at day and turned to
Ann with an interrogation about the Viennese. Katie, contemplating the
suppleness of Ann's neck, momentarily asleep at her post, missed the
"Come over and help us" look, and Ann had begun upon a fatal, "I have
never been in--" when Katie, with ringing laugh broke in: "Isn't it odd,
Ann, that you should never have been in Vienna, when you lived all those
years right there in Florence? I _do_ think it the oddest thing!"

Ann agreed that it _was_ odd--Wayne concurring.

But driven from Vienna, he sought Florence. "And Italy? I presume I go on
record as the worst sort of bounder in asking if you really care greatly
about living there?"

Katie thought it time Ann try a stroke for herself. One would never
develop strength on a life-preserver.

Seeing that she had it to make, she paused before it an instant. Fear
seemed to be feeling, and a possible sense of the absurdity of her
situation made for a slightly tremulous dignity as she said: "I do love
it. Love it so much it is hard to tell just how much--or why." And then
it was as if she shrank back, having uncovered too much. She looked as
though she might be dreaming of the Court of the Uffizi, or Santa Maria
Novella, but Katie surmised that that dreamy look was not failing to find
out what Wayne was going to do with his lettuce. But one who suggested
dreams of Tuscany when taking observations on the use of the salad
fork--was there not hope unbounded for such a one?

Wayne was silent for the moment, as though getting the fact that the love
of Italy, or perhaps its associations, was to this girl not a thing to
be compressed within the thin vein of dinner talk. "Well," he laughed
understanding, "to be sure I don't know it from the inside. I never was
of it; I merely looked at it. And I thought the plumbing was abominable."

"Wayne," scoffed Kate, "plumbing indeed! Have you no soul?"

"Yes, I have; and bad plumbing is bad for it."

Ann laughed quite blithely at that, and as though finding confidence in
the sound of her own laugh, she boldly volunteered a stroke. "I don't
know much about plumbing," Katie heard Ann saying. "I suppose perhaps it
is bad. But do you care much about plumbing when looking at"--her pause
before it might have been one of reverence--"The Madonna of the Chair?"

Katie treated herself to a particularly tender bit of lettuce and
secretly hugged herself, Ann, and "Days in Florence." The Madonna of the
Chair furnished the frontis