the little square piazza of the Capitol she turned
to him. "What have you to say? I--I am in a hurry."

"I am sorry for that, but if you are going anywhere I can walk with
you, or we can take a _vettura_ and drive together."

She looked past him at the green shining figure of Marcus Aurelius on
his horse riding between her and the sun, and said nothing.

"I shall enjoy being with you even if you are inclined to be silent.
You are so good to look at."

His brazen stare gave point to his words. Her face was no longer
childish in its charm. It had lost the first roundness of youth, but
had gained in expression. A soul seemed to be shining through the veil
of flesh--white and rose-red flesh, divinely gilt with freckles--and
fluttering in the troubled depths of her blue eyes. The nun-like
simplicity of her grey dress pleased him: it did not detract from her;
it left the eyes free to return to her face, to dwell upon her lips.

"Something has happened," he said. "There is another man. Are you
married?"

"No."

"I only came to Rome yesterday. Strange that we should meet so soon.
It seems that there is a Destiny that shapes our ends after all."

"You do not believe in free will?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I do not think about such things."

"Well," she said impatiently. "Is that all you have to say? I suppose
the Marchesa and Mamie are here too."

He hesitated and seemed to lose some of his assurance. "No, we
quarrelled. The girl is insupportable. She is engaged now to a lord of
sorts, an Englishman, and they are still in Cairo."

"So you have lost her too."

"It was your fault that Edna gave me up. You owe me something for
that. And you behaved badly to me again--afterwards."

"I did not."

He laughed enjoyingly. "I trusted you and you took advantage of a
truce to run away."

She moved away from him, but he followed her and kept at her side.

"I never asked you to trust me. I asked you to come the next day for
an answer. You came and you had it."

"I came and I had it," he repeated. "Did the old woman give you my
message?"

"That we should meet again?"

"That was not all. I said you would come to me one day sooner or
later."

They had paused at the top of the steps that lead down from the
Capitol into the streets and are guarded by the gigantic figures of
Castor and Pollux, great masses of discoloured marble set on pedestals
on either side. It was twelve o'clock, and a black stream of hungry,
de