Olive had been glad to get away when she heard the impossible terms, but the afternoon was passing, and when she got to the house in the Via dei Bardi she saw bills of sale plastered on its walls and a litter of straw and torn paper in the courtyard. The porter came out of his lodge to tell her that one of the daughters had died.

"They all went away, and the furniture was sold yesterday."

As Olive had never really wished to live and eat with strangers she was not greatly depressed by these experiences, but she was cold and tired, and her head ached, and when on her way back to the Aquila Verde she saw a card, "Affitasi, una camera, senza mobilia," in the doorway of one of the old houses in the Borgo San Jacopo, she went in and up the long flight of steep stone stairs without any definite idea of what she wanted beyond a roof to shelter her.

A shrivelled, snuffy old woman showed her the room. It was very large and lofty, and it had two great arched windows that looked out upon the huddled roofs of Oltr'Arno. The brick floor was worn and weather-stained, as were the white-washed walls.

"It was a loggia, but some of the arches have been filled in and the others glazed. Ten lire a month, signorina. As to water, there is a good fountain in the courtyard."

Olive moved in next day.

Heaven helps those who help themselves, she thought, as she borrowed a broom from her landlady to sweep the floor. The morning was fine and she opened the windows wide and let the sun and air in. At noon she went down into the Borgo and bought fried polenta for five soldi and a slice of chestnut cake at the cook shop, and filled her kettle with clear cold water from the fountain in the courtyard.

Later, as she waited for the water to boil over her little spirit lamp, she made a list of absolute necessaries. She had paid a month's rent in advance, and fifty-three lire remained to her. Fifty-three lire out of which she must buy a straw mattress, a camp-stool, two blankets, some crockery and soap.

She went out presently to do her shopping and came back at dusk. She was young enough to rather enjoy the novelty of her proceedings, and she slept well that night on the floor, pillowless, and wrapped in her coarse brown coverings; and though the moon shone in upon her through the unshuttered windows for a while she did not dream or wake until the dawn.

Olive tried very hard to get work in the days that followed, and she went twice to the registry office in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele.

"Ah, you were here before." A stout woman came bustling out from the room behind the shop to speak to her the second time. "There is nothing for you, signorina mia. The ladies who come here will not take anyone without a character, and a written reference from Milan or Rome is no good. I told you so before. Last winter Contessa Foscoli had an English maid with a written character—not from us, I am glad to say—and she ran away with the chauffeur after a fortnight, and took a diamond ring and the Contessa's pearls with her. If you cannot tell me who you were with last I shall not be able to help you."

"The Marchesa Lorenzoni," Olive said.

The woman drew in her breath with a hissing noise, then she smiled, not pleasantly. "Why did you not say so before? I have heard of you, of course. The little English girl! Well, I can't help you, my dear. This is a registry office."

Olive walked out of the shop at once, but she heard the woman calling to someone in the room at the back to come and look at her, and she felt her cheeks burning as she crossed the road. "The little English girl!" What were they saying about her?

One morning she went into one of the English tea-rooms. It was kept by two elderly maiden ladies, and one of them came forward to ask her what she wanted. The Pagoda was deserted at that hour, a barren wilderness of little bamboo tables and chairs, tea-less and cake-less. The walls were distempered green and sparsely decorated with Japanese paper fans, and Olive noticed them and the pattern of the carpet and remembered them afterwards as one remembers the frieze, the engravings, the stale periodicals in a dentist's waiting-room.

"Do—do you want a waitress?"

The older woman's face changed. Oh, that change! The girl knew it so well now that she saw it ten times a day.

"No. My sister and I manage very well, and we have an Italian maid to do the washing up."

"Thank you," Olive said, faltering. "You don't know anyone who wants an English girl? I have been very well educated. At least—"

"I am afraid not."

Poor Olive. She was an unskilled workwoman, not especially gifted in any way or fitted by her upbringing to earn her daily bread. Long years of her girlhood had been spent at a select school, and in the result she knew a part of the Book of Kings by heart, with the Mercy speech from the Merchant of Venice and the date of the Norman Conquest. Every day she bought the Fieramosca, and she tried to see the other local papers when they came out. Several people advertised who wanted to exchange lessons, but no one seemed inclined to pay. Once she saw names she knew in the social column.

"The Marchese Lorenzoni is going to Monte Carlo, and he will join the Marchesa and Miss Whittaker in Cairo later in the season."

"Prince Tor di Rocca is going to Egypt for Christmas."

It was easy to read between the lines.



CHAPTER VIII

Florence, in the great days of the Renaissance, bore many men whom now she delights to honour, and Ugo Manelli was one of these. He helped to build a bridge over the Arno, he had his palace in the Corso frescoed by Masaccio, he framed sumptuary laws, and he wrote sonnets, charming sonnets that are still read by the people who care for such things. The fifth centenary of his birthday, on the twenty-eighth of November, was to be kept with great rejoicings therefore. There were to be fireworks and illuminations of the streets for the people, and a Trecento costume ball at the Palazzo Vecchio for those who had influence to procure tickets and money to pay for them.

Mamie, greatly daring, proclaimed her intention of wearing the "umile ed onesto sanguigno" of Beatrice.

"You will be my Dante, Don Filippo? Momma is going in cloth of gold as Giovanna degli Albizzi."

The Marchese looked inquiringly at the Prince. "Shall you add to the gaiety of nations, or at least of Florence?"

The young man shrugged his broad shoulders. "I suppose so." He was well established as cavalier servente now in the Lorenzoni household, and it was understood that Mamie would be a princess some day. The girl was so young that the engagement could scarcely be announced yet.

"I guess we must wait until you are eighteen, Mamie," her mother said. "Keep him amused and don't be exacting or he'll quit. He is still sore from his jilting."

"I can manage him," the girl boasted, but she had no real influence over him now. The forbidden fruit had allured him, but since it was his for the gathering it seemed sour—as indeed it was, and he was not the man to allow himself to be tied to the apron-strings of a child. When he was in a good humour he watched his future wife amusedly as she metaphorically and sometimes literally danced before him, but he discouraged the excess of audacity that had attracted him formerly, perhaps because he scarcely relished the idea of a Princess Tor di Rocca singing, "O che la gioia mi fe morir."

Probably he regretted gentle, amenable Edna. At times he was grimly, impenetrably silent, and often he said things that would have wounded a tender heart past healing. Fortunately there were none such in the Palazzo Lorenzoni.

"I shall be ridiculous as the Alighieri, and you must forgive me, Mamie, if I say that one scarcely sees in you a reincarnation of Monna Beatrice."

"Red is my colour," the girl answered rather defiantly.

The Marchese laughed gratingly.

Filippo dined with the Lorenzoni on the night of the ball. He wore the red lucco, but had declined to crown himself with laurel. His gaudy Muse, however, had no such scruples, and her black curls were wreathed with silver leaves. The Prince was not the only guest; there was a slender, flaxen-haired girl from New York dressed after Botticelli's Judith, an artillery captain as Lorenzo dei Medici, and another man, a Roman, in the grey of the order of San Francesco.

"Poppa left for Monte this morning," Mamie explained over the soup. "He reckoned dressing up was just foolishness, but the fact is armour is hot and heavy, and he would have had to pass from trousers into greaves. He has not got the right kind of legs for parti-coloured hosen, someway."

The Piazza della Signoria was crowded as it had been on that dreadful May day when Girolamo's broken body was burnt to ashes there; as it was on the afternoon of the Pazzi conspiracy, when a bishop was hanged from one of the windows of the old Palazzo. But the old order had changed, giving place to new even here, and the people had come now merely to see the fine dresses; there was no thought of murder, though there might be some picking of pockets. The night was still and cold, and the white, round moon that had risen above the roof of the Loggia dei Lanzi shone, unclouded, upon the restless human sea that divided here and there to let the carriages and motors pass. The guests entered by the side door nearest the Uffizi, and carabinieri kept the way clear. The crowd was dense thereabouts, and the people pushed and jostled one another, leaned forward, and stood on tiptoe to see the brocaded ladies in their jewelled coifs and the men, hooded and strange, in their gay mediaeval garb.

The Marchesa's cloth of gold drew the prolonged "Oh!" of admiration that is only accorded to the better kind of fireworks, and hearing it, she smiled, well satisfied. Mamie followed with Filippo. Her dress of rose-coloured brocade was exquisite. It clung to her and seemed to be her one and only garment; one could almost see the throb of her heart through the thin stuff. She let her furred cloak fall as she got out of the car and then drew it up again about her bare arms and shoulders.

"Who is the black-curled scarlet thing?"

"Beatrice."

"What! half naked! She is more like one of the donnine in the Decameron."

Her Dante, overhearing, hurried her up the steps. His eyes were bright with anger in the shadow of his hood, but they changed and darkened as he caught sight of one girl's face in the crowd. At the foot of the grand staircase he turned, muttering some excuse and leaving Mamie and her mother to go up alone, and hurried back and out into the street. He stood aside as though to allow some newcomers to pass in. The girl he had come to see was close to him, but she was half hidden behind a carabiniere's broad epauletted shoulders.

"Scusi," murmured the Prince as he leant across the man to pull at her sleeve. "I must see you," he said urgently. "When? Where?"

"When you like," she answered, but her eyes were startled as they met his. "No. 27 Borgo San Jacopo. The only door on the sixth landing."

"Very well. To-night, then, and in an hour's time."

The press of incoming masqueraders screened them. The carabiniere knew the Prince by sight, and he listened with all his might, but they spoke English, and he dared not turn to stare at the girl until the tall figure in the red lucco had passed up the steps and gone in again, and by that time she had slipped away out of sight.

