, silky hair, covered by a sweeping, soft
felt hat, made her think of Van Dyck's portrait of Charles I of England
that she had seen in print somewhere. They called him "the poet" at the
cafe, and gossip had it that an old woman, a retired "star," was paying
for his keep--and his amusements--until his verses should bring him
fame. "Well," said Leonora, simply, with a smile, "he was my first
love--a calf-and-puppy love, a schoolgirl's infatuation which nobody
ever knew about"; for though the Doctor's daughter spent hours with her
green golden eyes fixed upon the poet, the latter never suspected his
good fortune; doubtless because the beauty of his patroness, the
superannuated _diva_, had so obsessed him that the attractions of other
women left him quite unmoved. How vividly Leonora remembered those days
of poverty and dreams!... Little by little the modest capital the Doctor
owned in Alcira vanished, what with living expenses and music lessons.
Dona Pepa, at her brother's instance, sold one piece of land after
another; but even such remittances were often long delayed; and then,
instead of eating in the _trattoria_, near _la Scala_, with dancing
students and the more successful of the young singers, they would stay
at home; and Leonora would lay aside her scores and take a turn at
cooking, learning mysterious recipes from the old _danseuse_. For weeks
at a time they would live on nothing but macaroni and rice served _al
burro_, a diet that her father abhorred, the Doctor, meanwhile,
pretending illness to justify his absence from the cafe. But these
periods of want and poverty were endured by father and daughter in
silence. Before their friends, they still maintained the pose of
well-to-do people with plenty of income from property in Spain.

Leonora underwent a rapid transformation. She had already passed her
period of growth--that preadolescent "awkward age" when the features are
in constant change before settling down to their definitive forms and
the limbs seem to grow longer and longer and thinner and thinner. The
long-legged spindling "flapper," who was never quite sure where to stow
her legs, became the reserved, well-proportioned girl with the
mysterious gleam of puberty in her eyes. Her clothes seemed, naturally,
willingly, to curve to her fuller, rounding outlines. Her skirts went
down to her feet and covered the skinny, colt-like appendages that had
formerly made the denizens of the Gallery repress a smile.

He