gaze. It was a comfort to her that their foreign tongue covered
what they said--and they might have appeared of course, as the Prince
now had one of the snuffboxes in his hand, to be discussing a purchase.

"You don't refer," she went on to her companion. "_I_ refer."

He had lifted the lid of his little box and he looked into it hard. "Do
you mean by that then that you would be free--?"

"'Free'--?"

"To offer me something?"

This gave her a longer pause, and when she spoke again she might have
seemed, oddly, to be addressing the dealer. "Would you allow me--?"

"No," said the Prince into his little box.

"You wouldn't accept it from me?"

"No," he repeated in the same way.

She exhaled a long breath that was like a guarded sigh. "But you've
touched an idea that HAS been mine. It's what I've wanted." Then she
added: "It was what I hoped."

He put down his box--this had drawn his eyes. He made nothing, clearly,
of the little man's attention. "It's what you brought me out for?"

"Well, that's, at any rate," she returned, "my own affair. But it won't
do?"

"It won't do, cara mia."

"It's impossible?"

"It's impossible." And he took up one of the brooches.

She had another pause, while the shopman only waited. "If I were to
accept from you one of these charming little ornaments as you suggest,
what should I do with it?"

He was perhaps at last a little irritated; he even--as if HE might
understand--looked vaguely across at their host. "Wear it, per Bacco!"

"Where then, please? Under my clothes?"

"Wherever you like. But it isn't then, if you will," he added, "worth
talking about."

"It's only worth talking about, mio caro," she smiled, "from your having
begun it. My question is only reasonable--so that your idea may stand
or fall by your answer to it. If I should pin one of these things on
for you would it be, to your mind, that I might go home and show it to
Maggie as your present?"

They had had between them often in talk the refrain, jocosely,
descriptively applied, of "old Roman." It had been, as a pleasantry,
in the other time, his explanation to her of everything; but nothing,
truly, had even seemed so old-Roman as the shrug in which he now
indulged. "Why in the world not?"

"Because--on our basis--it would be impossible to give her an account of
the pretext."

"The pretext--?" He wondered.

"The occasion. This ramble that we shall have had together and that
we're not to speak of."