "You think you're so holy and
truthful, but really it's only abominable conceit. Do you suppose that
a man like Cecil would take the slightest notice of anything you say? I
hope he boxed your ears. How dare you say no?"

"Oh, do keep quiet, mother! I had to say no when I couldn't say yes. I
tried to laugh as if I didn't mean what I said, and, as Cecil laughed
too, and went away, it may be all right. But I feel my foot's in it. Oh,
do keep quiet, though, and let a man do some work."

"No," said Mrs. Honeychurch, with the air of one who has considered the
subject, "I shall not keep quiet. You know all that has passed between
them in Rome; you know why he is down here, and yet you deliberately
insult him, and try to turn him out of my house."

"Not a bit!" he pleaded. "I only let out I didn't like him. I don't hate
him, but I don't like him. What I mind is that he'll tell Lucy."

He glanced at the curtains dismally.

"Well, I like him," said Mrs. Honeychurch. "I know his mother; he's
good, he's clever, he's rich, he's well connected--Oh, you needn't kick
the piano! He's well connected--I'll say it again if you like: he's
well connected." She paused, as if rehearsing her eulogy, but her face
remained dissatisfied. She added: "And he has beautiful manners."

"I liked him till just now. I suppose it's having him spoiling Lucy's
first week at home; and it's also something that Mr. Beebe said, not
knowing."

"Mr. Beebe?" said his mother, trying to conceal her interest. "I don't
see how Mr. Beebe comes in."

"You know Mr. Beebe's funny way, when you never quite know what he
means. He said: 'Mr. Vyse is an ideal bachelor.' I was very cute, I
asked him what he meant. He said 'Oh, he's like me--better detached.' I
couldn't make him say any more, but it set me thinking. Since Cecil has
come after Lucy he hasn't been so pleasant, at least--I can't explain."

"You never can, dear. But I can. You are jealous of Cecil because he may
stop Lucy knitting you silk ties."

The explanation seemed plausible, and Freddy tried to accept it. But at
the back of his brain there lurked a dim mistrust. Cecil praised one too
much for being athletic. Was that it? Cecil made one talk in one's own
way. This tired one. Was that it? And Cecil was the kind of fellow who
would never wear another fellow's cap. Unaware of his own profundity,
Freddy checked himself. He must be jealous, or he would not dislike a
man for such foolish reasons.

"Will this do?" called his mother. "'Dear Mrs. Vyse,--Cecil has just
asked my permission about it, and I should be delighted if Lucy wishes
it.' Then I put in at the top, 'and I have told Lucy so.' I must write
the letter out again--'and I have told Lucy so. But Lucy seems very
uncertain, and in these days young people must decide for themselves.' I
said that because I didn't want Mrs. Vyse to think us old-fashioned. She
goes in for lectures and improving her mind, and all the time a thick
layer of flue under the beds, and the maid's dirty thumb-marks where you
turn on the electric light. She keeps that flat abominably--"

"Suppose Lucy marries Cecil, would she live in a flat, or in the
country?"

"Don't interrupt so foolishly. Where was I? Oh yes--'Young people must
decide for themselves. I know that Lucy likes your son, because she
tells me everything, and she wrote to me from Rome when he asked her
first.' No, I'll cross that last bit out--it looks patronizing. I'll
stop at 'because she tells me everything.' Or shall I cross that out,
too?"

"Cross it out, too," said Freddy.

Mrs. Honeychurch left it in.

"Then the whole thing runs: 'Dear Mrs. Vyse.--Cecil has just asked my
permission about it, and I should be delighted if Lucy wishes it, and
I have told Lucy so. But Lucy seems very uncertain, and in these days
young people must decide for themselves. I know that Lucy likes your
son, because she tells me everything. But I do not know--'"

"Look out!" cried Freddy.

The curtains parted.

Cecil's first movement was one of irritation. He couldn't bear the
Honeychurch habit of sitting in the dark to save the furniture.
Instinctively he give the curtains a twitch, and sent them swinging down
their poles. Light entered. There was revealed a terrace, such as is
owned by many villas with trees each side of it, and on it a little
rustic seat, and two flower-beds. But it was transfigured by the view
beyond, for Windy Corner was built on the range that overlooks the
Sussex Weald. Lucy, who was in the little seat, seemed on the edge of a
green magic carpet which hovered in the air above the tremulous world.