Filippo came to the Borgo a little before midnight and crossed the dingy threshold of No. 27 as the bells of the churches rang out the hour. The old street was quiet enough now but for the wailing of some strayed and starving cats that crept about the shadowed courts and under the crumbling archways, and the departing cab woke strange echoes as it rattled away over the cobble stones.

The only door on the sixth landing was open.

"What are you doing here?" Filippo said, wonderingly, as he groped his way in. The room was in utter darkness but for one ray of moonlight athwart it and the faint light of the stars, by which he saw Olive leaning against the sill of one of the unshuttered windows, and looking, as it seemed, towards him.

"Come in," she said. "You need not be afraid of falling over the furniture. There is not much."

"You seem partial to bare attics."

"Ah! you are thinking of my room in the Vicolo dei Moribondi."

"Yes!" he said as he came towards her from the door. "I cannot rest, I cannot forget. For God's sake tell me about the end! I have been to Siena since I heard, but I dared not ask too many questions. Was she—did she suffer very much before she died? Answer me quickly."

"Throw back your hood," she said. "Let me see your face."

Impatiently he thrust the folds of white and scarlet away and stood bare-headed. She saw that his strong lips quivered and that his eyes were contracted with pain.

"No, she died instantly. They said at the inquest that it must have been so."

"Her face—was she—" his voice broke.

"I did not see it. It was covered by a handkerchief," she said gently. "Don't! Don't! I did not think you would suffer so much."

"I suffer horribly day and night. Love is the scourge of the world in the hands of the devil. That is certain. She is buried near the south wall of the Campo Santo. Oh, God! when I think of her sweet flesh decaying—"

Olive, scarcely knowing what she did, caught at his hand and held it tightly.

"Hush, oh, hush!" she said tremulously. She felt as though she were seeing him racked. "I do believe that her soul was borne into heaven, God's heaven, on the day she died. She was forgiven."

"Heaven!" he cried. "Where is heaven? I am not guilty of her death. She was a fool to die, and I shall not soon forgive her for leaving me so. If she came back I would punish her, torment her, make her scream with pain—if she came back—oh, Gemma!—carissima—"

The hard, hot eyes filled with tears. He tried to drag his hand away, but the girl held it fast.

"You are kind and good," he said presently in a changed voice. "I am sorry if I did you any harm with the Lorenzoni, but the woman told me she meant to send you away in any case because of the Marchese."

Then, as he felt the clasp of her fingers loosening about his wrist, "Don't let go," he said quickly. "Is he really going to take you to Monte Carlo with him?"

"Does his wife say so? Do you believe it?"

He answered deliberately. "No, not now. But you cannot go on living like this."

"No."

He was right. She could not go on. Her little store of coppers was dwindling fast, so fast that the beggars at the church doors would soon be richer than she was. And she was tired of her straits, tired of coarse food and a bare lodging, and of the harsh, clamorous life of the streets. The yoke of poverty was very heavy.

Filippo drew a little nearer to her. "I could make you love me."

"Never."

He made no answer in words but he caught her to him. She lay for a moment close in his arms, her heart beating on his, before she cried to him to let her go.

He released her instantly. "Well?"

"I must light the lamp," she said unsteadily. She was afraid now to be alone with him in the dim, starlit room, and she fumbled for the matches. He stood still by the window waiting until the little yellow flame of the lucerna burnt brightly on the floor between them, then he smiled at her, well pleased at her pallor. "You see it would be easy," he said.

She answered nothing.

"I am going to Naples to-morrow by the afternoon train. Will you come with me? We will go where you like from there, to Capri, or to Sicily; and you will help me to forget, and I will teach you to live."

There was silence between them for a while. Olive stared with fascinated eyes at this tall, lithe man whose red lucco, falling in straight folds to his feet, became him well. The upper part of his face was in shadow, and she saw only the strong lines of the cleft chin, and the beautiful cruel lips that smiled at her as though they knew what her answer must be.

She was of those who are apt to prefer one hour of troubled joy to the long, grey, eventless years of the women who are said to be happy because they have no history, and it seemed to her that the moment had come when she must make a choice. This love was not what she had dreamed of, longed for; other lips, kinder and more true, should have set their seal on her accomplished womanhood. She knew that this that was offered was a perilous and sharp-edged thing, a bright sheath that held a sword for her heart, and yet that heart sang exultantly as it fluttered like a wild bird against the bars of its cage. It sang of youth and life and joy that cares not for the morrow.

It sang.

Filippo watched her closely and he saw that she was yielding. Her lips parted, and instinctively as he came towards her she closed her eyes so nearly that he saw only a narrow line of blue gleaming between her lashes. But as he laid his hands upon her shoulders something awoke within her, a terror that screamed in her ears.

"I am afraid," she said brokenly. "Leave me and come back to-morrow morning if you will. I cannot answer you now."

As he still held her she spoke again. "If I come to you willingly I shall be more worth having, and if you do not go now I will never come. I will drown myself in the Arno."

"Very well. I will come to-morrow."

When he was gone she went stumblingly across the room to the mattress on the floor in the farthest corner, and threw herself down upon it, dressed as she was.

There was no more oil in the little lamp, and its flame flickered and went out after a while, leaving her in the dark. The clocks were striking two. Long since the moon had set behind the hills and now the stars were fading, or so it seemed. There was no light anywhere.

Olive did not sleep. Her frightened thoughts ran to and fro busily, aimlessly, like ants disturbed, hither and thither, this way and that. He could give her so much. Nothing real, indeed, but many bright counterfeits. For a while she would seem to be cared for and beloved. Yes, but if the true love came she would be shamed. She knew that her faith in Dante's Amor, his lord of terrible aspect, made his coming possible. The men and women who go about proclaiming that there is no such person because they have never seen him were born blind. Like those prosy souls who call the poets mad, they mistake impotence for common sense.

Besides, the first step always costs so dear, and now that he was gone and she could think of him calmly she knew that she was afraid of Filippo Tor di Rocca. He was cruel. Then among the forces arrayed against him there was the desire of that she called her soul to mortify her flesh, to beckon, to lead by stony ways to the heights of sacrifice. She could not be sure where that first step would lead her, she could not be sure of herself or gauge the depths to which she might fall.

"Oh, God!" she said aloud. "Help me! Don't let things be too difficult."

The hours of darkness were long, but the grey glimmering dawn came at last with a pattering of rain against the uncurtained window. Olive rose as soon as it was light, and before eight she had eaten the crust of bread she had saved for her breakfast and was gone out. On her way down the stairs she met her landlady and spoke to her.

"If anyone comes to see me will you tell them that I have gone out, and that I do not know when I shall come in again. And if anything is said about my going away you can say that I have changed my mind and that I shall not leave Florence."

She would not cross the river for fear of meeting Filippo in any of the more-frequented streets on the other side, so she went down the Via della Porta Romana and out by the gates into the open country beyond. She walked for a long time along muddy roads between the high walls of vineyards and olive orchards. She had an umbrella, but her skirts were draggled and splashed with mire and the water came through the worn soles of her thin shoes. She had nothing to eat and no money to buy food. There were some coppers in her purse, but she had forgotten to bring that. It was windy, and as she was toiling up the steep hill to Bellosguardo her umbrella blew inside out. She threw it down by the side of the road and went on, rather glad to be rid of it and to feel the rain on her face. She had two hands now to hold her skirt and that was better. Soon after noon she knocked at the door of a gardener's cottage and asked for something to eat; she was given a yellow lump of polenta and a handful of roast chestnuts and she sat down on a low wall by the roadside to devour them. She did not think much about anything now, she could not even feel that she cared what happened to her, but she adhered to the resolution she had made to keep out of the way until Tor di Rocca had left Florence. She could not sit long. It was cold and she was poorly clad, so poorly that the woman in the cottage had believed her to be a beggar. The Prince would have had to buy her clothes before he could take her away with him.

She wandered about until nightfall and then made her way back to the house in the Borgo, footsore and cold and wretched, but still the captain of her soul; ragged, but free and in no man's livery.

The landlady heard her coming slowly up the stairs and came out of her room to speak to her.

"A gentleman called for you this morning. I told him you were gone out and that you had changed your mind about leaving Florence, and at first he seemed angry, and then he laughed. 'Tell her we shall meet again,' he said. Then another came this afternoon in an automobile and asked if you lived here, and when I said you were out he said he would come again this evening. He left his card."

Olive looked at it with dazed eyes. Her pale face flushed, but as she went on up the stairs the colour ebbed away until even her lips were white. She had to rest twice before she could reach her own landing, and when she had entered her room she could go no farther than the door. She fell, and it was some time before she could get up again, but she still held the card crumpled in her hand.

"Jean Avenel."



CHAPTER IX

The Villa Fiorelli is set high among the olive groves above the village of Settignano. There are Medicean balls on a shield over the great wrought-iron gates, and the swarthy splendid banker princes appear as the Magi in the faded fresco painting of the Nativity in the chapel. They have knelt there in the straw of the stable of Bethlehem for more than four hundred years. The nobili of Florence were used to loiter long ago on the terrace in the shade of the five cypresses, and women, famous or infamous, but always beautiful, listened to sonnets said and songs sung in their honour in the scented idleness of the rose garden. The villa belonged first to handsome, reckless Giuliano, the lover of Simonetta and others, and the father of a Pope, and when the dagger thrusts of the Pazzi put an end to his short life his elder brother and lord, Lorenzo, held it for a while before he sold it to the Salviati. So it passed through many hands until at last Hilaire Avenel bought it and filled it with the books and armour that he loved. There were Spanish suits, gold-chased, in the hall, Moorish swords and lances, and steel hauberks on the staircase, and stray arquebuses, greaves and gauntlets everywhere. They were all rather dusty, since Hilaire was unmarried; but he was well served nevertheless. He was not a sociable person, and no Florentine had ever partaken of a meal with him, but it was currently reported that he sat through a ten-course dinner every night of his life, crumbling the bread at the side of his plate, and invariably refusing to partake of nine of the dishes that were handed in form by the old butler.

