was Rosina. The signorino was always very good, and he gave
her an afternoon off when she asked for it. On Christmas night, for
instance, she had drunk too much wine, and she had fallen down in the
street and hurt herself. The next day her head ached so, and when the
signorino saw she was not well he said she might go home and sleep.
She had been working for him six weeks. What work? She seemed
surprised at the question.

"I am a model. My face is ugly, as you see," she said in her simple,
straightforward way; "but otherwise I am beautiful, and I can always
get work with sculptors. The signorino is an American and he has an
unpronounceable name. He is doing me as Eve, crouched on the ground
and hiding my head in my arms. After the Fall, you know. Have you been
to the Andreoni gallery? There is a statuette of me there called
'Morning.' This is the pose."

She clasped her hands together behind her head, raising her chin a
little. Olive observed the smooth long throat, the exquisite lines of
the shoulders and breast and hips. Pasquina slipped off her mother's
knees.

"Are you well paid?"

"It depends on the artist. Some are so poor that they cannot give, and
others will not. The schools allow fifteen soldi an hour, but the
signorino is paying me twenty-five soldi. In the evenings I sing and
dance at a _caffe_ near the station."

Olive hesitated. "Do--do artists ever want models dressed?"

Rosina looked at her quickly. "Oh, yes, when they are as pretty as you
are. But you are well educated--one sees that--it is not fit work for
such as you."

"Never mind that," Olive said eagerly. "How does one begin being a
model? I will try that. Will you help me?"

Rosina beamed at her. "_Sicuro!_ We will go to Varini's school in the
Corso if you like. The woman in the newspaper kiosk in the Piazza di
Spagna knows me, and I can leave Pasquina with her. _An'iamo!_"

The two girls went together down the wide, shallow steps of the
Trinita dei Monti with the child between them.

Poor little Pasquina was the outward and visible sign of her mother's
inward and hopelessly material gracelessness; she symbolised the great
gulf fixed between smirched Roman Rosina and Jean's English rose in
their different understanding of their own hearts' uses. Olive
believed love to be the way to heaven; Rosina knew it, or thought she
knew it, as a means of livelihood.

The model was very evidently not only familiar with the studios. The
cabmen on