ng the terrace.

Gemma stood quite still beside the pomegranate tree. She was sorry
for the poor, silly little woman, and annoyed at the Gadfly's languid
insolence. He was watching the retreating figures with an expression
of face that angered her; it seemed ungenerous to mock at such pitiable
creatures.

"There go Italian and--Russian patriotism," he said, turning to her with
a smile; "arm in arm and mightily pleased with each other's company.
Which do you prefer?"

She frowned slightly and made no answer.

"Of c-course," he went on; "it's all a question of p-personal taste; but
I think, of the two, I like the Russian variety best--it's so thorough.
If Russia had to depend on flowers and skies for her supremacy instead
of on powder and shot, how long do you think 'mon prince' would k-keep
that Polish fortress?"

"I think," she answered coldly, "that we can hold our personal opinions
without ridiculing a woman whose guests we are."

"Ah, yes! I f-forgot the obligations of hospitality here in Italy;
they are a wonderfully hospitable people, these Italians. I'm sure the
Austrians find them so. Won't you sit down?"

He limped across the terrace to fetch a chair for her, and placed
himself opposite to her, leaning against the balustrade. The light from
a window was shining full on his face; and she was able to study it at
her leisure.

She was disappointed. She had expected to see a striking and powerful,
if not pleasant face; but the most salient points of his appearance were
a tendency to foppishness in dress and rather more than a tendency to a
certain veiled insolence of expression and manner. For the rest, he was
as swarthy as a mulatto, and, notwithstanding his lameness, as agile as
a cat. His whole personality was oddly suggestive of a black jaguar.
The forehead and left cheek were terribly disfigured by the long crooked
scar of the old sabre-cut; and she had already noticed that, when he
began to stammer in speaking, that side of his face was affected with a
nervous twitch. But for these defects he would have been, in a certain
restless and uncomfortable way, rather handsome; but it was not an
attractive face.

Presently he began again in his soft, murmuring purr ("Just the voice
a jaguar would talk in, if it could speak and were in a good humour,"
Gemma said to herself with rising irritation).

"I hear," he said, "that you are interested in the radical press, and
write for the papers."

"I write a li