"It's real mean of your brother to keep his lovely garden shut up all through the spring," the Marchesa Lorenzoni had said once to Jean, and he had replied, "Well, it is his."

That seemed final, but the present Marchesa and late relict of Jonas P. Whittaker of Pittsburg was not so easily put off. She was apt to motor up to Settignano more than once in the May month of flowers; the intractable Hilaire was never at home to her, but she revenged herself by multitudinous kind inquiries. He was an invalid, but he disliked to be reminded of his infirmities almost as much as he did most women and all cackle about the weather.

Jean lived with him when not playing Chopin at the ends of the earth, and when the two were together the elder declared himself to be perfectly happy. "I only want you."

"And your first editions and your Cellini helmet."

When Jean came back from his American tour his brother was quick to notice a change in him, and when on the day after his Florentine concert he came in late for a dinner which he ate in silence, Hilaire spoke his mind. They were together in the library. Jean had taken a book down from the shelves but he was not reading it.

"Bad coffee."

"Was it?"

Hilaire was watching his brother's face. It seemed to him that there were lines in it that he had not seen before, and the brown eyes that gazed so intently into the fire were surely very tired.

He began again rather awkwardly. "You have been here a week, Jean."

"Yes."

"Did the concert go off well?"

"Oh, well enough. As usual."

"You went away alone in the Itala car before nine this morning and you came back scarcely an hour ago. What is the matter? Is there some new trouble? Jean, dear man, I am older than you; I have only you. What is it?"

Jean reached out for his tobacco pouch. "Hilaire," he said very gravely, after a pause, which he occupied in filling his pipe. "You remember I asked you to do anything, anything, for a girl named Olive Agar. You have never heard from her or of her?"

"Never."

"Ah," he sighed, "I have been to Siena. There was some affair—early in September she came to Florence, to the Lorenzoni of all people in the world."

Hilaire whistled.

"Yes, I know," the younger man said gloomily, as though he had spoken. "That woman! What she must have suffered in these months! Well, she left them suddenly at the beginning of November."

"Where is she now?"

"That's just it. I don't know."

"Why did she leave Siena?"

"There was some trouble—a bad business," he answered reluctantly. "She lived with some cousins, and one of them committed suicide. She came away to escape the horror and all the talk, I suppose."

"Ah, I need not ask why she left the Lorenzoni woman. No girl in her senses would stay an hour longer than she could help with her."

"Hilaire, I think I half hoped to see her at the concert yesterday. When I came on the platform I looked for her, and I am sure I should have seen her in that crowd if she had been there. She is different, somehow. I played like a machine for the first time in my life, I think, and during the interval the manager asked me why I had not given the nocturne that was down on the programme. I said something about a necessary alteration at the last moment, but I don't know now what I did play. I was thinking of her. A girl alone has a bad time in this world."

"You are going to find her? Is she in love with you?"

Jean flushed. "I can't answer that."

"That's all right. What I really wanted to know was if you cared for her. I see you do. Oh, Lord!" The older man sighed heavily as he put down his coffee-cup. "I wish you would play to me."

Jean went into the music-room, leaving the folding doors between open, and sat down at the piano. There was no light but the moon's, and Hilaire saw the beloved head dark against the silvery grey of the wall beyond. The skilled hands let loose a torrent of harmonies.

"Damn women!" said Hilaire, under cover of the fortissimo.

He spent some hours in the library on the following day re-arranging and dusting his books, lingering over them, reading a page here and there, patting their old vellum-bound backs fondly before he returned them to their shelves. They absorbed him, and yet the footman bringing in his tea on a tray heard him saying, "I must not worry."

Jean had always come to him with his troubles ever since he was a child, and the worst of all had been brought about by a woman. That was years ago now. Hilaire had been away from England, and he had come back to find his brother aged and altered—and married.

They had got on so well together without women in these latter years that Hilaire had hoped they might live and die in peace, but it seemed that it was not to be. Jean had gone out again in the car to look for his Olive. Well, if she made him happy Hilaire thought they might get on very well after all. But he had forebodings, and later, he sat frowning at the white napery and glittering glass and silver reflected in the polished walnut wood of his well-appointed table, and he refused soup and fish with unnecessary violence. Jean loved this girl and she could make him happy if she would, but would she? She was evidently not of a "coming-on disposition"; she was good, and Jean was, unfortunately, still married to the other.

It had been raining all day. The wind moaned in the trees and sighed in the chimney, and now and again the blazing logs on the hearth hissed as drops fell on them from above.

"There is a good fire in the signorino's dressing-room, I hope. He has been out all day, and it is so stormy that—"

"The signorino has come in, eccellenza. He—he brought a lady with him. She seemed faint and ill, and I sent for the gardener's wife to come and look after her. I have given her the blue room, and the housekeeper is with her now. She was busy with the dinner when she first came." The old butler rubbed his hands together.

"I hope I did right," he said after a pause.

Hilaire roused himself. "Oh, quite right, of course. She will want something to eat."

"I have sent up a tray—"

"Ah, when?"

"He—here he is."

The old man drew back as Jean came in. "I am sorry to be late, Hilaire."

"It does not matter."

Thereafter both sat patiently waiting for the end of a dinner that seemed age-long. When, at last, they were alone Jean rose to his feet; he was very pale and his brown eyes glittered.

"Did Stefano tell you? I have found her and brought her here."

"Oh, she has come, has she?"

"You think less of her for that. Ah, you will misjudge her until you know her. Wait."

He hurried out of the room.

Hilaire stood on the hearth with his back to the fire. He repeated his formula, but there was a not unkindly light in his tired eyes, and when presently the door was opened and the girl came in he smiled.

The club foot, of which he was nervously conscious at times, held him to his place, but she came forward until she was close to him.

"You are his brother," she began. "I—what a good fire."

She knelt down on the bear skin and stretched her hands to the blaze. Hilaire noticed that she was excessively thin; the rose-flushed cheeks were hollow and the curves of the sweet cleft chin too sharp. He looked at her as she crouched at his feet; the nape of the slim neck showed a very pure white against the shabby black of her dress, there were fine threads of gold in the soft brown tangle of her hair.

Jean was dragging one of the great armchairs closer.

"You are cold," he said anxiously. "Come and sit here."

She rose obediently.

"Have you had any dinner?" asked Hilaire.

"Yes; they brought me some soup in my room. I am not hungry now."

She spoke very simply, like a child. Jean had rifled all the other chairs to provide her with a sufficiency of cushions, and now he brought her a footstool.

"I think I must take my shoes off," she said. "So cold—you see they let the water in, and—"

"Take them off at once," ordered Hilaire, and he watched, still with that faint smile in his eyes, as Jean knelt to do his bidding.

"That's very nice," sighed the girl. "I never knew before that real happiness is just having lots to eat and being warm."

The two men looked at each other.

"I have often wondered about you," she said to Hilaire presently. "Your eyes are just like his. I think if I had known that I should have had to come before; but you see I promised Cardinal Jacopo of Portugal—in San Miniato—that I would not. What am I talking about?" Her voice broke and she covered her face with her hands.

"Oh, my God!" Jean would have gone to her, but his brother laid a restraining hand on his arm.

"Leave her alone," he said. "She will be all right to-morrow. It's only excitement, nervous exhaustion. She must rest and eat. Wait quietly and don't look at her."

Jean moved restlessly about the room; Hilaire, gravely silent, seemed to see nothing.

So the two men waited until the girl was able to control her sobs.

"I am so sorry," she said presently. "I have made you uncomfortable; forgive me."

"Will you take a brandy-and-soda if I give it you?"

"Yes, if you think it will do me good."

Hilaire limped across to the sideboard. He was scarcely gone half a minute, but when he came back with a glass of the mixture he had prescribed he saw his brother kneeling at the girl's side, his arms about her, his face hidden in the folds of her skirt.

"Jean! Get up!" he said very sharply. "Pull yourself together."

Olive sat stiffly erect; her swollen, tear-stained lids hid the blue eyes, her pale, quivering lips formed words that were inaudible.

Hilaire ground his teeth. "Get up!"

After a while the lover loosed his hold; he bent to kiss the girl's feet; then he rose and went silently out of the room. Hilaire listened for the closing of another door before he rang the bell.



CHAPTER X

For some days and nights Olive lived only to eat and sleep. When she woke it was to hear a kind old voice urging her to take hot milk or soup, to see a kind old face framed in white hair set off by black lace lappets; and yet whenever she closed her eyes at first she was aware of a passionate aching echo of words said that was sad as the sound of the sea in a shell. "I love you—I love you—" until at last sleep helped to knit up the ravelled sleave of care.

Every morning there were fresh roses for her.

"The signorino hopes you are better."

"Oh, much better, thank you." And after a while a day came when she felt really strong enough to get up. She dressed slowly and came down and out on to the terrace. The crumbling stones of the balustrade were moss-grown, as was the slender body of the bronze Mercury, poised for flight and dark against the pale illimitable blue of the December sky. Hilaire Avenel never tried to make Nature neat; the scarlet leaves of the Virginia creeper came fluttering down and were scattered on the worn black and white mosaic of the pavement; they showed like fire flickering in the sombre green of the cypresses. Beyond and below the garden, the olive and ilex woods, and the steep red roofs of Settignano, lay Florence, a city of the plain, and wreathed in a delicate mist. There was the great dome of Santa Maria dei Fiori; the tortuous silver streak that was Arno, spanned by her bridges; there was Giotto's tower, golden-white and rose golden, there the campanile of the Badia, the grim old Bargello, and the battlemented walls of the Palazzo Vecchio; farther still, across the river, the heights of San Miniato al Monte, Bellosguardo, and Mont' Oliveto, cypress crowned.

