How I wish you had come sooner! it is getting a little dusk," said Romola, going towards him.
"Don't you want your spectacles, godfather?" said Romola, in anxiety that he should see just what she saw.
Romola, keenly sensitive to the absence of the usual response, took away her hand and said, "I am going, Tito."
The rustling magnates came and went, the bargains had been concluded, and Romola returned home; but nothing grave was said that night.
It was not possible for him to make himself independent even of those Florentines who only greeted him with regard; still less was it possible for him to make himself independent of Romola.
And Tito could never find it easy to face displeasure and anger; his nature was one of those most remote from defiance or impudence, and all his inclinations leaned towards preserving Romola's tenderness.
It was a marked day to Romola, for Piero di Cosimo, stimulated to greater industry on her behalf by the fear that he might have been the cause of pain to her in the past week, had sent home her father's portrait.
Still Tito did not look up, and Romola went out without saying any more. Very slight things make Epochs in married life, and this morning for the first time she admitted to herself not only that Tito had changed, but that he had changed towards her.
He had never meant to be disapproved; he had meant always to conduct himself so ably that if he acted in opposition to the standard of other men they should not be aware of it; and the barrier between himself and Romola had been raised by the impossibility of such concealment with her.