answered. "And then, I built this house from
the foundations. If you will come in, Signor Principe, I will show you
how solidly the work is done."

He took a key from his pocket and thrust it into a hole in the boarding,
which latter proved to be a rough door and opened noisily upon rusty
hinges. Orsino followed him in silence. To the young man's inexperienced
eye the interior of the building was even more depressing than the
outside. It smelt like a vault, and a dim grey light entered the square
apertures from the curtained scaffoldings without, just sufficient to
help one to find a way through the heaps of rubbish that covered the
unpaved floors. Contini explained rapidly and concisely the arrangement
of the rooms, calling one cave familiarly a dining-room and another a
"conjugal bedroom," as he expressed it, and expatiating upon the
facilities of communication which he himself had carefully planned.
Orsino listened in silence and followed his guide patiently from place
to place, in and out of dark passages and up flights of stairs as yet
unguarded by any rail, until they emerged upon a sort of flat terrace
intersected by low walls, which was indeed another floor and above which
another story and a garret were yet to be built to complete the house.
Orsino looked gloomily about him, lighted a cigarette and sat down upon
a bit of masonry.

"To me, it looks very like failure," he remarked. "But I suppose there
is something in it."

"It will not look like failure next month," said Contini carelessly.
"Another story is soon built, and then the attic, and then, if you like,
a Gothic roof and a turret at one corner. That always attracts buyers
first and respectable lodgers afterwards."

"Let us have a turret, by all means," answered Orsino, as though his
tailor had proposed to put an extra button on the cuff of his coat. "But
how in the world are you going to begin? Everything looks to me as
though it were falling to pieces."

"Leave all that to me, Signor Principe. We will begin to-morrow. I have
a good overseer and there are plenty of workmen to be had. We have
material for a week at least, and paid for, excepting a few cartloads of
lime. Come again in ten days and you will see something worth looking
at."

"In ten days? And what am I to do in the meantime?" asked Orsino, who
fancied that he had found an occupation.

Andrea Contini looked at him in some surprise, not understanding in the
least what he meant.

"