He looked at her, annoyed.

“What I mean,” he said, “is that if you go to Venice, you won’t go in the hopes of some love affair that you can take au grand sérieux , will you?”

“A love affair in Venice au grand sérieux ? No, I assure you! No, I’d never take a love affair in Venice more than au très petit sérieux .”

She spoke with a queer kind of contempt. He knitted his brows, looking at her.

Coming downstairs in the morning, she found the keeper’s dog Flossie sitting in the corridor outside Clifford’s room, and whimpering very faintly.

“Why Flossie!” she said softly, “What are you doing here?”