, for
just a moment, she would go down-stairs, she thought, and have a look at
her portrait, for that was the most comforting thing to do that she
could think of. She loved her portrait as a child loves its favorite
toy.

This she was intending when the sound of the door-bell at once stopped
and cheered her by the possibility it held out of some diversion. Vitale
entered with a package.

Catching in what he said the name Gaetano, Aurora took it to mean that
Gaetano had brought the package. He was waiting below, she did not
doubt. Gaetano was Giovanna's nephew, and had more than once come on
errands from Gerald. Saying, "_Aspettare_!" she hastened into her
room for the porte-monnaie which resided in her top drawer. From this
she drew a reward that should make the journey through night and rain
from Gerald's house to hers seem no hardship. Her blues had vanished.

Before removing the rain-splashed newspaper, she gazed for a moment at
the package, trying to guess what it could be. It was square, flat,
about a foot and a half one way by a foot the other. What was Gerald
Fane sending her like that without any enlightening missive? A note
might be inside. She cut the string, took off the newspaper, to find a
second wrapper of clean white drawing-paper. After touching and
pinching, she guessed the object to be a picture-frame and picture.
Filled with curiosity, she pulled off the last wrapping, and with a face
at first very blank stared before her....

It was a painting, one of the kind she had seen at Gerald's studio and
not liked.

Different though it was from the portrait down-stairs,--as different as
poverty from riches, as twilight from day,--she could yet see that this
also was meant for a portrait of herself. She remembered tying that blue
neckerchief over her head and under her chin one evening, trying to look
like an Italian in her _pezzola_, to make the others laugh.

She stood the picture on the chair which she had pulled up before her so
as to rest her feet on the rung, off the stone floor, still to be felt,
she imagined, through the rug. Of course it was herself, but how
disappointing--disappointing enough to shed tears over--to have this
held up to her after that lovely being down-stairs! How unkind of her
friend Gerald!

Unfair, too, for although this, in not being a beauty, was obviously
more like her than the other, she could not admit that it was any truer.
She could not believe that she ever really