man.

She ate eggs and bread, and drank the red wine, never having conquered
her disgust for Italian meat since first she saw the filthy carcasses,
fly-infested, dust-covered, loathsome, being carted through the swarming
streets.

It was six o'clock of an evening early in March when Mary Gowd went home
to the murky little room in the Via Babbuino. She was too tired to
notice the sunset. She was too tired to smile at the red-eyed baby of
the cobbler's wife, who lived in the rear. She was too tired to ask Tina
for the letters that seldom came. It had been a particularly trying day,
spent with a party of twenty Germans, who had said "_Herrlich!_" when
she showed them the marvels of the Vatican and "_Kolossal!_" at the
grandeur of the Colosseum and, for the rest, had kept their noses buried
in their Baedekers.

She groped her way cautiously down the black hall. Tina had a habit of
leaving sundry brushes, pans or babies lying about. After the warmth of
the March sun outdoors the house was cold with that clammy, penetrating,
tomblike chill of the Italian home.

"Tina!" she called.

From the rear of the house came a cackle of voices. Tina was gossiping.
There was no smell of supper in the air. Mary Gowd shrugged patient
shoulders. Then, before taking off the dowdy hat, before removing the
white cotton gloves, she went to the window that overlooked the noisy
Via Babbuino, closed the massive wooden shutters, fastened the heavy
windows and drew the thick curtains. Then she stood a moment, eyes shut.
In that little room the roar of Rome was tamed to a dull humming. Mary
Gowd, born and bred amid the green of Northern England, had never become
hardened to the maddening noises of the Via Babbuino: The rattle and
clatter of cab wheels; the clack-clack of thousands of iron-shod hoofs;
the shrill, high cry of the street venders; the blasts of motor horns
that seemed to rend the narrow street; the roar and rumble of the
electric trams; the wail of fretful babies; the chatter of gossiping
women; and above and through and below it all the cracking of the
cabman's whip--that sceptre of the Roman cabby, that wand which is one
part whip and nine parts crack. Sometimes it seemed to Mary Gowd that
her brain was seared and welted by the pistol-shot reports of those
eternal whips.

She came forward now and lighted a candle that stood on the table and
another on the dresser. Their dim light seemed to make dimmer the dark
little room. She l