mart strokes on the
window panes.

"You can't go now," he said, "and since you are never to come here again
there is something you ought to hear."

She took a seat immediately, unfastened her coat, and slipped it back on
to her shoulders.

The thick-falling drops were drenching the piazza, and its pavement was
bubbling like a lake.

"The rain will last for some time," said Rossi, looking out, "and the
matter I speak of is one of some urgency, therefore it is better that
you should hear it now."

Taking the pins out of her hat, Roma lifted it off and laid it in her
lap, and began to pull off her gloves. The young head with its glossy
hair and lovely face shone out with a new beauty.

Rossi hardly dared to look at her. He was afraid that if he allowed
himself to do so he would fling himself at her feet. "How calm she is,"
he thought. "What is the meaning of it?"

He went to the bureau by the wall and took out a small round packet.

"Do you remember your father's voice?" he asked.

"That is all I do remember about my father. Why?"

"It is here in this cylinder."

She rose quickly and then slowly sat down again.

"Tell me," she said.

"When your father was deported to the Island of Elba, he was a prisoner
at large, without personal restraint but under police supervision. The
legal term of _domicilio coatto_ is from one year to five, but excuses
were found and his banishment was made perpetual. He saw prisoners come
and go, and in the sealed chamber of his tomb he heard echoes of the
world outside."

"Did he ever hear of me?"

"Yes, and of myself as well. A prisoner brought him news of one David
Rossi, and under that name and the opinions attached to it he recognised
David Leone, the boy he had brought up and educated. He wished to send
me a message."

"Was it about...."

"Yes. The letters of prisoners are read and copied, and to smuggle out
by hand a written document is difficult or impossible. But at length a
way was discovered. Some one sent a phonograph and a box of cylinders to
one of the prisoners, and the little colony of exiled ones used to meet
at your father's house to hear the music. Among the cylinders were
certain blank ones. Your father spoke on to one of them, and when the
time came for the owner of the phonograph to leave Elba, he brought the
cylinder back with him. This is the cylinder your father spoke on to."

With an involuntary shudder she took out of his hands a circular
cardboa