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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mae Madden, by Mary Murdoch Mason
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mae Madden
+
+Author: Mary Murdoch Mason
+
+Release Date: May 12, 2006 [EBook #1829]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAE MADDEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+MAE MADDEN
+
+By Mary Murdoch Mason
+
+
+With an introductory poem, by Joaquin Miller.
+
+     The wheel of fortune guide you,
+     The boy with the bow beside you
+     Run aye in the way, till the dawn of day
+     And a luckier lot betide you.
+
+     Ben Jonson.
+
+
+
+
+A DREAM OF ITALY.
+
+AN ALLEGORY INTRODUCING "MAE MADDEN."
+
+     I.
+
+     We two had been parted, God pity us, when
+     The stars were unnamed and when heaven was dim;
+     We two had been parted far back on the rim
+     And the outermost border of heaven's red bars:
+     We two had been parted ere the meeting of men
+     Or God had set compass on spaces as yet.
+     We two had been parted ere God had set
+     His finger to spinning the spaces with stars,--
+     And now, at the last in the gold and set
+     Of the sun of Venice, we two had met.
+
+     II.
+
+     Where the lion of Venice, with brows afrown,
+     With tossed mane tumbled, and teeth in air,
+     Looks out in his watch o'er the watery town,
+     With a paw half lifted, with his claws half bare,
+     By the blue Adriatic, in the edge of the sea,
+     I saw her.  I knew her, but she knew not me.
+     I had found her at last!  Why, I had sailed
+     The antipodes through, had sought, had hailed
+     All flags, had climbed where the storm clouds curled,
+     And called from the awful arched dome of the world.
+
+     III.
+
+     I saw her one moment, then fell back abashed
+     And filled full to the throat. . . .  Then I turned me once more
+     So glad to the sea, while the level sun flashed
+     On the far, snowy Alps. . . .  Her breast!  Why, her breast
+     Was white as twin pillows that allure you to rest;
+     Her sloping limbs moved like to melodies, told
+     As she rose from the sea, and she threw back the gold
+     Of her glory of hair, and set face to the shore. . . .
+     I knew her!  I knew her, though we had not met
+     Since the far stars sang to the sun's first set.
+
+     IV.
+
+     How long I had sought her!  I had hungered, nor ate
+     Of any sweet fruits.  I had tasted not one
+     Of all the fair glories grown under the sun.
+     I had sought only her.  Yea, I knew that she
+     Had come upon earth and stood waiting for me
+     Somewhere by my way.  But the path ways of fate
+     They had led otherwhere.  The round world round,
+     The far North seas and the near profound
+     Had failed me for aye.  Now I stood by that sea
+     While a ship drove by, and all dreamily.
+
+     V.
+
+     I had turned from the lion a time, and when
+     I looked tow'rd the tide and out on the lea
+     Of the town where the warm sea tumbled and teemed
+     With beauty, I saw her.  I knew her then,
+     The tallest, the fairest fair daughter of men.
+     O, Venice stood full in her glory.  She gleamed
+     In the splendor of sunset and sensuous sea;
+     Yet I saw but my bride, my affinity,
+     While the doves hurried home to the dome of Saint Mark
+     And the brass horses plunged their high manes in the dark,
+
+     VI.
+
+     Was it well with my love?  Was she true?  Was she brave
+     With virtue's own valor?  Was she waiting for me?
+     O, how fared my love!  Had she home?  Had she bread?
+     Had she known but the touch of the warm-tempered wave?
+     Was she born upon earth with a crown on her head;
+     Or born like myself, but a dreamer, instead?
+     So long it had been!  So long!  Why the sea,
+     That wrinkled and surly old time-tempered slave,
+     Had been born, had his revels, grown wrinkled and hoar
+     Since I last saw my love on that uttermost shore.
+
+     VII.
+
+     O, how fared my love?  Once I lifted my face
+     And I shook back my hair and looked out on the sea;
+     I pressed my hot palms as I stood in my place
+     And cried, "O, I come like a king to your side
+     Though all hell intervene." . . .  "Hist! she may be a bride!
