ountry at this
time of year. You may fancy yourself sitting in the Villa Reale, if you
could only have a flash of blue sea underneath the branches of the
trees."

But when they had crossed over and got into the comparative quiet of the
Park, she resolutely returned to her English again; and now she was
telling him about the people in Naples whom he used to know, and of
their various fortunes and circumstances. Sometimes neither of them
spoke; for all this around them was very still and pleasant--the fresh
foliage of the trees and the long lush grass of the enclosures as yet
undimmed by the summer dust; the cool shadows thrown by the elms and
limes just moving as the wind stirred the wide branches; altogether a
world of soft, clear, sunny green, unbroken except by here and there a
small copper beech with its bronze leaves become translucent in the hot
light. It is true that the browsing sheep were abnormally black; and the
yellow-billed starlings had perhaps less sheen on their feathers than
they would have had in the country; nevertheless, for a park in the
midst of a great city this place was very quiet and beautiful and
sylvan; and indeed, when these two sat down on a couple of chairs under
a fragrant hawthorn, Nina's lustrous dark eyes became wistful and
absent, and she said,

"Yes, Leo, it is as you say in the house--it all appears a dream."

"What appears like a dream to you?" her companion asked.

"To be in London, sitting with you, Leo, and hearing you speak," she
answered, in a low voice. "Often I think of it--often I think of
London--wondering what it is like--and I ask myself, 'Will Leo be the
same after his great renown? Are we friends as before?' and now I am
here, and London is not dark and terrible with smoke, but we sit in
gardens--oh, very beautiful!--and Leo is talking just as in the old
way--perhaps it is a dream?" she continued, looking up with a smile.
"Perhaps I wake soon?"

"Oh, no, it isn't a dream, Nina," said he, "only it might pass for one,
for you haven't told me how you managed to get here. It is all a mystery
to me. Where are you staying, for example?"

"My lodging?" she said. "I have an apartment in the Restaurant
Gianuzzi."

"Where is that?"

"Rupert Street," she answered, with a valiant effort at the proper
pronunciation.

"My goodness! what are you doing, Nina?" he said, almost angrily.
"Living by yourself in a foreign restaurant, in the neighborhood of
Leicester Square! You