Cecil entered.

Appearing thus late in the story, Cecil must be at once described. He
was medieval. Like a Gothic statue. Tall and refined, with shoulders
that seemed braced square by an effort of the will, and a head that
was tilted a little higher than the usual level of vision, he resembled
those fastidious saints who guard the portals of a French cathedral.
Well educated, well endowed, and not deficient physically, he
remained in the grip of a certain devil whom the modern world knows
as self-consciousness, and whom the medieval, with dimmer vision,
worshipped as asceticism. A Gothic statue implies celibacy, just as
a Greek statue implies fruition, and perhaps this was what Mr. Beebe
meant. And Freddy, who ignored history and art, perhaps meant the same
when he failed to imagine Cecil wearing another fellow's cap.

Mrs. Honeychurch left her letter on the writing table and moved towards
her young acquaintance.

"Oh, Cecil!" she exclaimed--"oh, Cecil, do tell me!"

"I promessi sposi," said he.

They stared at him anxiously.

"She has accepted me," he said, and the sound of the thing in English
made him flush and smile with pleasure, and look more human.

"I am so glad," said Mrs. Honeychurch, while Freddy proffered a hand
that was yellow with chemicals. They wished that they also knew Italian,
for our phrases of approval and of amazement are so connected with
little occasions that we fear to use them on great ones. We are obliged
to become vaguely poetic, or to take refuge in Scriptural reminiscences.

"Welcome as one of the family!" said Mrs. Honeychurch, waving her hand
at the furniture. "This is indeed a joyous day! I feel sure that you
will make our dear Lucy happy."

"I hope so," replied the young man, shifting his eyes to the ceiling.

"We mothers--" simpered Mrs. Honeychurch, and then realized that she
was affected, sentimental, bombastic--all the things she hated most.
Why could she not be Freddy, who stood stiff in the middle of the room;
looking very cross and almost handsome?

"I say, Lucy!" called Cecil, for conversation seemed to flag.

Lucy rose from the seat. She moved across the lawn and smiled in at
them, just as if she was going to ask them to play tennis. Then she saw
her brother's face. Her lips parted, and she took him in her arms. He
said, "Steady on!"

"Not a kiss for me?" asked her mother.

Lucy kissed her also.

"Would you take them into the garden and tell Mrs. Honeychurch all about
it?" Cecil suggested. "And I'd stop here and tell my mother."

"We go with Lucy?" said Freddy, as if taking orders.

"Yes, you go with Lucy."

They passed into the sunlight. Cecil watched them cross the terrace,
and descend out of sight by the steps. They would descend--he knew their
ways--past the shrubbery, and past the tennis-lawn and the dahlia-bed,
until they reached the kitchen garden, and there, in the presence of the
potatoes and the peas, the great event would be discussed.

Smiling indulgently, he lit a cigarette, and rehearsed the events that
had led to such a happy conclusion.

He had known Lucy for several years, but only as a commonplace girl
who happened to be musical. He could still remember his depression that
afternoon at Rome, when she and her terrible cousin fell on him out
of the blue, and demanded to be taken to St. Peter's. That day she had
seemed a typical tourist--shrill, crude, and gaunt with travel. But
Italy worked some marvel in her. It gave her light, and--which he held
more precious--it gave her shadow. Soon he detected in her a wonderful
reticence. She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci's, whom we love
not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us. The
things are assuredly not of this life; no woman of Leonardo's could have
anything so vulgar as a "story." She did develop most wonderfully day by
day.

So it happened that from patronizing civility he had slowly passed if
not to passion, at least to a profound uneasiness. Already at Rome he
had hinted to her that they might be suitable for each other. It had
touched him greatly that she had not broken away at the suggestion.
Her refusal had been clear and gentle; after it--as the horrid phrase
went--she had been exactly the same to him as before. Three months
later, on the margin of Italy, among the flower-clad Alps, he had asked
her again in bald, traditional language. She reminded him of a Leonardo
more than ever; her sunburnt features were shadowed by fantastic rock;
at his words she had turned and stood between him and the light with
immeasurable plains behind her. He walked home with her unashamed,
feeling not at all like a rejected suitor. The things that really
mattered were unshaken.