+     A mother at peace, with sweet babes on her knee!
+     A babe at her breast and a spouse at her side! . . .
+     Have I wandered too long, and has destiny
+     Set mortal between us?"  I buried my face
+     In my hands, and I moaned as I stood in my place.
+
+     VIII.
+
+     'Twas her year to be young.  She was tall, she was fair
+     Was she pure as the snow on the Alps over there?
+     'Twas her year to be young.  She was fair, she was tall
+     And I knew she was true as I lifted my face
+     And saw her press down her rich robe to its place
+     With a hand white and small as a babe's with a doll,
+     And her feet--why, her feet, in the white shining sand,
+     Were so small they might nest in my one brawny hand.
+     Then she pushed back her hair with a round hand that shone
+     And flashed in the light with a white starry stone.
+
+     IX.
+
+     Then, my love she was rich.  My love she was fair.
+     Was she pure as the snow on the Alps over there?
+     She was gorgeous with wealth, "Thank God, she has bread,"
+     I said to myself.  Then I humbled my head
+     In gratitude.  Then I questioned me where
+     Was her palace? her parents?  What name did she bear?
+     What mortal on earth came nearest her heart?
+     Who touched the small hand till it thrilled to a smart?
+     'Twas her day to be young.  She was proud, she was fair.
+     Was she pure as the snow on the Alps over there?
+
+     X.
+
+     Now she turned, reached a hand; then a tall gondolier
+     That had leaned on his oar, like a long lifted spear,
+     Shot sudden and swift and all silently
+     And drew to her side as she turned from the tide. . .
+     It was odd, such a thing, and I counted it queer
+     That a princess like this, whether virgin or bride,
+     Should abide thus apart, and should bathe in that sea;
+     And I shook back my hair, and so unsatisfied.
+     Then I fluttered the doves that were perched close about,
+     As I strode up and down in dismay and in doubt.
+
+     XI.
+
+     Then she stood in the boat on the borders of night
+     As a goddess might stand on that far wonder land
+     Of eternal sweet life, which men have named Death.
+     I turned to the sea and I caught at my breath,
+     As she drew from the boat through her white baby hand
+     Her vestment of purple imperial, and white.
+     Then the gondola shot! swift, sharp from the shore.
+     There was never the sound of a song or of oar
+     But the doves hurried home in white clouds to Saint Mark,
+     And the lion loomed high o'er the sea in the dark.
+
+     XII.
+
+     Then I cried, "Quick!  Follow her.  Follow her.  Fast!
+     Come!  Thrice double fare if you follow her true
+     To her own palace door."  There was plashing of oar
+     And rattle of rowlock. . . .  I sat leaning low
+     Looking far in the dark, looking out as we sped
+     With my soul all alert, bending down, leaning low.
+     But only the oaths of the men as we passed
+     When we jostled them sharp as we sudden shot thro'
+     The watery town.  Then a deep, distant roar--
+     The rattle of rowlock, the rush of the oar.
+
+     XIII.
+
+     Then an oath.  Then a prayer!  Then a gust that made rents
+     Through the yellow sailed fishers.  Then suddenly
+     Came sharp forked fire!  Then far thunder fell
+     Like the great first gun!  Ah, then there was route
+     Of ships like the breaking of regiments
+     And shouts as if hurled from an upper hell.
+     Then tempest!  It lifted, it spun us about,
+     Then shot us ahead through the hills of the sea
+     As if a great arrow shot shoreward in wars--
+     Then heaven split open till we saw the blown stars.
+
+     XIV.
+
+     On!  On!  Through the foam, through the storm, through the town,
+     She was gone.  She was lost in the wilderness
+     Of palaces lifting their marbles of snow.
+     I stood in my gondola.  Up and all down
+     I pushed through the surge of the salt-flood street
+     Above me, below. . .  Twas only the beat
+     Of the sea's sad heart. . .  Then I heard below
+     The water-rat building, but nothing but that;
+     Not even the sea bird screaming distress,
+     As she lost her way in that wilderness.