Two white rough-coated sheep-dogs came rushing up the steps from the garden to greet Olive with sharp barks of joy, and Hilaire was not slow to follow. Olive still thought him very like his brother, an older and greyer Jean.

"I have been so looking forward to showing you the garden," he said hurriedly in his kind eagerness to put her at her ease. "There are still a few late chrysanthemums, and you will find blue and white violets in the grass by the sundial."

They passed down the steps together and through the green twilight of the orange groves, and came to a little fountain in the midst of a space of lawn set about with laurels. Hilaire threw a biscuit into the pool, and the dark water gleamed with silver and gold as the fish rushed at it.

"I flatter myself that all the living things in this garden know me," he said. "I bar the plainer kinds of insects and scorpions, of course; but the small green lizards are charming, aren't they?"

"Mamie Whittaker had one on a gold chain. She used to wear it sometimes."

"She would," he said drily. "The young savage! Better go naked than torture harmless things."

"This place is perfect," sighed Olive; and then, "You have no home in France?"

"We should have; but our great-grandfather was guillotined in Paris during the Terror, and his wife and child came to England. Years later, when they might have gone back they would not. Why should they? Napoleon had given the Avenel estates to one of his ruffians, who had since seceded to the Bourbon and so made all secure. Besides, they were happy enough. Marie Louis Hilaire gave music lessons, and the Marquise scrubbed and cooked and patched their clothes—she, who had been the Queen's friend, and so they managed to keep the little home together. Presently the young man married, and then Jean Marie appeared on the scene. We have a picture of him at the age of five, in a nankeen frock and a frill. Our mother was a Hungarian—hence Jean's music, I suppose—and there is Romany blood on that side. These are our antecedents. You will not be surprised at our vagaries now?"

Olive smiled. "No, I shall remember the red heels of Versailles, English bread and butter, and the gipsy caravan."

"Jean has fetched your books from the Monte di Pieta. Marietta found the tickets in your coat pocket. You don't mind?"

Looking at her he saw her eyes fill with tears, and he hurried on: "No rubbish, I notice. Are you fond of reading?"

"Yes."

"I was wondering if you would care to undertake a work for me."

"I should be glad to do anything," she said anxiously.

"I have some thousands of books in the villa. Those I have collected myself I know—they are all in the library—but there are many that were left me by my father, and others that came from an uncle, and they are all piled up in heaps in the empty rooms on the second floor. I want someone to sort them out, catalogue, and arrange them for me. Would you care to do it?"

"Yes, indeed."

"That's all right then," he said hastily. "I'll get a carpenter in at once to put up some more shelves ready for them. And I think you had better stay on in the villa, if you don't mind. It will be more convenient. The salary will be two hundred lire a month, paid in advance."

"Your kindness—I can't express my gratitude—" she began tremulously.

"Nonsense! This is a business transaction, and I am coming out of it very well. I should not get a man to do the work for that absurdly small sum. I am underpaying you on purpose because I hate women."

Olive laughed. "Commend me to misogynists henceforth."

She wanted to begin at once, but her host assured her that he would rather she waited until the shelves were put up.

"You will have to sort them out several times, according to date, language and subject. Perhaps Jean can help you when he returns. He is away just now."

Watching her, he saw the deepening of the rose.

"I—I can't remember exactly what happened the night I came, Mr Avenel. You know I had not been able to find work, and though my padrona was kind she was very poor too. She pawned my things for me, but they fetched so little, and I had not had anything to eat for ever so long when he came. He has not gone away because of me, has he?"

Hilaire threw the fish another biscuit; it fell among the lily leaves at the feet of the weather-stained marble nymph of the fountain.

"I must decline to answer," he said gravely, after a pause. "I understand that you are twenty-three and old enough therefore to judge for yourself, and I do not intend to influence either you or Jean, if I can help it. You will be perfectly free to do exactly what you think right, my dear girl. I will only give you one bit of advice, and that is, look at life with your eyes wide open. Don't blink! This is Friday, and Jean is coming to see you on Wednesday."



CHAPTER XI

Olive told herself that Hilaire was very good to her in the days that followed. He came sometimes into the room where she was, to find her sitting on the floor amid the piles of books she was trying to reduce to some kind of order.

"You do not get tired? I am afraid they are rather dusty."

"Oh, not at all," she assured him. She was swathed in a blue linen apron of Marietta's and had tied a cotton handkerchief over her hair. "I like to feel I am doing something for you," she said. "I wish—you have been—you are so kind."

On the Wednesday morning she covered some of the books with brown paper and pasted labels on their backs. She tried not to listen for the creaking of the great gates as they swung open, for the grating of wheels against the stones, for Jean's voice calling to his brother, for his quick step upon the stair, but she heard all as she wrote Vita Nuova on the slip intended for an early edition of the Rape of the Lock, and put the Decameron aside with some sermons and commentaries that were to be classified as devotional literature. He did not come to her then, but she was desperately afraid that he might. "I am not ready ... not ..."

When, later, she came into the dining-room she seemed to be perfectly at her ease. Jean's eyes had been fixed on the door, and they met hers eagerly as she came forward. "Are you better?" he asked, and then bit his lip, thinking he had said the wrong thing.

"Oh, yes. But—but you look pale and thinner."

Her little air of gay indifference fell away from her. As he still held her hand she felt the tears coming and longed to be able to run upstairs and take some more sal volatile, but Hilaire came to the rescue.

"Well, let's have lunch," he said. "I hate tepid food."

When they had taken their places Jean gave the girl a letter.

"It came for you to the Lorenzoni. I called at the porter's lodge this morning and Ser Gigia gave it me."

"Such a waste of good things I never saw," the butler said afterwards to his wife. "As you know, the padrone never eats more than enough to fill a bird, but I have seen the signorino hungry, and the young lady too. To-day, however, they ate nothing, though the frittata was fit to melt in one's mouth. I should not have been ashamed to set it before the Archangel Gabriel, and he would have eaten it, since it is certain that the Blessed One has never been in love."

After the meal, to which no one indeed had done justice, Hilaire explained that he was going to write some letters.

The younger man looked at Olive. "Come with me," he said abruptly. "I want to play to you."

"I want to hear you," she said as she rose from the table.

He followed her into the music-room and shut the door. "Well?"

She chose to misunderstand him. "It is charming. Just what a shrine of sound should be."

The grand piano stood out from the grey-green background of the walls beyond, there was a bronze statuette of Orpheus with his lute on a twisted Byzantine column of white and gold mosaic, and a long cushioned divan set on one side broke the long lines of light on the polished floor.

"What are you going to play?" she asked.

"Nothing, at present," he said, smiling at her. "I want to talk to you first. You are not frightened?"

"No." She sat on the divan and he stood before her, looking down into her eyes.

"I think I had better try to tell you about my wife," he said. "May I sit here? And may I smoke?"

"Yes." She drew her skirts aside to make room for him next to her. "I want to hear you," she said again.

"Imagine me, a boy of twenty-two, convalescing in country lodgings after an illness that seemed to have taken the marrow out of my bones. Hilaire was in Japan, and I—a callow fledgling from the nest—was very sick and sorry for myself. There were some people living in rather a large house at the other end of the village who took notice of me. They were the only ones, and I have thought since that my acquaintance with them really did for me with everyone else. They were not desirable—but—well, I was too young, and just then too physically weak to avoid their more pressing attentions. Old Seldon was one of those flushed, swollen men whose collars seem always to be too small for them. He tried to be pleasant, but it was not a great success. There were two daughters at home, and Gertrude was the eldest. She had been married, and the man had died, leaving her penniless. As you may suppose she had not come back to veal. I was sorry for her then because she seemed a good sort, and she was very kind to me; she was five years my senior—"

"Go on," Olive said.

"I used to go to the house nearly every evening. She sang well, and I used to play her accompaniments, while the old man hung about the sideboard. He never left us alone, and the younger girl, Violet, used to meet the rector's son in the stables then. I heard that afterwards. They lived anyhow, and owed money to all the tradespeople round.

"One night I was awakened by a knocking outside; my landlady slept at the back, and she was deaf besides, so I went down myself. The wind put my candle out as I opened the door, but I saw a woman standing there in the rain, and I asked her what she wanted. She made no answer, but pushed past me into the passage, and went into my sitting-room. I followed, of course.

"Well, perhaps you have guessed that it was Gertrude. Her yellow hair hung down and about her face; she was only half dressed, and her bare arms and shoulders were all wet. Her skirts were torn and stained with mud. She told me her father had turned her out of the house in a drunken fury and she had come to me. Even then I wondered why she had not gone to some woman—surely she might have found shelter—however, she had come to me. I was going to call up my landlady, but she would not allow it because she said that no one but I need ever know. She would creep home through the fields soon after sunrise and her sister would let her in. The old man would be sleeping heavily.... The end of it was that I let her go up to my room while I lay on the sofa in the little parlour. The horsehair bolster was deucedly hard, but I was young, and when I did get off I slept well. When I woke it was nearer eight than seven, and I had just scrambled up when my landlady came in. One look at her face was enough. I understood that Gertrude had overslept herself too.

"The sequel was hateful. There was a frightful scandal, of course; the father raved, the women cried, the rector talked to me seriously, and—Olive, mark this—Gertrude would not say anything. I married her and we came away."

"It was a trap," cried Olive.

