is dreadful to have to leave
it unfinished now." And when Gontrand tried to persuade him to let him
have Olive during his absence he was, as the girl phrased it, quite
cross. "I have seen enough of that. Last year in the Salon St
Elizabeth of Hungary, and Clytemnestra, and Malesherbe's _vivandiere_
were one and the same woman. Besides, oreads are nearly related to
Bacchantes, Gontrand, and I am not going to allow my little
sewing-girl to be mixed up with people of that sort."

He made Olive promise not to sit for any of the other men at the Villa
Medici.

"I shall work at Varini's in the evenings," she said. "And one of the
men there wants me to come to his studio in the Via Margutta three
mornings a week. He is a Baron von something."

The Frenchman's face lightened. "Oh, that German! I know him. I saw a
landscape of his once. It looked as if several tubes of paint had got
together and burst. What else will you do?"

"Rome, if you will lend me your Baedeker," she answered. "I shall begin
with A and work my way through Beatrice Cenci and the Borgo Nuovo to
the Corsini Gallery and the Corso. Some of the letters may be rather
dull. I am so glad Apollo comes now."

He laughed. "M for Michelin. You will be sure to admire me when my
turn comes."

Olive was living alone now in a tall old house in Ripetta. The two
kind women who had been her friends had left Rome and gone to stay
with their brother at Como. It was evidently the best thing they could
do, and the girl had assured them that she was quite well able to look
after herself, but they had been only half convinced by her reasoning.
She was English and she had done it before. "That is nothing," Ser
Giulia said. "You may catch a ball once, and the second time it may
slip through your fingers. And sometimes Life is like the importunate
widow and goes on asking until one gives what one should not." She
helped her to find a room, and eked out the furniture from her own
little store. "Another saucepan, and a kettle, and a blanket. And if
lessons fail you must come to us, _figliuola mia_. My brother's house
is large."

The girl had answered her with a kiss, but though she loved them she
was not altogether sorry to see them go. She could never tell them how
she had earned the lire that paid the baker's bill. The truth would
hurt them, and she would not give them a moment's pain if she could
avoid it, but she was not good at lying. Even the very little white
ones stuc