mething really fine. As for you, Signorino," she turned on me with
an unexpected and sarcastic sally, "I am not in love with you yet." She
changed her tone from sarcasm to a soft and even dreamy note. "A head
like a gem," went on that woman born in some by-street of Rome, and a
plaything for years of God knows what obscure fates. "Yes, Dominic!
_Antica_. I haven't been haunted by a face since--since I was sixteen
years old. It was the face of a young cavalier in the street. He was on
horseback, too. He never looked at me, I never saw him again, and I
loved him for--for days and days and days. That was the sort of face he
had. And her face is of the same sort. She had a man's hat, too, on her
head. So high!"

"A man's hat on her head," remarked with profound displeasure Dominic, to
whom this wonder, at least, of all the wonders of the earth, was
apparently unknown.

"_Si_. And her face has haunted me. Not so long as that other but more
touchingly because I am no longer sixteen and this is a woman. Yes, I
did think of her, I myself was once that age and I, too, had a face of my
own to show to the world, though not so superb. And I, too, didn't know
why I had come into the world any more than she does."

"And now you know," Dominic growled softly, with his head still between
his hands.

She looked at him for a long time, opened her lips but in the end only
sighed lightly.

"And what do you know of her, you who have seen her so well as to be
haunted by her face?" I asked.

I wouldn't have been surprised if she had answered me with another sigh.
For she seemed only to be thinking of herself and looked not in my
direction. But suddenly she roused up.

"Of her?" she repeated in a louder voice. "Why should I talk of another
woman? And then she is a great lady."

At this I could not repress a smile which she detected at once.

"Isn't she? Well, no, perhaps she isn't; but you may be sure of one
thing, that she is both flesh and shadow more than any one that I have
seen. Keep that well in your mind: She is for no man! She would be
vanishing out of their hands like water that cannot be held."

I caught my breath. "Inconstant," I whispered.

"I don't say that. Maybe too proud, too wilful, too full of pity.
Signorino, you don't know much about women. And you may learn something
yet or you may not; but what you learn from her you will never forget."

"Not to be held," I murmured; and she whom the