nfiscation, then," he humorously conceded.

"Since they pay no taxes on their cherries they might at least," she
argued, "spare a few to us poor taxpayers."

"Ah," said her father, "I want to tax their cherries, not to gather
them." He slipped a hand through her arm. "Come, child," said he, "does
not the philosopher tell us that he who enjoys a thing possesses it? The
flowers are yours already!"

"Oh, are they?" she retorted. "Then why doesn't the loaf in the baker's
window feed the beggar that looks in at it?"

"Casuist!" he cried and drew her up the bend of the road.

Odo stood gazing after them. Their words, their aspect, seemed an echo
of his reading. The father in his plain broadcloth and square-buckled
shoes, the daughter with her unpowdered hair and spreading hat, might
have stepped from the pages of the romance. What a breath of freshness
they brought with them! The girl's cheek was clear as the
cherry-blossoms, and with what lovely freedom did she move! Thus Julie
might have led Saint Preux through her "Elysium." Odo crossed the road
and, breaking one of the blossoming twigs, thrust it in the breast of
his uniform. Then he walked down the hill to the inn where the horses
waited. Half an hour later he rode up to the house where he lodged in
the Piazza San Carlo.

In the archway Cantapresto, heavy with a nine years' accretion of fat,
laid an admonishing hand on his bridle.

"Cavaliere, the Countess's black boy--"

"Well?"

"Three several times has battered the door down with a missive."

"Well?"

"The last time, I shook him off with the message that you would be there
before him."

"Be where?"

"At the Valentino; but that was an hour ago!"

Odo slipped from the saddle.

"I must dress first. Call a chair; or no--write a letter for me first.
Let Antonio carry it."

The ex-soprano, wheezing under the double burden of flesh and
consequence, had painfully laboured after Odo up the high stone flights
to that young gentleman's modest lodgings, and they stood together in a
study lined with books and hung with prints and casts from the antique.
Odo threw off his dusty coat and called the servant to remove his boots.

"Will you read the lady's letters, cavaliere?" Cantapresto asked,
obsequiously offering them on a lacquered tray.

"No--no: write first. Begin 'My angelic lady'--"

"You began the last letter in those terms, cavaliere," his scribe
reminded him with suspended pen.

"The devil! Well,