+
+     XV.
+
+     I listened all night.  I caught at each sound;
+     I clutched and I caught as a man that drown'd. . . .
+     Only the sullen low growl of the sea
+     Far out the flood street at the edge of the ships.
+     Only the billow slow licking his lips,
+     Like a dog that lay crouching there watching for me;
+     Growling and showing white teeth all the night,
+     Reaching his neck and as ready to bite--
+     Only the waves with their salt flood tears
+     Fawning white stones of a thousand years.
+
+     XVI.
+
+     Only the birds in the wilderness
+     Of column and dome and of glittering spire
+     That thrust to heaven and held the fire
+     Of the thunder still:  The bird's distress
+     As he struck his wings in that wilderness,
+     On marbles that speak and thrill and inspire. . .
+     The night below and the night above;
+     The water-rat building, the startled white dove,
+     The wide-winged, dolorous sea bird's call
+     The water-rat building, but that was all.
+
+     XVII.
+
+     Lo! pushing the darkness from pillar to post,
+     The morning came silent and gray like a ghost
+     Slow up the canal.  I leaned from the prow
+     And listened.  Not even the bird in distress
+     Screaming above through the wilderness;
+     Not even the stealthy old water-rat now.
+     Only the bell in the fisherman's tower
+     Slow tolling a-sea and telling the hour
+     To kneel to their sweet Santa Barbara
+     For tawny fishers a-sea and pray.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+     XVIII.
+
+     My dream it is ended, the curtain withdrawn.
+     The night that lay hard on the breast of earth,
+     Deep and heavy as a horrid nightmare,
+     Moves by, and I look to the rosy dawn. . . . .
+     I shall leave you here, with a leader fair;
+     One gentle, with faith and fear of her worth.
+     She shall lead you on through that Italy
+     That the gods have loved; and may it be
+     A light-hearted hour that, hand in hand,
+     You wander the warm and the careless love-land.
+
+     XIX.
+
+     By the windy waters of the Michigan
+     She invokes the gods. . . .  Be it bright or dim,
+     Who does his endeavor as best he can
+     Does bravely, indeed.  The rest is with Him.
+     Let a new star dance in the Occident
+     Till it shakes through the gossamer floors of God
+     And shines, o'er Chicago. . .  The Orient
+     Is hoar with glories.  Let Illini sod
+     Bear glory as well as the gleaming grain,
+     And engines smoking along her plain.
+
+
+     JOAQUIN MILLER.
+
+     CHICAGO, NOV., 1875.
+
+
+
+
+MAE MADDEN.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     SCENE.  Deck of an ocean steamer.
+
+     Characters:
+     Mrs. Jerrold,  matron and chaperon in general.
+     Edith Jerrold, her daughter.
+     Albert Madden, a young man on study intent.
+     Eric,          his brother, on pleasure bent.
+     Norman Mann,   cousin of the Jerrolds, old classmate of the
+          Maddens.
+     Mae Madden,    sister of the brothers and leading lady.
+
+"It's something like dying, I do declare," said Mae, and as she spoke
+a suspicious-looking drop slid softly across her cheek, down over the
+deck-railing, to join its original briny fellows in the deep below.
+
+"What is like dying?" asked Eric.
+
+"Why, leaving the only world you know. There, you see, papa and mamma
+are fast fading away, and here we are traveling off at the rate of ever
+so many miles an hour."
+
+"Knots, Mae; do be nautical at sea."
+
+"Away from everything and everybody we know. I do really think it is
+like dying,--don't you, Mr. Mann?" Mae turned abruptly and faced the
+young man by her side.
+
+"People aren't apt to die in batches or by the half-dozen," he replied,
+coolly. "If you were all by yourself, it would be more like it, I
+suppose, but you are taking quite a slice of your own world along with
+you, and really--"
+
+"And really pity is the very last article I have any use for. You are
+right. I was only sorry for the moment. 'Eastward Ho' is a very happy
+cry. How differently we shall all take Europe," she continued, in
+a moment. "There is Albert, I honestly believe he will live in his
+Baedeker just because he can see no further than the covers of a book.
