u, and caresses the mother-of-pearl on your cheeks."

"Yes," she said. "Candle-light hardens my features. I have observed this.
I am not an evening woman, unfortunately. It is at night that women have
a chance to show themselves and to please. At night, Princess Seniavine
has a fine blond complexion; in the sun she is as yellow as a lemon. It
must be owned that she does not care. She is not a coquette."

"And you are?"

"Oh, yes. Formerly I was a coquette for myself, now I am a coquette for
you."

She looked at the Sabine woman, who with her waving arms, long and
robust, tried to avoid the Roman's embraces.

"To be beautiful, must a woman have that thin form and that length of
limb? I am not shaped in that way."

He took pains to reassure her. But she was not disturbed about it. She
was looking now at the little castle of the ice-vender. A sudden desire
had come to her to eat an ice standing there, as the working-girls of the
city stood.

"Wait a moment," said Dechartre.

He ran toward the street that follows the left side of the Lanzi, and
disappeared.

After a moment he came back, and gave her a little gold spoon, the handle
of which was finished in a lily of Florence, with its chalice enamelled
in red.

"You must eat your ice with this. The man does not give a spoon with his
ices. You would have had to put out your tongue. It would have been
pretty, but you are not accustomed to it."

She recognized the spoon, a jewel which she had remarked the day before
in the showcase of an antiquarian.

They were happy; they disseminated their joy, which was full and simple,
in light words which had no sense. And they laughed when the Florentine
repeated to them passages of the old Italian writers. She enjoyed the
play of his face, which was antique in style and jovial in expression.
But she did not always understand what he said. She asked Jacques:

"What did he say?"

"Do you really wish to know?"

Yes, she wished to know.

"Well, he said he should be happy if the fleas in his bed were shaped
like you!"

When she had eaten the ice, he asked her to return to San Michele. It was
so near! They would cross the square and at once discover the masterpiece
in stone. They went. They looked at the St. George and at the bronze St.
Mark. Dechartre saw again on the wall the post-box, and he recalled with
painful exactitude the little gloved hand that had dropped the letter. He
thought it hideous, that copper mouth wh