seen her face, Dan; I have."

"Oh, she may be a queen and all that; but she has an evil influence over
all the people she meets. Here's Kitty, following her round, and the
Lord knows in what kind of trouble. She has hooked you, and presently
you'll be leaving me to get back home the best way I can."

"It is quite possible, my boy." And Hillard did not smile.

"Come, Jack, have you really got it? If you have, why, we'll pack up and
leave by the next steamer. I don't care to wander about Italy with a
sick man on my hands."

"Don't be hard on me, Dan," pleaded Hillard, smiling now. "Think of all
the Kitty Killigrews you've poured into my uncomplaining ears!"

"I got over it each time." But Merrihew felt a warmth in his cheeks.

"Happy man! And, once you see the face of this adventuress, as you call
her, Kitty Killigrew will pass with all the other lasses."

"I?" indignantly. "Rot! She won't hold a candle to Kitty."

"No, not a candle, but the most powerful light known to the human
eye--perfect beauty." Hillard sighed unconsciously.

"There you go again!" laughed Merrihew. "You tack that sigh to
everything you say; and that's what I've been complaining about."

Hillard was human; he might be deeply in love, but this had not
destroyed his healthy sense of humor. So he laughed at himself.

Then they mused silently for a while. On either side, from their
window-balcony, the lights of Lungarno spread out in a brilliant
half-circle, repeating themselves, after the fashion of women, in the
mirror of the Arno. On the hill across the river the statue of David was
visible above the Piazza Michelangelo.

"You never told me what she was like," said Merrihew finally.

"Haven't I? Perhaps you never asked. We went through the Pitti Palace
to-day. I couldn't drag you from Raphael's _Madonna of the Chair_. She
is as beautiful as that."

"Imagination is a wonderful thing," was Merrihew's solitary comment.

"Mine has not been unduly worked in this instance," Hillard declared
with emphasis. "Beauty in women has always been to me something in the
abstract, but it is so no longer. There is one thing which I wish to
impress upon you, Dan. She is not an adventuress. She has made no effort
to trap me. On the contrary, she has done all she could to keep out of
my way."

"It's a curious business; the dinner, the mask, the veil, the mystery. I
tell you frankly, Jack, something's wrong, and we shall both live to
find it out."

"Bu