Half an hour afterwards my husband came in, and though I did not look up
I heard him say, in a tone of indulgent sympathy that cut me to the
quick:
"You've been playing the wrong part, my child. A Madonna, yes, but a
Venus, no! It's not your _metier_."
"What's the good? What's the good? What's the good?" I asked myself.
I thought my heart was broken.
FORTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
With inexpressible relief I heard the following day that we were to
leave for Rome immediately.
Alma was to go with us, but that did not matter to me in the least.
Outside the atmosphere of this place, so artificial, so unrelated to
nature, her power over my husband would be gone. Once in the Holy City
everything would be different. Alma would be different, I should be
different, above all my husband would be different. I should take him to
the churches and basilicas; I should show him the shrines and papal
processions, and he would see me in my true "part" at last!
But what a deep disappointment awaited me!
On reaching Rome we put up at a fashionable hotel in the new quarter of
the Ludovisi, and although that was only a few hundred yards from the
spot on which I had spent nine happy years it seemed to belong to
another world altogether.
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