Had Nino loved Hedwig a whit the less he would not have gone.

But he felt himself strong enough to face anything and everything, and therefore he determined to go.
He found her, indeed, with the manner of a person who is ill, but not with the appearance.

She was lying on a huge couch, pushed to the fireside, and there were furs about her.

A striped scarf of rich Eastern silk was round her throat, and she held in her hand a new novel, of which she carelessly cut the pages with a broad-hafted Persian knife.

But there was colour in her dark cheek, and a sort of angry fire in her eyes.