had been based not a trace remained in
Susy’s independence and self-sufficiency had been among herchief attractions; if she were to turn into an echo theirdelicious duet ran the risk of becoming the dullest ofmonologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier he had resentedher being glad to see their friends, and for a moment he foundhimself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of thesentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, andto be agreed with monotonous.
Once more he began to wonder if he were not fundamentallyunfitted for the married state; and was saved from despair onlyby remembering that Susy’s subjection to his moods was notlikely to last. But even then it never occurred to him toreflect that his apprehensions were superfluous, since their tiewas avowedly a temporary one. Of the special understanding onwhich their marriage had been based not a trace remained in histhoughts of her; the idea that he or she might ever renounceeach other for their mutual good had long since dwindled to theghost of an old joke.
It was borne in on him, after a week or two of unbroken sociability, that of all his old friends it was the MortimerHickses who bored him the least. The Hickses had left the Ibisfor an apartment in a vast dilapidated palace near theCanareggio. They had hired the apartment from a painter (one oftheir newest discoveries), and they put up philosophically withthe absence of modern conveniences in order to secure theinestimable advantage of "atmosphere." In this privileged airthey gathered about them their usual mixed company of quietstudious people and noisy exponents of new theories, themselvestotally unconscious of the disparity between their differentguests, and beamingly convinced that at last they were seated atthe source of wisdom.
In old days Lansing would have got half an hour’s amusement,followed by a long evening of boredom, from the sight of Mrs.
Hicks, vast and jewelled, seated between a quiet-lookingprofessor of archaeology and a large-browed composer, or thehigh priest of a new dance-step, while Mr. Hicks, beaming abovehis vast white waistcoat, saw to it that the champagne flowedmore abundantly than the talk, and the bright young secretariesindustriously "kept up" with the dizzy cross-current of prophecyand erudition. But a change had come over Lansing. Hitherto itwas in contrast to his own friends that the Hickses had seemedmost insufferable; now it was as an escape from these samefriends that they had become not only sympathetic but eveninteresting. It was something, after all, to be with people whodid not regard Venice simply as affording exceptionalopportunities for bathing and adultery, but who were reverentlyif confusedly aware that they were in the presence of somethingunique and ineffable, and determined to make the utmost of theirprivilege.
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