"We had not one single thing in common, and you know when there is no love sex is a barrier set up by the devil between human souls. After some years of mutual misery I brought her here. Poor Hilaire has hated respectable women ever since—she was that, if that counts when there is nothing else. Just virtue, with no saving graces. She is living in London now, is much esteemed, and regularly exceeds her allowance."

"Was she pretty?"

Jean had let his pipe go out, and now he relit it. "Oh, yes," he said, "I suppose so. Frizzy hair and all that. I fancy she has grown stout now. She is the kind that spreads."

"Life is all so hateful," sighed the girl. Jean moved away from her and went to the window. Hilaire was limping across the terrace towards the garden steps. When he was gone out of sight Jean came back into the room.

"My brother is unhappy too. The woman he loved died. Oh, Olive, are we to be lonely always because the law will not give me a divorce from the woman who was never really my wife, never dear to me or near to me as you are? Joy is within our reach, a golden rose on the tree of life, and it is for you to gather it or to hold your hand. Don't answer me yet for God's sake. Wait!"

He went to the piano and opened it.

Rain ... rain dripping on the roof through the long hours of night, and the weary moaning of the wakeful wind. Thronging memories of past years, past youth, past joy, past laughter echoing and re-echoing in one man's hungry heart. Light footsteps of children never to be born ... and then the heavy tread of men carrying a coffin, and the last sound of all—the clanging of an iron door....

The grave ... the grave ... it held the boy who had loved her, and presently, surely, it would hold this man too, sealing his kind lips with earth, closing his brown eyes in an eternal darkness.

He played, as thousands had said, divinely, not only with his hands but with his soul. The music that had been a work of genius became a miracle when he interpreted it, and indeed it seemed that virtue went out of him. His face was drawn and pale and a pulse beat in his cheek. Olive, gazing at him through a blur of tears, knew that she had never longed for anything in her life as she longed now to comfort this pain expressed in ripples, and low murmurings, and great crashing waves of the illimitable sea of sound. Her heart ached with the pity that is a woman's way of loving, and as he left the piano she rose too. He uttered a sort of cry as she swayed towards him, and clasped her in his arms.

"I love you," he said, his lips so close to hers that she felt rather than heard the words.



CHAPTER XII

Jean came to the villa a little before noon on the following day. Hilaire, who was in the library, heard his voice in the hall calling the dogs, heard him whistling some little song tune as he opened and shut all the doors one after the other.

"'O l'amor e' come un nocciuola Se non se apre non si puo mangiarla—'"

"Hilaire, where are you? I thought I should find you on the terrace this fine morning. Where is she?" he added eagerly as he laid a great bunch of roses down on the table. "Is her headache better? Has not she come down yet?"

He looked across the room to where his brother's grey head just showed above the high carved back of his chair.

"Hilaire! Why don't you answer?"

In the silence that ensued he distinctly heard the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece and the falling of the soft wood ashes in the grate; the beating of his own heart sounded loud to him. One of the dogs was scratching at the door and whining to be let in.

"Hilaire."

"She is gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes. She left this letter for you."

"Ah, give it to me." He opened and read it hurriedly.

"I thought you meant dead at first," he said. His brown eyes had lost the light that had been in them and were melancholy as before; he stood still by the table looking down upon his roses. They would fade, and she would never see them now. Never ... never ...

"Come and sit by the fire and let's talk it over quietly," said Hilaire. "Oh, damn women," he mumbled as he drew at his pipe—the fifth that morning. It was the first time in a week that he had uttered his pet expletive. "What does she say?"

"You can read her letter."

"Would she mind?"

"Oh, no," Jean said bitterly. "She loves you—what she calls loving—next best after me. She told me so."

Hilaire carefully smoothed the crumpled, blotted page out on his knee.

"MY DEAREST JEAN,—I am going away because I am a coward. I dare not live with you, and I dare not ask you to forgive me. Last night as I lay awake I thought and thought about my feeling for you and I was sure that it was love. I used to think of you often last summer and to wonder where you were and what you were doing, and I hoped you had not forgotten me. I did not love you then, but I suppose my thoughts of you kept my heart's door open for you, and certainly they helped to keep out someone else who came and tried to get admittance. Oh, one must suffer to keep love perfect, but isn't it worth while? You may not believe me now when I say that if I cared for you less I should stay, but it is true. Oh, Jean, even when we were so happy for a few minutes yesterday something in me looked beyond into the years to come and was afraid. Not of you; I trust you, dearest; but of the world. Men would stare at me and laugh and whisper together, and women would look away, and I know I should not be able to bear it. I am not brave like that. Oh, every word I write must hurt you, I know. Remember that I love you now and shall always. Good-bye.—Your

"OLIVE."

"I should keep this."

"I am going to. Hilaire, did you know she was going? Did she tell you?"

The older man answered quietly: "Yes, I knew, and I sent her to the station in the motor. I had promised a strict neutrality, Jean, and she was right to go. Some women, good women, may be strong enough to bear all the suffering that is entailed upon them by a known irregularity in their lives. She is not. It would probably have killed her though I am not saying that she would not have been happy sometimes, when she could forget her shame."

Jean flinched as though his brother had struck him. "Don't use that word."

"Well, what else would it be? What else would the world call it? And women listen to what the world says. 'Good name in man or woman is the immediate jewel of their souls'; Othello said something like that, and it's often true. Besides, you know, this woman is pure in herself, and from what she told me I understand that she has seen something of the seamy side of love lately—enough to inspire her with dread. She is afraid, and her fear is exquisite; a very fine and rare thing. It is the bloom on the fruit and should not be brushed off with an ungentle hand. Poor child! Don't blame her as she blames herself or I shall begin to think she is too good for you."

Jean sat leaning forward staring into the fire.

"Do you realise that when I brought her here it was from starvation in a garret? Where is she going? What will she do? Oh, God! The poor little slender body! Do you remember she said it was happiness just to be warm and have enough to eat?"

"That's all right," Hilaire said hastily. "She is going to a good woman, a friend she made in Siena. The letter you brought was from her, and she wrote to say she had been ill and wished Olive could come and be with her for a while."

"I see! And she was glad to get away."

"My dear man, did you really think she would be so easily won? She loves you, and you not only made love to her yesterday afternoon; you played to her—I heard you—and I knew she would have to say 'Yes' to everything. Now she says 'No,' but you must not think she does not care." Hilaire got up, came across to where his brother sat, and laid a caressing hand on his shoulder. "Dear Jean, will it comfort you to hear me swear she means every word of that letter? It's not all over. You will come together in the end. Her poor blue eyes were drowned in tears—"

"Oh, don't," Jean said brokenly. The hard line of his lips relaxed. He hid his face in his hands.

Hilaire went out of the room.



BOOK III.—ROME



CHAPTER I

Olive was alone in the compartment of the train that bore her away from Florence and from Jean. She had a book; it lay open on her lap, and she had tried to read, but the lines all ran together and the effort to concentrate her thoughts made her head ache. She was very unhappy. It seemed to her that now indeed life was emptied of all sweets and the taste of it was as dust and ashes in her mouth. She was leaving youth and joy behind; or rather, she had killed them and left a man to bury them. At Orvieto she nearly broke down. It would be so easy to get out and cross over to the other platform and there await the next train back to Florence. She had her hand upon the handle of the door when a boy with little flasks of wine in a basket came up and asked her to buy, and as she answered him she heard the cry of "Partenza!" It was too late; the moment had passed, and after a while she knew that she was glad she had not yielded. She was doing the right thing. What was the old French motto? "Fais ce que doit, advienne que pourra." The brave words comforted her a little. She was very tired, and presently she slept.

She was awakened by the discordant yells of the Roman facchini on the station platform. One of them carried her box to the office of the Dogana, but a large party of Americans had come by the same train and the officials were too busily engaged in turning over the contents of their innumerable Saratogas to do more than scrabble in chalk on the side of her shabby leather trunk and shake their heads at the proffered key, and soon she was in a vettura clattering down the wide new Via Nazionale.

Signora de Sanctis lived with her sister in one of the old streets in the lower part of the city near the Pantheon—the Via Arco della Ciambella. The houses there are built on the foundations of the Baths of Agrippa, and a brick arch, part of the great Tepidarium, remains to give the street its name. The poor fragment has been Christianised; a wayside altar sanctifies it, and a little painted shrine to the Madonna adorns the base. The buildings on that side are small and mean and overshadowed by the great yellow palace of the Spinola opposite. Olive's friends lived over a wine shop, but the entrance was some way down the street.

"Fortunately, my dear," as they remarked, "though really the place is very quiet. People go outside the gates to get drunk."

Both the women seemed glad to see her. Her room was ready and a meal had been prepared and the cloth laid at one end of the work-table. The younger sister was a dressmaker too, and the floor was strewn with scraps of lining and silk. A white dress lay on the sofa, carefully folded and covered with a sheet of tissue paper.

"You look tired, Olive. Were you not happy in Florence?"

The girl admitted that the Lorenzoni had not been very kind to her. She had left them and had been living on her savings. It had been hard to find other employment. "I want to work," she said. "You will let me help you, and I hope to get lessons."

She asked to be allowed to wash the plates and dishes and put them away in the tiny kitchen. She was in a mood to bear anything better than the idleness that left room for her own sad thoughts, and she wished that they would let her do some sewing. "I am not good at needlework, but I can hem and put on buttons," she pleaded.

Signora Giulia smiled at her. She was small, and she had a pale, dragged look and many lines about her weak eyes. "No, thank you, my dear. I have a girl apprentice who comes during the day, and I do the cutting out and designing and the embroidery myself. You must not tire yourself in the kitchen either. We have an old woman in to do mezzo servizio."

It was nine o'clock, and the narrow streets were echoing now to the hoarse cries of the newsvendors: "Tribuna!" "Tribuna!"