So now he had asked her once more, and, clear and gentle as ever, she
had accepted him, giving no coy reasons for her delay, but simply saying
that she loved him and would do her best to make him happy. His mother,
too, would be pleased; she had counselled the step; he must write her a
long account.

Glancing at his hand, in case any of Freddy's chemicals had come off
on it, he moved to the writing table. There he saw "Dear Mrs. Vyse,"
followed by many erasures. He recoiled without reading any more, and
after a little hesitation sat down elsewhere, and pencilled a note on
his knee.

Then he lit another cigarette, which did not seem quite as divine as
the first, and considered what might be done to make Windy Corner
drawing-room more distinctive. With that outlook it should have been a
successful room, but the trail of Tottenham Court Road was upon it; he
could almost visualize the motor-vans of Messrs. Shoolbred and Messrs.
Maple arriving at the door and depositing this chair, those varnished
book-cases, that writing-table. The table recalled Mrs. Honeychurch's
letter. He did not want to read that letter--his temptations never lay
in that direction; but he worried about it none the less. It was his
own fault that she was discussing him with his mother; he had wanted her
support in his third attempt to win Lucy; he wanted to feel that others,
no matter who they were, agreed with him, and so he had asked their
permission. Mrs. Honeychurch had been civil, but obtuse in essentials,
while as for Freddy--"He is only a boy," he reflected. "I represent all
that he despises. Why should he want me for a brother-in-law?"

The Honeychurches were a worthy family, but he began to realize
that Lucy was of another clay; and perhaps--he did not put it very
definitely--he ought to introduce her into more congenial circles as
soon as possible.

"Mr. Beebe!" said the maid, and the new rector of Summer Street was
shown in; he had at once started on friendly relations, owing to Lucy's
praise of him in her letters from Florence.

Cecil greeted him rather critically.

"I've come for tea, Mr. Vyse. Do you suppose that I shall get it?"

"I should say so. Food is the thing one does get here--Don't sit in that
chair; young Honeychurch has left a bone in it."

"Pfui!"

"I know," said Cecil. "I know. I can't think why Mrs. Honeychurch allows
it."

For Cecil considered the bone and the Maples' furniture separately; he
did not realize that, taken together, they kindled the room into the
life that he desired.

"I've come for tea and for gossip. Isn't this news?"

"News? I don't understand you," said Cecil. "News?"

Mr. Beebe, whose news was of a very different nature, prattled forward.

"I met Sir Harry Otway as I came up; I have every reason to hope that I
am first in the field. He has bought Cissie and Albert from Mr. Flack!"

"Has he indeed?" said Cecil, trying to recover himself. Into what a
grotesque mistake had he fallen! Was it likely that a clergyman and a
gentleman would refer to his engagement in a manner so flippant? But his
stiffness remained, and, though he asked who Cissie and Albert might be,
he still thought Mr. Beebe rather a bounder.

"Unpardonable question! To have stopped a week at Windy Corner and not
to have met Cissie and Albert, the semi-detached villas that have been
run up opposite the church! I'll set Mrs. Honeychurch after you."

"I'm shockingly stupid over local affairs," said the young man
languidly. "I can't even remember the difference between a Parish
Council and a Local Government Board. Perhaps there is no difference, or
perhaps those aren't the right names. I only go into the country to see
my friends and to enjoy the scenery. It is very remiss of me. Italy and
London are the only places where I don't feel to exist on sufferance."

Mr. Beebe, distressed at this heavy reception of Cissie and Albert,
determined to shift the subject.

"Let me see, Mr. Vyse--I forget--what is your profession?"

"I have no profession," said Cecil. "It is another example of my
decadence. My attitude--quite an indefensible one--is that so long as I
am no trouble to any one I have a right to do as I like. I know I ought
to be getting money out of people, or devoting myself to things I don't
care a straw about, but somehow, I've not been able to begin."

"You are very fortunate," said Mr. Beebe. "It is a wonderful
opportunity, the possession of leisure."

His voice was rather parochial, but he did not quite see his way to
answering naturally. He felt, as all who have regular occupation must
feel, that others should have it also.

"I am glad that you approve. I daren't face the healthy person--for
example, Freddy Honeychurch."

"Oh, Freddy's a good sort, isn't he?"

"Admirable. The sort who has made England what she is."

