ly with the bead blossoms that are
kept in glass cases and need not be changed once a year. The afternoon
was passing, but still Olive lingered by the cardinal's monument.
Looking at him understandingly she saw that there had been lines of
pain about the firm mouth. He had suffered in his short life, he had
suffered until death came to comfort him and give him quiet sleep. The
mother-sense in her yearned over him, lying there straight and still,
with closed eyes that had never seen love; and, womanlike, she pitied
the accomplished loneliness that yet seemed to her the most beautiful
thing in the world. The old familiar words were in her mind as she
looked down upon this saint uncanonised: "Cleanse the thoughts of my
heart by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit!" and she remembered
Astorre, for whose sake she had come to this church to pray. Once when
she had been describing a haggard St Francis in the Sienese gallery to
him, he had said: "Ah, women always pity him and admire his
picturesque asceticism, but if married men look worried they do not
notice it. Their troubles are no compliment to your sex."

Poor Astorre had not been devout in any sense, but he had written his
friend a long letter on the day after Gemma's suicide, and he had
asked for her prayers then. "Fausto told me how you knelt there in the
street beside the dead Odalisque and said the Pater-noster and the
Miserere. Perhaps you will do as much for me one day. Your prayers
should help the soul that is freed now from the burden of the flesh. I
cannot complain of flesh myself, but my bones weigh and I shall be
glad to be rid of them. Come and see me soon, _carissima_ ..."

The next morning his mother sent for the girl, but when she came into
the darkened room where he lay he had already passed away.

"He asked for you, but he would not see a priest. You know they
refused to bury his father because he fought for united Italy. Ah!
Rome never forgets."

After the funeral Signora Aurelia had sold her furniture and gone
away, and she was living now with a widowed sister in Rome. The
Menotti had left Siena too and had gone to Milan, and Olive, not
caring to stay on alone in the place where everyone knew what had
happened, had come to the Lorenzoni in Florence. She had had a letter
from Carmela that morning.

"We like Milan as the streets are so gay, and the shops are beautiful.
We should have got much better mourning here at Bocconi's if we could
have waited