. The initiator was passionately describing to her the misery
of the Calabrian peasantry; and she sat listening silently, her chin
resting on one hand and her eyes on the ground. To Arthur she seemed
a melancholy vision of Liberty mourning for the lost Republic.
(Julia would have seen in her only an overgrown hoyden, with a sallow
complexion, an irregular nose, and an old stuff frock that was too short
for her.)

"You here, Jim!" he said, coming up to her when the initiator had been
called to the other end of the room. "Jim" was a childish corruption of
her curious baptismal name: Jennifer. Her Italian schoolmates called her
"Gemma."

She raised her head with a start.

"Arthur! Oh, I didn't know you--belonged here!"

"And I had no idea about you. Jim, since when have you----?"

"You don't understand!" she interposed quickly. "I am not a member.
It is only that I have done one or two little things. You see, I met
Bini--you know Carlo Bini?"

"Yes, of course." Bini was the organizer of the Leghorn branch; and all
Young Italy knew him.

"Well, he began talking to me about these things; and I asked him to
let me go to a students' meeting. The other day he wrote to me to
Florence------Didn't you know I had been to Florence for the Christmas
holidays?"

"I don't often hear from home now."

"Ah, yes! Anyhow, I went to stay with the Wrights." (The Wrights were
old schoolfellows of hers who had moved to Florence.) "Then Bini wrote
and told me to pass through Pisa to-day on my way home, so that I could
come here. Ah! they're going to begin."

The lecture was upon the ideal Republic and the duty of the young to
fit themselves for it. The lecturer's comprehension of his subject was
somewhat vague; but Arthur listened with devout admiration. His mind at
this period was curiously uncritical; when he accepted a moral ideal
he swallowed it whole without stopping to think whether it was quite
digestible. When the lecture and the long discussion which followed it
were finished and the students began to disperse, he went up to Gemma,
who was still sitting in the corner of the room.

"Let me walk with you, Jim. Where are you staying?"

"With Marietta."

"Your father's old housekeeper?"

"Yes; she lives a good way from here."

They walked for some time in silence. Then Arthur said suddenly:

"You are seventeen, now, aren't you?"

"I was seventeen in October."

"I always knew you would not grow up like other girls and