Cecil wondered at himself. Why, on this day of all others, was he so
hopelessly contrary? He tried to get right by inquiring effusively after
Mr. Beebe's mother, an old lady for whom he had no particular regard.
Then he flattered the clergyman, praised his liberal-mindedness, his
enlightened attitude towards philosophy and science.

"Where are the others?" said Mr. Beebe at last, "I insist on extracting
tea before evening service."

"I suppose Anne never told them you were here. In this house one is so
coached in the servants the day one arrives. The fault of Anne is
that she begs your pardon when she hears you perfectly, and kicks the
chair-legs with her feet. The faults of Mary--I forget the faults of
Mary, but they are very grave. Shall we look in the garden?"

"I know the faults of Mary. She leaves the dust-pans standing on the
stairs."

"The fault of Euphemia is that she will not, simply will not, chop the
suet sufficiently small."

They both laughed, and things began to go better.

"The faults of Freddy--" Cecil continued.

"Ah, he has too many. No one but his mother can remember the faults of
Freddy. Try the faults of Miss Honeychurch; they are not innumerable."

"She has none," said the young man, with grave sincerity.

"I quite agree. At present she has none."

"At present?"

"I'm not cynical. I'm only thinking of my pet theory about Miss
Honeychurch. Does it seem reasonable that she should play so
wonderfully, and live so quietly? I suspect that one day she will be
wonderful in both. The water-tight compartments in her will break down,
and music and life will mingle. Then we shall have her heroically good,
heroically bad--too heroic, perhaps, to be good or bad."

Cecil found his companion interesting.

"And at present you think her not wonderful as far as life goes?"

"Well, I must say I've only seen her at Tunbridge Wells, where she was
not wonderful, and at Florence. Since I came to Summer Street she has
been away. You saw her, didn't you, at Rome and in the Alps. Oh, I
forgot; of course, you knew her before. No, she wasn't wonderful in
Florence either, but I kept on expecting that she would be."

"In what way?"

Conversation had become agreeable to them, and they were pacing up and
down the terrace.

"I could as easily tell you what tune she'll play next. There was simply
the sense that she had found wings, and meant to use them. I can show
you a beautiful picture in my Italian diary: Miss Honeychurch as a
kite, Miss Bartlett holding the string. Picture number two: the string
breaks."

The sketch was in his diary, but it had been made afterwards, when he
viewed things artistically. At the time he had given surreptitious tugs
to the string himself.

"But the string never broke?"

"No. I mightn't have seen Miss Honeychurch rise, but I should certainly
have heard Miss Bartlett fall."

"It has broken now," said the young man in low, vibrating tones.

Immediately he realized that of all the conceited, ludicrous,
contemptible ways of announcing an engagement this was the worst. He
cursed his love of metaphor; had he suggested that he was a star and
that Lucy was soaring up to reach him?

"Broken? What do you mean?"

"I meant," said Cecil stiffly, "that she is going to marry me."

The clergyman was conscious of some bitter disappointment which he could
not keep out of his voice.

"I am sorry; I must apologize. I had no idea you were intimate with her,
or I should never have talked in this flippant, superficial way. Mr.
Vyse, you ought to have stopped me." And down the garden he saw Lucy
herself; yes, he was disappointed.

Cecil, who naturally preferred congratulations to apologies, drew down
his mouth at the corners. Was this the reception his action would get
from the world? Of course, he despised the world as a whole; every
thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement. But he was
sensitive to the successive particles of it which he encountered.

Occasionally he could be quite crude.

"I am sorry I have given you a shock," he said dryly. "I fear that
Lucy's choice does not meet with your approval."

"Not that. But you ought to have stopped me. I know Miss Honeychurch
only a little as time goes. Perhaps I oughtn't to have discussed her so
freely with any one; certainly not with you."

"You are conscious of having said something indiscreet?"

Mr. Beebe pulled himself together. Really, Mr. Vyse had the art of
placing one in the most tiresome positions. He was driven to use the
prerogatives of his profession.

"No, I have said nothing indiscreet. I foresaw at Florence that her
quiet, uneventful childhood must end, and it has ended. I realized dimly
enough that she might take some momentous step. She has taken it. She
has learnt--you will let me talk freely, as I have begun freely--she has
learnt what it is to love: the greatest lesson, some people will tell
you, that our earthly life provides." It was now time for him to wave
his hat at the approaching trio. He did not omit to do so. "She has
learnt through you," and if his voice was still clerical, it was now
also sincere; "let it be your care that her knowledge is profitable to
her."

