and from the corners of the rare, sweet mouth over
the heads of the idlers to Mae, who looked up to catch them. There was
a resting, almost saving influence, Mae's excited soul believed, in
the strange face; and her eyes sought it constantly. She had been quite
oblivious to the friends about this beautiful stranger, but once, as
her eyes sought the Italian's, she saw her arise with a sudden flash of
light on her face, and hold out a white hand. A head bent over it, and
as it lifted itself slowly, Mae saw once more the well-known features of
the Signor Bero.

She looked down toward the street quickly and a sharp pain filled her
heart.

She had lost her only friend in Rome, so the silly girl said to herself.
If he knew that wonderful woman, and if she flashed those weary, great
eyes for him, how could he see or think of any other? Moreover, it was
very vexatious to have him there. If she smiled up at the girl, Bero
might think she was watching him, trying to attract his notice. So Mae
appeared very careless and played she did not see him at all, at all.
Yet she could not resist looking up now and then for one of the rare
smiles. They seemed like very far between "nows and thens" to Mae,
averaging possibly a distance of four minutes apart. But that is as one
counts time by steady clock-ticks, and not by heart-beats.

Meanwhile, what could she do with her eyes? They would wander once in a
while over to the opposite balcony, at just such moments as when Norman
Mann was picking up Miss Rae's fan and receiving her thanks for it from
under her drooped eyelids, or choosing a flower for himself, "the very,
very prettiest, Mr. Mann," before she threw the rest to the winds and
the passing gallants.

As Mae grew reckless her eyes grew bright. There were few passers-by who
were not attracted by the flash of those eyes. The sailor lads, as they
trundled past in their ship on wheels, left the barrels of lime from
which they had been pelting the pleasure-seekers to throw whole
handfuls of flowers up to the Jesu e Maria balcony; a set of hale young
Englishmen picked out their prettiest bonbons for the same purpose;
and one elderly, pompous man, who drove unmasked and with staring opera
glasses up and down the Corso, quite showered her with bouquets, which
he threw so poorly, and with such a shaky old hand, that the street
gamins caught them all except such as he craftily flung so that they
might assuredly tumble back to the carriage