The Eternal City. Sir Hall Caine
difficult."
"No matter! Tell me what it is."
"I thought when I came here … but it is no matter."
"Tell me, I beg of you."
He was trying to look into her face again, and she was eluding his gaze as before, but now for another, a sweeter reason.
"I thought if—if you would come to my house when my friends are there, your presence as my guest, in the midst of those in whose eyes you have injured me, might be sufficient of itself to wipe out everything. But. … "
"Is that all?" he said.
"Then you are not afraid?"
"Afraid?"
For one moment they looked at each other, and their eyes were shining.
"I have thought of something else," she said.
"What is it?"
"You have heard that I am a sculptor. I am making a fountain for the Municipality, and if I might carve your face into it. … "
"It would be coals of fire on my head."
"You would need to sit to me."
"When shall it be?"
"To-morrow morning to begin with, if that is not too soon."
"It will be years on years till then," he said.
She bent her head and blushed. He tried again to look at her beaming eyes and golden complexion, and for sheer joy of being followed up she turned her face away.
"Forgive me if I have stayed too long," she said, making a feint of opening the door.
"I should have grudged every moment if you had gone sooner," he answered.
"I only wished that you should not think of me with hatred and bitterness."
"If I ever had such a feeling it is gone."
"Mine has gone too," she said softly, and again she prepared to go.
One hook of her cape had got entangled in the silk muslin at her shoulder, and while trying to free it she looked at him, and her look seemed to say, "Will you?" and his look replied, "May I?" and at the physical touch a certain impalpable bridge seemed in an instant to cross the space that had divided them.
"Let me see you to the door?" he said, and her eyes said openly, "Will you?"
They walked down the staircase side by side, going step by step, and almost touching.
"I forgot to give you my address—eighteen Trinità de' Monti," she said.
"Eighteen Trinità de' Monti," he repeated.
They had reached the second storey. "I am trying to remember," she said. "After all, I think I have seen you before somewhere."
"In a dream, perhaps," he answered.
"Yes," she said. "Perhaps in the dream I spoke about."
They had reached the street, and Roma's carriage, a hired coupé, stood waiting a few yards from the door.
They shook hands, and at the electric touch she raised her head and gave him in the darkness the look he had tried to take in the light.
"Until to-morrow then," she said.
"To-morrow morning," he replied.
"To-morrow morning," she repeated, and again in the eye-asking between them she seemed to say, "Come early, will you not?—there is still so much to say."
He looked at her with his shining eyes, and something of the boy came back to his world-worn face as he closed the carriage door.
"Adieu!"
"Adieu!"
She drew up the window, and as the carriage moved away she smiled and bowed through the glass.
PART THREE—ROMA
I
The Piazza of Trinità de' Monti takes its name from a church and convent which stand on the edge of the Pincian Hill.
A flight of travertine steps, twisted and curved to mask the height, goes down from the church to a diagonal piazza, the Piazza di Spagna, which is always bright with the roses of flower-sellers, who build their stalls around a fountain.
At the top of these steps there stands a house, four-square to all winds, and looking every way over Rome. The sun rises and sets on it, the odour of the flowers comes up to it from the piazza, and the music of the band comes down to it from the Pincio. Donna Roma occupied two floors of this house. One floor, the lower one, built on arches and entered from the side of the city, was used as a studio, the other was as a private apartment.
Donna Roma's home consisted of ten or twelve rooms on the second floor, opening chiefly out of a central drawing-room, which was furnished in red and yellow damask, papered with velvet wall-papers, and lighted by lamps of Venetian glass representing lilies in rose-colour and violet. Her bedroom, which looked to the Quirinal, was like the nest of a bird in its pale-blue satin, with its blue silk counterpane and its embroidered cushion at the foot of the bed; and her boudoir, which looked to the Vatican, was full of vases of malachite and the skins of wild animals, and had a bronze clock on the chimney-piece set in a statue of Mephistopheles. The only other occupant of her house, besides her servants, was a distant kinswoman, called her aunt, and known to familiars as the Countess Betsy; but in the studio below, which was connected with the living rooms by a circular staircase, and hung round with masks, busts, and weapons, there was Bruno Rocco, her marble-pointer, the friend and housemate of David Rossi.
On the morning after Donna Roma's visit to the Piazza Navona a letter came from the Baron. He was sending Felice to be her servant. "The man is a treasure and sees nothing," he wrote. And he added in a footnote: "Don't look at the newspapers this morning, my child; and if any of them send to you say nothing."
But Roma had scarcely finished her coffee and roll when a lady journalist was announced. It was Lena, the rival of Olga both in literature and love.
"I'm 'Penelope,'" she said. "'Penelope' of the Day, you know. Come to see if you have anything to say in answer to the Deputy Rossi's speech yesterday. Our editor is anxious to give you every opportunity; and if you would like to reply through me to Olga's shameful libels. … Haven't you seen her article? Here it is. Disgraceful insinuations. No lady could allow them to pass unnoticed."
"Nevertheless," said Roma, "that is what I intend to do. Good-morning!"
Lena had barely crossed the doorstep when a more important person drove up. This was the Senator Palomba, Mayor of Rome, a suave, oily man, with little twinkling eyes.
"Come to offer you my sympathy, my dear! Scandalous libels. Liberty of the press, indeed! Disgraceful! It's in all the newspapers—I've brought them with me. One journal actually points at you personally. See—'A lady sculptor who has recently secured a commission from the Municipality through the influence of a distinguished person.' Most damaging, isn't it? The elections so near, too! We must publicly deny the statement. Ah, don't be alarmed! Only way out of a nest of hornets. Nothing like diplomacy, you know. Of course the Municipality will buy your fountain just the same, but I thought I would come round and explain before publishing anything."
Roma said nothing, and the great