"I will go and unpack then, and to-morrow I shall find some registry offices and try to get English lessons."

"Yes, go, nina, and sleep well. You look tired. You must get stronger while you are with us."

For a long time she could not sleep. In the summer she had played with the thought of love, and then she had been able to close her eyes and feel Jean Avenel close beside her, leaning towards her, saying that she must not be afraid, that he would not hurt her. It had been a sort of game, a childish game of make-believe that seemed to hurt no one, not even herself. But now she was hurt indeed; the remembrance of his kisses ached upon her lips.

When Tor di Rocca had asked her to go away with him she had felt that it might be worth while, that it would be pleasant to be cared for and loved, to eat and drink and die on the morrow, but the man himself had been nothing to her. A means to an end.

She had been wholly a creature of blind instincts, the will to live, to creep out of the dark into the sunshine that is inherent in the animal, fighting against that other impulse, trying to root up that white fragile flower, watered throughout the centuries with blood and tears and rare and precious ointment, that thorn in some women's hearts, their pale ideal of inviolate purity.

The spirit had warred against the flesh, and the spirit had won then and now. It had won, but not finally. She was dismayed to find that temptation was a recurrent thing. Every morning when she woke it returned to her. It would be so easy to write "Dearest, come to me." It would be so easy to make him happy. She thought little of herself now and much of Jean. Would he stay on with his brother or go away again? Had she hurt him very much? Would he forget her? Or hate her?

During the day she trudged the streets of Rome and grew to know them well. Here, as in Florence, no one wanted to pay for learning, no one wanted an English girl for anything apparently. If she had been Swiss, and so able to speak three languages incorrectly, she might have found a place as nursery-governess; as it was, the people in the registry offices grew tired of her and she was afraid to go to them too often.

There was little for her to do in the house. The old woman who came in did the cleaning, and they lived on bread and ricotta cheese and a cabbage soup that was easily prepared, but sometimes she was able to help with the sewing, and now and then she was allowed to take the finished work home.

"It is not fit! They will take you for an apprentice, a sartina."

Olive laughed rather mirthlessly at that. "I am not proud," she said.

"I sat up until two last night to finish the Contessa's dress. She is always in a hurry. If only she would pay what she owes," sighed the dressmaker.

Olive promised to bring the money back with her, and she waited a long while in the stuffy passage of the Contessa's flat. There were imitation Abyssinian trophies on the walls, lances and daggers and shields of lathe and cardboard and painted paper. The husband was an artillery captain, and his sword stood with the umbrellas in the rack, the only real thing in that pretentious armoury.

The Contessa came out to her presently. She was a large woman, and as she was angry she seemed to swell and redden and gobble as turkeys do.

"Are you the giovinetta? You will take this dress away. It is not fit to put on." She held the bodice in her hand, and as she spoke she shook it in Olive's face. "The stitches are all awry; they are enormous; and half the embroidery is blue and the other half green. I shall make her pay for the material. The dress is ruined, and it is the last she shall make for me. She must pay me, and you must tell her so."

Olive collected her scattered wits. "If the Signora Contessa would allow me to look," she said.

The stitches were very large, and her heart sank as she examined them. The poor women had toiled so over this work, stooping over it, straining their tired eyes. "I think we can alter it to your satisfaction, but I must ask you to be indulgent, signora. I will bring it back the day after to-morrow, if that will suit you." She folded the bodice carefully and wrapped it in the piece of paper she had brought it in, fastening the four corners with pins.

"The skirt goes well?"

"It will do," the Contessa admitted as she turned away. "Anacleto!"

A slender, dark-eyed youth emerged from the shadows at the far end of the passage, bringing a sound and smell of frying with him. His bare brown arms were floury and he wiped them on his striped cotton apron as he came forward to open the door. He wore a white camellia thrust behind one ear.

"It would be convenient—Signora Manara would be glad if you could pay part of her account," faltered Olive.

The Contessa stopped short. "I could, but I will not," she said emphatically. "She does her work too badly."

The young servant grinned at the girl as she passed out. She was half-way down the stairs when he came out on to the landing and leaned over the banisters.

"Never! Never!" he called down to her. "They never pay anyone. I am leaving to-morrow."

The white camellia dropped at her feet. She smiled involuntarily as she stooped to gather up the token. "Men are rather dears."

She met Ser Giulia coming down the stairs of their house. The little woman looked quickly at the bundle she carried as she asked why it had been brought back.

"She wants it altered! Dio mio! And I worked so hard at it. How much of the money has she given you?"

"She has given nothing; I hope she will pay when I take the work back."

But the other began to cry. "Perhaps the stitches are large," she said, sobbing. "I know my eyes are weak. No one will pay me, and I owe the baker more than ten lire. Soon we shall have to beg our bread in the streets."

"Don't," Olive said hurriedly. "Don't. I have been with you more than a month and I have not found work yet, but I will not be a burden to you much longer. I shall find something to do soon and then you need not do so much and we shall manage better."

"Oh, child, I know you do your best."

"Don't cry then. I will get money somehow. Don't be afraid."



CHAPTER II

Olive sat idly on one of the benches near the great wall in the Pincian gardens. She had been to an office in the Piazza di Spagna and had there been assured for the seventh time that there was nothing on the books. "If the signorina were a cook now, there are many people in need of cooks," the young man behind the counter had said smilingly, and she had thanked him and come away. What else could she do?

It was getting late, and a fading light filtered through the bare interwoven branches of the planes. The shadows were lengthening in the avenues and grass-bordered paths where the seminarists had been walking in twos and threes among the playing children. They were gone now, the grave-faced young men in their black soutanes and broad beaver hats; all the people were gone.

"O Pasquina! Birichina!"

Olive, turning her head, saw a young woman and a child coming towards her. The little thing was clinging to its mother's skirts, stumbling at every step, whining to be taken up, and now she dropped the white rabbit muff and the doll she was carrying into a puddle.

"O Pasquina!"

The child stared open-mouthed as Olive came forward and stooped to pick up the fallen treasures, and though tears were running down her little face she made no outcry.

"See, the beautiful lady helps you," the mother said hastily, and she sat down on the bench at Olive's side and lifted the baby on to her lap to comfort her.

"She is tired. We have been to the Campo Marzo to buy her a fine hat with white feathers," she explained.

Olive looked at her with interest. She was not at all pretty; her round snubby face was red and she had a bruise on her chin, and yet she was somehow attractive. Her small, twinkling blue eyes were so kind, and her hair was beautiful, smooth, shining, and yellow as straw. She wore no hat.

Her name was Rosina. The signorino was always very good, and he gave her an afternoon off when she asked for it. On Christmas night, for instance, she had drunk too much wine, and she had fallen down in the street and hurt herself. The next day her head ached so, and when the signorino saw she was not well he said she might go home and sleep. She had been working for him six weeks. What work? She seemed surprised at the question.

"I am a model. My face is ugly, as you see," she said in her simple, straightforward way; "but otherwise I am beautiful, and I can always get work with sculptors. The signorino is an American and he has an unpronounceable name. He is doing me as Eve, crouched on the ground and hiding my head in my arms. After the Fall, you know. Have you been to the Andreoni gallery? There is a statuette of me there called 'Morning.' This is the pose."

She clasped her hands together behind her head, raising her chin a little. Olive observed the smooth long throat, the exquisite lines of the shoulders and breast and hips. Pasquina slipped off her mother's knees.

"Are you well paid?"

"It depends on the artist. Some are so poor that they cannot give, and others will not. The schools allow fifteen soldi an hour, but the signorino is paying me twenty-five soldi. In the evenings I sing and dance at a caffe near the station."

Olive hesitated. "Do—do artists ever want models dressed?"

Rosina looked at her quickly. "Oh, yes, when they are as pretty as you are. But you are well educated—one sees that—it is not fit work for such as you."

"Never mind that," Olive said eagerly. "How does one begin being a model? I will try that. Will you help me?"

Rosina beamed at her. "Sicuro! We will go to Varini's school in the Corso if you like. The woman in the newspaper kiosk in the Piazza di Spagna knows me, and I can leave Pasquina with her. An'iamo!"

The two girls went together down the wide, shallow steps of the Trinita dei Monti with the child between them.

Poor little Pasquina was the outward and visible sign of her mother's inward and hopelessly material gracelessness; she symbolised the great gulf fixed between smirched Roman Rosina and Jean's English rose in their different understanding of their own hearts' uses. Olive believed love to be the way to heaven; Rosina knew it, or thought she knew it, as a means of livelihood.

The model was very evidently not only familiar with the studios. The cabmen on the rank in the piazza hailed her with cries of "Rosi"; she was greeted by beggars at the street corners, dustmen, carabinieri, crossing-sweepers, and Olive was not wholly unembarrassed. Yet Rosina escaped the vulgarity of some who might be called her betters as the world goes by being simply natural. When she was amused she laughed aloud, when she was tired she yawned as openly and flagrantly as any duchess. In manners extremes meet, and the giggle and the sneer are the disastrous half measures of the ill-bred, the social greasers. Rosina had never been sly in her life; she was ever as simply without shame as Eve before the Fall, and lawless because she knew no law. The darkness of Northern cities is tainted and cold and cannot bring forth such kindly things as the rosine—little roses—that spring up in the warm, sweet Roman dust.

"Here is Varini's."

They passed through a covered passage into a little garden overgrown with laurels and gnarled old pepper trees; there was a fountain with gold fish, and green arums were springing up about a broken faun's head set on a pedestal of verd' antico. Some men were standing together in the path, a pretty dark-eyed peasant girl with them. They all turned to stare, and the cioccara put out her tongue as Olive went by. Rosina instantly replied in kind.

