voice that struggled to control itself: "So this was
the father of little Roma?"

"Yes."

"Is it very like him?"

"Very."

"What a beautiful face! What a reverend head! Did he look like that on
the day ... the day he was at Kensal Green?"

"Exactly."

The excitement she laboured under could no longer be controlled, and she
lifted the picture to her lips and kissed it. Then catching her breath,
and looking up at him with swimming eyes, she laughed through her tears
and said:

"That is because he was your friend, and because ... because he loved my
little namesake."

David Rossi did not reply, and the silence was too audible, so she said
with another nervous laugh:

"Not that I think she deserved such a father. He must have been the best
father a girl ever had, but she...."

"She was a child," said David Rossi.

"Still, if she had been worthy of a father like that...."

"She was only seven, remember."

"Even so, but if she had not been a little selfish ... wasn't she a
little selfish?"

"You mustn't abuse my friend Roma."

Her eyes beamed, her cheeks burned, her nerves tingled. It would be a
sweet delight to egg him on, but she dare not go any farther.

"I beg your pardon," she said in a soft voice. "Of course you know best.
And perhaps years afterward when she came to think of what her father
had been to her ... that is to say if she lived..."

Their eyes met again, and now hers fell in confusion.

"I want to give you that portrait," he said.

"Me?"

"You would like to have it?"

"More than anything in the world. But you value it yourself?"

"Beyond anything I possess."

"Then how can I take it from you?"

"There is only one person in the world I would give it to. She has it,
and I am contented."

It was impossible to hear the strain any longer without crying out, and
to give physical expression to her feelings she lifted the portrait to
her lips again and kissed and kissed it.

He smiled at her, she smiled back; the silence was hard to break, but
just as they were on the edge of the precipice the big shock-head of the
little boy looked in on them through the chink of the door and cried:

"You needn't ask me to come in, 'cause I won't!"

By the blessed instinct of the motherhood latent in her, Roma understood
the boy in a moment. "If I were a gentleman, I would, though," she said.

"_Would_ you?" said Joseph, and in he came, with a face shining all
over.

"Hurrah! A piano!" said