head with a show of impatience.

"Your real name--your last name."

"Yamhankeesh."

"Oh!" she laughed. "Antonio Yamhankeesh doesn't seem to me a very musical
combination; I don't think I ever heard anything like it before."

"It suits me, signorina." His tone carried a suggestion of wounded
dignity. "Yamhankeesh has a ver' beautiful meaning in my language--'He
who dares not, wins not'."

"And that is your motto?"

"_Si_, signorina."

"A very dangerous motto, Tony; it will some day get you into trouble."

They had reached the base of the mountain and their path now broadened
into the semblance of a road which wound through the fields, between
fragrant hedgerows, under towering chestnut trees. All about them was the
fragrance of the dewy, flower-scented summer night, the flash of
fireflies, the chirp of crickets, occasionally the note of a
nightingale. Before them out of a cluster of cypresses, rose the square
graceful outline of the village campanile.

Constance looked about with a pleased, contented sigh.

"Isn't Italy beautiful, Tony?"

"Yes, signorina, but I like America better."

"We have no cypresses and ruins and nightingales in America, Tony. We
have a moon sometimes, but not that moon."

They passed from the moonlight into the shade of some overhanging
chestnut trees. Fidilini stumbled suddenly over a break in the path and
Tony pulled him up sharply. His hand on the bridle rested for an instant
over hers.

"Italy is beautiful--to make love in," he whispered.

She drew her hand away abruptly, and they passed out into the moonlight
again. Ahead of them where the road branched into the highway, the others
were waiting for Constance to catch up, the two officers looking back
with an eager air of expectation. Tony glanced ahead and added with a
quick frown.

"But perhaps I do not need to tell you that--you may know it already?"

"You are impertinent, Tony."

She pulled the donkey into a trot that left him behind.

The highway was broad and they proceeded in a group, the conversation
general and in English, Tony quite naturally having no part in it. But at
the corners where the road to the village and the road to the villa
separated, Fidilini obligingly turned stubborn again. His mind bent upon
rest and supper, he insisted upon going to the village; the harder
Constance pulled on the left rein, the more fixed was his determination
to turn to the right.

"Help! I'm being run away with again," s