still a young girl with the best part of
her life stretching out before her. She did not toss about restlessly,
but lay very still, just enduring her misery, while all the every-day
sounds came to her from without laughter in the next room from two
talkative American girls, doors opening and shutting, boots thrown down,
electric bells rung, presently her father's step and voice.

"Has Miss Raeburn been up long?"

"Sairtenlee, sair, yes," replied the English-speaking waiter. "The
signorina sleeps, doubtless."

Then came a pause, and in another minute her father's door was closed
and locked.

Noisy parties of men shouting out some chorus sung at one of the
theatres passed along the Lung' Arno, and twanging mandolins wandered up
and down in the moonlight. The sound of that harshest and most jarring
of all musical instruments was every after hateful to her. She could not
hear one played without a shudder.

Slowly and wearily the night wore on. Sometimes she stole to the window,
and looked out on the sleeping city, on the peaceful Arno which was
bathed in silvery moonlight, and on the old, irregular houses, thinking
what struggles and agonies this place had witnessed in past times, and
realizing what an infinitesimal bit of the world's sufferings she was
called to bear. Sometimes she lighted a candle and read, sometimes
prayed, but for the most part just lay still, silently enduring,
learning, though she did not think it, the true meaning of pain.

Somewhat later than usual she joined her father the next morning in the
coffee room.

"Brian tells me he is off today," was Raeburn's greeting. "It seems that
he must see that patient at Genoa again, and he wants to get a clear
fortnight in Switzerland."

"Is it nor rather early for Switzerland?"

"I should have thought so, but he knows more about it than I do. He has
written to try to persuade your friend, Mr. Farrant, to join him in the
Whitsuntide recess."

"Oh, I am glad of that," said Erica, greatly relieved.

Directly after breakfast she went out with her father, going first of
all to French's bank, where Raeburn had to change a circular note.

"It is upstairs," he said as they reached the house. "Don't you trouble
to come up; you'll have stairs enough presently at the Uffizzi."

"Very well," she replied, "I will wait for you here."

She stood in the doorway looking out thoughtfully at the busy Tornabuoni
and its gay shops; but in a minute a step she knew so