lum), with her hair waving
about her shoulders, was curled up in the corner of a marble bench,
gazing with great intentness at a white flower that lay in her lap. It
was the warmest and the peacefullest moment of the afternoon. The sun
shone steadily; not a leaf stirred, not a shadow wavered; and the
intermittent piping of a blackbird, somewhere in the green world
overhead, seemed merely to give a kind of joyous rhythm to the silence.

"Mercy upon me! Who ever saw so young a maiden so deeply lost in
thought!" exclaimed a voice.

Annunziata, her reverie thus disturbed, raised a pair of questioning
eyes.

A lady was standing before her, smiling down upon her, a lady in a frock
of lilac-coloured muslin, with a white sunshade.

Annunziata, who, when she liked, could be the very pink of formal
politeness, rose, dropped a courtesy, and said: "Buon giorno,
Signorina."

"Buon giorno," responded the smiling lady. "Buon giorno--and a penny for
your thoughts. But I'm sure you could never, never tell what it was you
were thinking so hard about."

"Scusi," said Annunziata. "I was trying to think of the name of this
flower." She stooped and picked up the flower, which had slipped from
her lap to the ground when she rose. Then she held it at arm's length,
for inspection.

"Oh?" asked the lady, smiling at the flower, as she had smiled at its
possessor. "Isn't it a narcissus?"

"Yes," said Annunziata. "It is a narcissus. But I was trying to think of
its particular name."

The lady looked as if she did not quite understand. "Its particular
name?"

"It is a narcissus," explained Annunziata, "just as I am a girl. But it
must also have its particular name, just as I have mine. It is a soul
doing its Purgatory--a very good soul. If you are very good, then, when
you die, you do your Purgatory as a flower. But it is not such an easy
Purgatory--oh, no. For look: the flower is beautiful, but it is blind,
and cannot see; and it is fragrant, but it cannot smell; and people
admire it and praise it, but it is deaf, and cannot hear. It can only
wait, wait, wait, and think of God. But it is a short Purgatory. A few
days, and the flower will fade, and the soul will be released. I think
this flower's name is Cecilia, it is so white."

The smile in the lady's eyes had brightened, as she listened; and now
she gave a little laugh, a little, light, musical, pleased and friendly
laugh.

"Yes," she said. "I have sometimes wondered myself whet