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 Trinita de' Monti," she said.

"Eighteen Trinita 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 _coupe_, 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.

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PART THREE--ROMA

I

The Piazza of Trinita de' Monti takes its name from a church and conv