ent Eric off, and right
there and then, before all the Caesars--why what is the matter? The face
contracts as if in pain. What was the cause? She had heard Norman say,
"I'm afraid I was wrong, but I never meant anything by my attentions to
the girl, Eric. It was really on your account. I never liked Miss Rae
particularly. I was thrown much with her because you and I have been
together constantly, but she does not grow on me. I never expected
you should consider me as her necessary cavalier always. As for this
evening, I am engaged to Miss Mae, so that settles this matter, but I
wish that hereafter you would not get me into such scrapes."

Poor Mae! she leaned against Nero--or was it Caracalla?--surely somebody
very hard and cold and cruel,--and stopped breathing for a moment.
For she had heard wrong, had misunderstood Miss Rae for Miss Mae, and
supposed it was of herself that he spoke. Her heart stood still for the
minutest part of a minute. Then she turned softly and quickly, went back
to the Gladiator's room, left word with the custode for Eric that she
wasn't well, and had gone home alone, walked off down the Capitol steps,
took a cab and drove away.

At home she had a long, earnest talk with Lisetta, after which Lisetta
had a short, brisk talk with the padrona. "It means money," she said,
"and I can play I did it for the Signorina's safety." Later, Mae wrote
a brief, polite note to Norman Mann. She was ill, had gone to bed, and
wouldn't be able to go to the Corso with him to-night. She tried to
stifle the hot anger and other emotions out of the words, and read and
re-read them to assure herself that they were perfectly easy, natural,
and polite. At last she tore them up and sent this instead:

MY DEAR MR. MANN:--Such a pity that we are not to have our fun, after
all. Yet, perhaps it is just as well. I should be very speedily without
my light, and the cry of "senza moccolo, senza moccola," must be very
dispiriting. Have a good time right along. Good-bye--good-bye.

Of course, if Mae had not been beside herself with conflicting emotions,
she would never have sent this note, or repeated the good-bye in that
echoing, departing sort of way. Norman Mann knit his brow as he read it.
"What is the row now?" he thought. "What a child it is, anyway. She has
had the mocoletti fun in her mind since we left America, and now she
throws it away. Well, there's no help for it; I'm booked for Miss Rae.
I'll get Eric to see if M