forehead with her lips.

"_Ma che!_" he said ungratefully. "That's nothing. Kiss me properly
and at once."

When the boy's mother came out on to the terrace a moment later
Olive's blue eyes were full of tears and the rose flush of her cheeks
had deepened, but she looked at her friend very kindly as she uttered
the word he had been afraid to hear.

"_Addio!_"

The Piazza del Campo was crowded as the Signora Aurelia and Olive
passed through it to their seats on the second best stand, and the
_carabinieri_ were clearing the course. The thousands of people in the
central space, who had been chewing melon seeds, fanning themselves,
and talking vociferously as they waited, grew quieter, and all began
to look one way towards the narrow street from whence the procession
should appear.

Olive sat wedged between Signora Aurelia and an old country priest
whose shabby soutane was stained with the mud his housekeeper should
have brushed off after the last rains, a fortnight before. He had a
kind, worn face that smiled when Olive helped him put his cotton
umbrella in a safe place between them.

"I shall not need it yet," he said. "But there is a storm coming. Do
you not feel the heaviness of the air, and the heat, _Dio mio_!"

The deep bell of the Mangia tower tolled, and then the signal was
given, _un colpo di mortaletto_, and the pageant began.

Slowly they came, the grave, armoured knights riding with their visors
up that all might see how well the tanner, Giovanni, and Enrico Lupi
of the wine-shop, looked in chain mail; gay, velvet-clad pages
carrying the silk-embroidered standards of their _contrade_ with all
the fine airs of the lads who stand about the bier of Saint Catherine
in Ghirlandaio's fresco in the Duomo; lithe, slender _alfieri_ tossing
their flags, twisting them about in the carefully-concerted movements
that look so easy and are so difficult, until the whole great Piazza
was girdled with fluttering light and colour, while it echoed to the
thrilling and disquieting beat of the drums. Each _contrada_ had its
_tamburino_, and each _tamburino_ beat upon his drum incessantly until
his arms tired and the sweat poured down his face.

Olive's head began to ache, but she was excited and happy, enjoying
the spectacle as a child enjoys its first pantomime, not thinking but
feeling, and steeping her senses in the southern glow and gaiety that
was all about her. For the moment her cousin's shame and sorrow, and
her f