"Ohe! Fortunata! Benedetta ragazza! Resting as usual? Does Lorenz still beat you?"

She described the antecedents and characteristics of Lorenz.

The slower-witted country girl had a more limited vocabulary. Her eyes glared in the shadow of her white coif. "Ah," she gasped. "Brutta bestia!" and she turned her back.

The men laughed, and Rosina laughed with them as she knocked on a green painted door in the wall. It was opened by a burly, bearded man, tweed-clad, and swathed in a stained painting apron.

"Oh, Professore, here is a friend of mine who wants work."

"Come in," he said shortly, and they followed him into a large untidy studio. A Pompeian fruit-seller in a black frame, a study for a Judgment of Paris on a draped easel, and on another easel the portrait of an old lady just begun. There were stacks of canvases on the floor and on all the chairs.

"Turn to the light," the artist said brusquely; and then, as Olive obeyed him, "Don't be frightened. You are new, I see. You are so pink and white that I thought you were painted. You are not Italian?"

"No."

"What, then?"

She was silent.

He smiled. "Ah, well, it does not matter. You can come to the pavilion on Monday at five and sit to the evening class for a week. You understand? Wait a minute." He went to the door and called one of the young men in from the garden.

"Here is a new model, Mario. I have engaged her for the evening class. What do you think of her?"

"Carina assai," approved Mario. He was a round-faced, snub-nosed youth with clever brown eyes set very far apart, and a humorous mouth. "Carina assai!" he repeated.

"Fifteen soldi the hour, from five to seven-thirty," said the professor. "Come a little before the time on Monday; the porter will show you what costume you must wear and I shall be there to pose you."

"Now I shall take you to M'sieur Michelin," Rosina said when they had left Varini's. "He is looking for a type, and perhaps you will please him. He is strano, but good always, and he pays well."

"It is not tiring you?"

"Ma che! I must see that you begin well and with the right people. Some painters are canaglia. Ah, I know that," the girl said with a little sigh and a shrug of her shoulders.

They went by way of the Via Babuino across the Piazza di Spagna, and up the little hill past the convent of English nuns to the Villa Medici. Rosina rang the gate-bell, and the old braided Cerberus admitted them grumblingly. "You are late. But if it is M'sieur Camille—"

Camille Michelin, bright particular star of the French Prix de Rome constellation, lived and worked in one of the more secluded garden-studios of the villa; it was deep set in the ilex wood, and the girls came to it by a narrow winding path, box-edged, and strewn with dead leaves. A light shone in one of the upper windows; the great man was there and he came down the creaking wooden stairs himself to open the door.

"Who is it? Rosina? I have put away the Anthony canvas for a month and I will let you know when I want you again."

"But, signorino, I have brought you a type."

"What!" he said eagerly, in his execrable Italian. "Fresh, sweet, clean?"

"Sicuro."

"I do not believe you. You are lying."

Camille was picturesque from the crown of his flaxen head to the soles of his brown boots; his pallor was interesting, his blue eyes remarkable; he habitually wore rust-coloured velveteen; he smoked cigarettes incessantly. All men who knew and loved his work saw in him a decadent creature of extraordinary charm; and yet, in spite of his "Aholibah," his "Salome," and his horribly beautiful, unfinished study of Fulvia piercing the tongue of Cicero, in spite of his Byron-cum-Baudelaire after Velasquez and Vandyke exterior he always managed to be quite boyishly simple and sincere.

"Where is she?" Then, as his eyes met Olive's, he cried, "Not you, mademoiselle?" His surprise was as manifest as his pleasure. "My friends have sworn that I could never paint a wholesome picture. Now I will show them. When can you come?"

"Monday morning."

"Do not fail me," he implored. "Such harpies have been here to show themselves to me; fat, brown, loose-lipped things with purple-shadowed eyes. But you are perfect; divine bread-and-butter. They think they are clean because they have washed in soap and water, but it is the stainless soul I want. It must shine through my canvas as it does through Angelico's."

"I hope I shall please you," faltered the girl. "I—I only pose draped."

He looked at her quickly. "Very well," he said, "I will remember. It is your head I want. You are not Roman; have you sat to any other man here?"

"No. I am going to Varini's in the evenings next week."

"Ah! Well, don't let anyone else get hold of you. Gontrand will be trying to snap you up. He is so tired of the cioccare. What shall I call you?"

"Nothing. I have no name."

"I shall give you one. You shall be called child. Come at nine and you will find the door open." He fumbled in his pockets for some silver. "Here, Rosina, this is for the little one."



CHAPTER III

The virtue that bruises not only the heel of the Evil One but the heart of the beloved is never its own reward. The thought of Jean's aching loneliness oppressed Olive far more than her own. She believed that she had done right in leaving him, but no consciousness of her own rectitude sustained her, and she was pitifully far from any sense of self-satisfaction. Her head hung dejectedly in the cold light of its aureole. Sometimes she hated herself for being one of the dull ninety-and-nine who never stray and who need no forgiveness, and yet she clung to her dear ideal of love thorn-crowned, white, and clean.

She had hoped to be able to help her friends, but that hope had faded, and she had been very near despair. There was something pathetic now in her intense joy at the thought of earning a few pence. She lied to the kind women at home because she knew they would not understand. They might believe the way to the Villa Medici to be the primrose path that leads to everlasting fire—they probably would if they had ever heard of Camille. She told them she had found lessons, and the wolf seemed to skulk growlingly away from the door as she uttered the words.

"You need not be afraid of the baker now," she told Ser Giulia. "He shall be paid at the end of the week."

Her waking on the Monday morning was the happiest she had known since she left Florence. She was to help to make beautiful things. Her part would be passive; but they also serve who only stand and wait. She was not of those who see degradation in the lesser forms of labour. Each worker is needed to make the perfect whole. The men who wrought the gold knots and knops of the sanctuary, who wove the veil for the Holy of Holies, were called great, but the hewers of wood and carriers of water were temple builders too, even though their part was but to raise up scaffoldings that must come down again, or to mix the mortar that is unseen though it should weld the whole. Men might pass these toilers by in silence, but God would surely praise them.

Praxiteles moulded a goddess in clay, and we still acclaim him after the lapse of some two thousand years. What of the woman who wearied and ached that his eyes might not fail to learn the least sweet curve of her? What of the patient craftsmen who hewed out the block of marble, whose eyes were inflamed, whose lungs were scarred by the white dust of it? They suffered for beauty's sake—not, as some might say, because they must eat and live. Even slaves might get bread by easier ways. But, very simply for beauty's sake.

Olive might have soon learnt how vile such service may be in the studios of any of the canaglia poor Rosina knew, but Camille, that sheep in wolf's clothing, was safe enough. What there was in him of perversity, of brute force, he expended in the portrayal of his subtly beautiful furies. His art was feverishly decadent, and those who judge a man by his work might suppose him to be a monster of iniquity. He was, in fact, an extremely clever and rather worldly-wise boy who loved violets and stone-pines and moonlight with poetical fervour, who preferred milk to champagne, and saunterings in green fields to gambling on green cloth.

That February morning was cloudless, and Rome on her seven hills was flooded in sunshine. The birds were singing in the ilex wood as Olive passed through, and Camille was singing too in his atelier:

"'Derriere chez mon pere Vive la rose.' Il y a un oranger Vive ci, vive la! Il y a un oranger, Vive la rose et le lilas!"

"I was afraid you would be late."

"Why?" she asked, smiling, as she came to him across the great room.

"Women always are. But you are not a woman; you are an angel."

He looked at her closely. The strong north light showed her smooth skin flawless.

"The white and rose is charming," he said. "And I adore freckles. But your eyes are too deep; one can see that you have suffered. There is too much in them for the innocent baa-lamb picture I must paint."

Her face fell. "I shan't do then?"

"Dear child, you will," he reassured her. "I shall paint your lashes and not your eyes. Your lashes and a curve of pink cheek. Now go behind that screen and put on the sprigged cotton frock you will find there, with a muslin fichu and a mob cap. I have a basket of wools here and a piece of tapestry. The sort of woman I have never painted is always doing needlework."

Camille spent half the morning in the arrangement of the accessories that were, as he said, to suggest virtuous domesticity; then he settled the folds of the girl's skirt, the turn of her head, her hands. At last, when he was satisfied, he went to his easel and began to work. Olive had never before realised how hard it is to keep quite still. The muscles of her neck ached and her face seemed to grow stiff and set; she felt her hands quivering.

Hours seemed to pass before his voice broke the silence. "I have drawn it in," he announced. "You can rest now. Come down and see some of my pictures."

He showed her his "Salome," a Hebrew maenad, whose scarlet, parted lips ached for the desert dreamer's death; "Lucrezia Borgia," slow-smiling, crowned with golden hair; and a rough charcoal study for Queen Eleanor.

"I seem to see you as Henry's Rosamund," he said. "I wonder—the haunting shadow of coming sorrow in blue eyes. You have suffered."

"I am hungry," she answered.

He looked at his watch. "Forgive me! It is past noon. Run away, child, and come back at two."

The day seemed very long in spite of Camille's easy kindness, and the girl shrank from the subsequent sitting at Varini's.

"Why do you pose for those wretched boys?" grumbled the Prix de Rome man. "After this week you must come to me only. I must paint a Rosamund."

At sunset she hurried down the hill to the Corso, and came by way of the corridor and garden to the pavilion. The porter took her into a dingy little lumber-filled passage and left her there. A soiled pink satin frock was laid ready for her on a broken chair. As she put it on she heard a babel of voices in the class-room beyond, and she felt something like stage-fright as she fumbled at the hooks and eyes; but a clock struck the hour presently, and she went in then and climbed on to the throne. At first she saw nothing, but after a while she was aware of a group of men who stood near the door regarding her.

