“Ah, yes, indeed! A much more ingratiating lady to lift our glasses to. Mr. Sisson’s kindly fortune. Fortuna gentil–issima! Well, Mr. Sisson, and may your Lady Fortune ever smile on you.”

Sir William lifted his glass with an odd little smirk, some touch of a strange, prim old satyr lurking in his oddly inclined head. Nay, more than satyr: that curious, rather terrible iron demon that has fought with the world and wrung wealth from it, and which knows all about it. The devilish spirit of iron itself, and iron machines. So, with his strange, old smile showing his teeth rather terribly, the old knight glowered sightlessly over his glass at Aaron. Then he drank: the strange, careful, old–man’s gesture in drinking.

“But,” said Aaron, “if Fortune is a female—–”

“Fortune! Fortune! Why, Fortune is a lady. What do you say, Major?”

“She has all the airs of one, Sir William,” said the Major, with the wistful grimness of his age and culture. And the young fellow stared like a crucified cyclops from his one eye: the black shutter being over the other.

“And all the graces,” capped Sir William, delighted with himself.

“Oh, quite!” said the Major. “For some, all the airs, and for others, all the graces.”

“Faint heart ne’er won fair lady, my boy,” said Sir William. “Not that your heart is faint. On the contrary—as we know, and your country knows. But with Lady Fortune you need another kind of stout heart— oh, quite another kind.”

“I believe it, sir: and the kind of stout heart which I am afraid I haven’t got,” said the Major.

“What!” said the old man. “Show the white feather before you’ve tackled the lady! Fill the Major’s glass, Colonel. I am quite sure we will none of us ever say die.”

“Not likely. Not if we know it,” said the Colonel, stretching himself heartily inside his tunic. He was becoming ruddier than the cherry. All he cared about at the moment was his gay little port glass. But the Major’s young cheek was hollow and sallow, his one eye terribly pathetic.

“And you, Mr. Sisson,” said Sir William, “mean to carry all before you by taking no thought for the morrow. Well, now, we can only wish you success.”

“I don’t want to carry all before me,” said Aaron. “I should be sorry. I want to walk past most of it.”

“Can you tell us where to? I am intrigued, as Sybil says, to know where you will walk to. Come now. Enlighten us.”

“Nowhere, I suppose.”

“But is that satisfactory? Can you find it satisfactory?”

“Is it even true?” said the Major. “Isn’t it quite as positive an act to walk away from a situation as to walk towards it?”

“My dear boy, you can’t merely walk away from a situation. Believe that. If you walk away from Rome, you walk into the Maremma, or into the Alban Hills, or into the sea—but you walk into something. Now if I am going to walk away from Rome, I prefer to choose my direction, and therefore my destination.”