"Grazie tante!" said Cecil, who did not like parsons.

"Have you heard?" shouted Mrs. Honeychurch as she toiled up the sloping
garden. "Oh, Mr. Beebe, have you heard the news?"

Freddy, now full of geniality, whistled the wedding march. Youth seldom
criticizes the accomplished fact.

"Indeed I have!" he cried. He looked at Lucy. In her presence he could
not act the parson any longer--at all events not without apology.
"Mrs. Honeychurch, I'm going to do what I am always supposed to do, but
generally I'm too shy. I want to invoke every kind of blessing on
them, grave and gay, great and small. I want them all their lives to be
supremely good and supremely happy as husband and wife, as father and
mother. And now I want my tea."

"You only asked for it just in time," the lady retorted. "How dare you
be serious at Windy Corner?"

He took his tone from her. There was no more heavy beneficence, no more
attempts to dignify the situation with poetry or the Scriptures. None of
them dared or was able to be serious any more.

An engagement is so potent a thing that sooner or later it reduces all
who speak of it to this state of cheerful awe. Away from it, in the
solitude of their rooms, Mr. Beebe, and even Freddy, might again be
critical. But in its presence and in the presence of each other they
were sincerely hilarious. It has a strange power, for it compels not
only the lips, but the very heart. The chief parallel to compare one
great thing with another--is the power over us of a temple of some alien
creed. Standing outside, we deride or oppose it, or at the most feel
sentimental. Inside, though the saints and gods are not ours, we become
true believers, in case any true believer should be present.

So it was that after the gropings and the misgivings of the afternoon
they pulled themselves together and settled down to a very pleasant
tea-party. If they were hypocrites they did not know it, and their
hypocrisy had every chance of setting and of becoming true. Anne,
putting down each plate as if it were a wedding present, stimulated them
greatly. They could not lag behind that smile of hers which she gave
them ere she kicked the drawing-room door. Mr. Beebe chirruped. Freddy
was at his wittiest, referring to Cecil as the "Fiasco"--family honoured
pun on fiance. Mrs. Honeychurch, amusing and portly, promised well as
a mother-in-law. As for Lucy and Cecil, for whom the temple had been
built, they also joined in the merry ritual, but waited, as earnest
worshippers should, for the disclosure of some holier shrine of joy.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: "Mediaeval," opens at Lucy's family home outside of London, a country estate called Windy Corner. Lucy's mother, Mrs. Honeychurch, and her brother Freddy are waiting in the drawing-room as Lucy is being proposed to by Cecil Vyse. It is revealed that during her time in Rome, Lucy and Cecil became quite close and Cecil has already proposed twice, but been refused by Lucy. This time, Lucy says yes. Freddy does not like Cecil, and showed disapproval when Cecil asked his permission to marry his sister. Mrs. Honeychurch says she does like Cecil, as he's good, clever, rich, and well-connected. Cecil enters the room to announce the engagement and immediately draws open the curtains. Lucy can be seen outside, against a beautiful view of the Surrey countryside. Cecil is tall and refined, well-educated and strong, but he seems self-conscious and fastidious, suggesting a man who is celibate rather than passionate. In Mr. Beebe's words, "Mr. Vyse is an ideal bachelor. Cecil sees Lucy as a figure in a Leonardo painting, full of mystery. Immediately following the betrothal, while Freddy and Mrs. Honeychurch are outside congratulating Lucy, Mr. Beebe arrives for tea and shares some gossip with Cecil. Sir Harry Otway has bought two villas in town, called Cissie and Albert. Cecil declares his ignorance about town affairs. Changing the subject, Mr. Beebe asks what his profession is, and Cecil explains that he has none; he is independently wealthy. Unaware of the engagement, Mr. Beebe changes the subject again, talking freely to Cecil about Lucy, predicting that she will one day live life as wonderfully and heroically as she plays the piano. He is taken aback, and visibly disappointed, when Cecil abruptly announces that Lucy is going to marry him. Shortly thereafter, however, Mr. Beebe gives his blessing, and a cheery mood prevails as they all enjoy their tea.