"Carina."

"Yes, a fine colour, but too thin."

When the professor came in he made her sit in a carved chair, and gave her a fan to hold. The men moved about, choosing their places, and were silent until he left them with a gruff "Felice notte." Olive noticed the lad who had been called in to Varini's studio to see her; the boy who sat next him had a round, impudent face, and when presently she yawned he smiled at her.

"I will ask questions to keep you awake, but you must answer truly. Have you taken a fancy to anyone here?"

"I don't dislike you or Mario."

They rose simultaneously and bowed. "We are honoured. But why? Bembi here is a fine figure of a man."

"Enough!" growled Bembi. "You talk too much."

During the rest Olive went to look at the boys' work; it was brilliantly impressionistic. The younger had evidently founded himself on Mario, and Mario was, perhaps, a genius.

They came and sat down, one on either side of her.

"Why are you pretending to be a model?" whispered Mario. "We can see you are not. Are you hiding from someone?"

She shook her head. "I am earning my bread," she answered. "Be kind to me."

"We will." He patted her bare shoulder with the air of a grandfather, but his brown eyes sparkled.

"Why are some of the men so old, and why is some of the work so—"

"Bad." Mario squinted at Bembi's black, smudged drawing. "I will tell you. That bald man in the corner is seventy-two; painting is his amusement, and he loves models. He wants to marry Fortunata, but she won't have him because he is toothless. Once, twenty-five years ago, he sold a watercolour for ten lire and he has never forgotten it."

"Really because he is toothless?"

"Oh, he is mad too, and she is afraid of him. Cesare and I are the only ones here who will make you look human. It is a pity, as you are really carina."

He patted her shoulder again and pinched her ear, and Cesare passed his arm about her waist. She struggled to free herself.

"Let her go!" cried the other men, and, flushed and dishevelled, she took refuge on the throne. The pose was resumed, and the room settled down to work again.

She kept very still, but after a while the tears that filled her eyes overflowed, ran down her cheeks, and dripped upon the hand that held the fan.

"I am sorry," cried Mario.

"And I."

"Forgive me."

"And me."

"I was a mascalzone!"

"And I."

"Forgive them for our sakes," growled Bembi, "or they will cackle all night."

Olive laughed a little in spite of herself, but she was very tired and they had hurt her. The marks of Cesare's fingers showed red still on her wrist, and the lace of the short sleeve was torn.

Mario clattered out of the room presently, and came back with a glass of water for her. "I am really sorry," he whispered as he gave it. "Do stop crying."

After all they had not meant any harm. She was a little comforted, and the expressed contrition helped her.

"I shall be better soon," she said gently.

When she got home to the apartment in Via Arco della Ciambella there were lies to be told about the lessons, the pupils, the hours. The fine edge of her exaltation was already blunted, and she sighed at the thought of her morning dreams; sighed and was glad; the first steps had not cost much after all, and she had earned five lire and fifteen soldi.

The lamp was lit in the little sitting-room, and Ser Giulia was there, cutting out a skirt on the table very carefully, in a tense silence that was broken only by the click of the scissors and the rustle of silk.

"I have lost confidence in myself," she said as she fastened the shining lengths together with pins. "This is the right side of the material, isn't it, my dear? I can't see."

"Yes, this is right. Let me stitch the seams for you. Where is Signora Aurelia?"

"She has gone to bed. Her head ached. She—she does not complain, but I think she needs more sun and air than she can get here."

Olive looked at her quickly. "You ought to go away and rest, both of you."

"Our brother in Como would be glad to have us with him, but it is impossible at present. I paid our rent a few days ago—three months in advance."

"I will go to the house-agent in the Piazza di Spagna to-morrow. It should not be difficult to get a tenant, and at the end of the time the furniture could be warehoused, or you could sell it."

Ser Giulia hesitated. "What would you do then, figliuola mia?"

"Oh, I can take care of myself," the girl said easily.



CHAPTER IV

After the first week Olive went only to Camille's atelier. He was working hard at his "etude blanche," but no one had been allowed to see it, except, of course, M'sieur le Directeur.

"I almost wish I had asked you to come always heavily veiled. The other men are all mad about you, and Gontrand tells me he wants you to give him sittings for the head of an oread, but he cannot have you. You are mine."

"Is he a lean, black-bearded man?"

"Yes."

"He spoke to me the other day as I was coming through the garden, and asked me if you were really painting a 'jeune fille' picture. I said you were painting a picture, and he would probably see it when you had your show in April."

Camille laughed. "Good child! We must keep up the mystery." He flung down his brushes. "I cannot work any more to-day. Will you come with me for a drive into the Campagna?"

She hesitated. "I am not sure—"

"Come as my little brother." He took off his linen painting sleeves, and began to dabble his fingers in a pan of turpentine. "My little brother! Do you know that the Directeur thinks you are charming, and he wonders that I do not love you."

"I am glad you do not," she said, colouring. "If you did—"

He was lighting a cigarette. "If I did?" The little momentary flame of the match was reflected in his blue eyes.

"I should go away and not come back again."

"Well, I do not," he said heartily. "I care for you as St Francis did for his pet sparrow. So now put your hat on and I will go down and get a vettura with a good horse."

He was a creature of moods, and so young in many ways that he appealed to the girl as Astorre had done, by the queer, pathetic little flaws in his manhood. Some days he worked incessantly from early morning until the light failed at his picture, but there were times when he seemed unable even to look at it. He made several studies in charcoal for "Rosamund."

"It is an inspiration," he said excitedly more than once. "The rose of the world that can only be reached by love—or hate—holding the clue."

He had promised an American who had bought a picture of his the year before that he would do some work for him in Venice in the spring. "Very rash of me," he said fractiously. "The 'Jeune Fille' would have been quite enough for me to show, and it is dreadful to have to leave it unfinished now." And when Gontrand tried to persuade him to let him have Olive during his absence he was, as the girl phrased it, quite cross. "I have seen enough of that. Last year in the Salon St Elizabeth of Hungary, and Clytemnestra, and Malesherbe's vivandiere were one and the same woman. Besides, oreads are nearly related to Bacchantes, Gontrand, and I am not going to allow my little sewing-girl to be mixed up with people of that sort."

He made Olive promise not to sit for any of the other men at the Villa Medici.

"I shall work at Varini's in the evenings," she said. "And one of the men there wants me to come to his studio in the Via Margutta three mornings a week. He is a Baron von something."

The Frenchman's face lightened. "Oh, that German! I know him. I saw a landscape of his once. It looked as if several tubes of paint had got together and burst. What else will you do?"

"Rome, if you will lend me your Baedeker," she answered. "I shall begin with A and work my way through Beatrice Cenci and the Borgo Nuovo to the Corsini Gallery and the Corso. Some of the letters may be rather dull. I am so glad Apollo comes now."

He laughed. "M for Michelin. You will be sure to admire me when my turn comes."

Olive was living alone now in a tall old house in Ripetta. The two kind women who had been her friends had left Rome and gone to stay with their brother at Como. It was evidently the best thing they could do, and the girl had assured them that she was quite well able to look after herself, but they had been only half convinced by her reasoning. She was English and she had done it before. "That is nothing," Ser Giulia said. "You may catch a ball once, and the second time it may slip through your fingers. And sometimes Life is like the importunate widow and goes on asking until one gives what one should not." She helped her to find a room, and eked out the furniture from her own little store. "Another saucepan, and a kettle, and a blanket. And if lessons fail you must come to us, figliuola mia. My brother's house is large."

The girl had answered her with a kiss, but though she loved them she was not altogether sorry to see them go. She could never tell them how she had earned the lire that paid the baker's bill. The truth would hurt them, and she would not give them a moment's pain if she could avoid it, but she was not good at lying. Even the very little white ones stuck in her throat, and she was relieved to be no longer under the necessity of uttering them.

The room she had taken was on the sixth floor, and from the one narrow window she could look across the yellow swirl of Tiber towards Monte Mario. She had set up her household gods. The plaster bust of Dante, and her books, on the rickety wooden table by her bedside, and, such as it was, this place was home.

Camille went by a night train, and Olive began to "see Rome" on the following morning. She took the tram to the Piazza Venezia and walked from thence to the church of Santa Maria Ara Coeli.

The flight of steps to the west door is very long, and she climbed slowly, stopping once or twice to take breath and look back at the crowded roofs and many church domes of Rome, and at the green heights of the Janiculan hill beyond, with the bronze figure of Garibaldi on his horse, dominant, and very clear against the sky.

The cripple at the door lifted the heavy leather curtain for her and she put a soldo into his outstretched hand as she went in. The church seemed very still, very quiet, after the clamour of the streets. The acrid scent of incense was as the breath of spent prayer. Little yellow flames flickered in the shrine lamps before each altar, but it was early yet and for the moment no mass was being said. An old, white-haired monk was sweeping the worn pavement. He was swathed in a blue linen apron, and his rusty brown frock was tucked up about his ankles. A lean black cat followed him, mewing, and now and then he stopped his work to stroke it. There was a great stack of chairs by the door, and a few were scattered about the aisles and occupied by stray worshippers, women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads in deference to St Paul's expressed wishes, two or three old men, and some peasants with their market baskets. A be-ribboned nurse carrying a baby had just come in to see the Sacro Bambino, and Olive followed them into the sacristy and saw the child laid down before the bedizened, red-cheeked wooden doll in the glass case. As they passed out again the monk who was in attendance gave Olive a coloured card with a prayer printed on the back. She heard him asking what was the matter with the little one. The woman lifted the lace veil from the tiny face and showed him the sightless eyes. He crossed himself. "Poveretto! Dio vi benedica!"