On the arrival of the "fairly substantial" cheque, Grover paid Mme. Choiseul the hundred francs he owed her and packed his bags. He bought a ticket for Genoa, and from that point wandered southward through a series of little pink towns with mountains at their back doors and the sea fairly splashing up on their piazzas. The piazzas were studded with cheap marble Columbi, all pointing to America; but in his heart he almost wished that the Santa Maria had been wrecked.
His paint tubes and pencils and all the paraphernalia of his avocation had been left behind. They had become abhorrent to him. Abhorrent too was the very thought of a studio, of artists and art talk, "relations" and "values". He had long since found out "why Cézanne was so good," and he didn't care a straw.
Swimming in the calm blue sea, stretched on hubbly volcanic rocks while the sun baked him, he stared toward a horizon beyond which Rhoda was steaming her way home, her mind packed full of misapprehensions. The knowledge that an important lie, that two important lies were floating undenied on the sea, floating away beyond recall (for he would never have the courage to deny them) completed his misery. One of the lies was that he was a painter. The other was that he was deep in the joys of a pagan love affair. For a year he had boasted of his freedom, and all the vainglorious clatter was but the rattling of his chains.
All about him were robust young Italians, shouting