+You need not laugh, for it is a fact that people confined for years to
+a room can't see beyond its limits when they are taken out into broader
+space, and I don't see why it shouldn't be the same with a man who lives
+in his books as Albert does."
+
+"He sees the world in his books," said Mr. Mann, with a little spirit.
+
+"He gets a microscopic view of it, yes," replied Mae, grandiloquently,
+"and Edith--"
+
+"Always sees just what he does," suggested Eric maliciously.
+
+"Now, boys," said Miss Mae, assuming suddenly a mighty patronage, "I
+will not have you hit at Albert and Edith in this way. It will be very
+annoying to them. They have a right to act just as absurdly as they
+choose. We none of us know how people who are falling in love would
+act."
+
+No, the boys agreed this was quite true.
+
+"And I really do suppose they are falling in love, don't you?" queried
+Mae.
+
+Yes, they did both believe it.
+
+Just here, up came the two subjects of conversation, looking, it must be
+confessed, as much like one subject as any man and wife.
+
+"What are you talking of?" asked Edith, "Madame Tussaud or a French
+salad? No matter how trivial the topic, I am sure it has a foreign
+flavor."
+
+"There you are mistaken," replied the frank Eric, "we were discussing
+you two people, in the most homelike kind of a way."
+
+At this Edith blushed, Albert frowned, Mae scowled at Eric, who opened
+his eyes amazedly, Norman Mann looked over the deck railing and laughed,
+the wind blew, the sailors heave-ho-ed near by, and there was a grand
+tableau vivant for a few seconds.
+
+"O, come," cried Mae, "suppose we stop looking like a set of
+illustrations for a phrenological journal, expressive of the various
+emotions. I was only speculating on the different sights we should see
+in the same places. Confess, now, Albert. Won't your eyes be forever
+hunting out old musty, dusty volumes? Will not books be your first
+pleasures in the sight-seeing line?"
+
+"O, no, pictures," cried Edith.
+
+"That is as you say," Mae demurely agreed. "Pictures and books for you
+two at any rate."
+
+"And churches."
+
+"For your mother, yes, and beer-gardens for Eric, and amphitheatres and
+battle fields for Mr. Mann."
+
+"And for yourself?"
+
+"The blue, blue bay of Naples, a grove of oranges, moonlight and a boat
+if it please you."
+
+"By the way," suggested Albert, "about our plans; we really should begin
+to agitate the matter at once."
+
+"Yes, to do our fighting on shipboard. Let us agree to hoist the white
+flag the day we sight land, else we shall settle down into a regular War
+of the Roses and never decide," laughed Norman.
+
+"As there are six minds," continued Albert, "there will have to be some
+giving up."
+
+"Why do you look at me?" enquired Mae. "I am the very most unselfish
+person in the world. I'll settle down anywhere for the winter, provided
+only that it is not in Rome."
+
+"But that is the very place," cried Edith, and Albert, and Mrs. Jerrold
+from her camp-chair.
+
+"O, how dreadful! The only way to prevent it will be for us to stand
+firm, boys, and make it a tie."
+
+"But Norman is especially eager to go to Rome," said Edith, "and that
+makes us four strong at once in favor of that city."
+
+"But is not Rome a fearful mixture of dead Caesar's bones and dirty
+beggars? And mustn't one carry hundreds of dates at one's finger-tips to
+appreciate this, and that, and the other? Is it not all tremendously and
+overwhelmingly historical, and don't you have to keep exerting your mind
+and thinking and remembering? I would rather go down to Southern Italy
+and look at lazzaroni lie on stone walls, in red cloaks, as they do in
+pictures, and not be obliged to topple off the common Italian to pile
+the gray stone with old memories of some great dead man. Everything is
+ghostly in Rome. Now, there must be some excitement in Southern Italy.
+There's Vesuvius, and she isn't dead--like Nero--but a living demon,
+that may erupt any night, and give you a little red grave by the sea for
+your share."
+
+"She's not nearly through yet," laughed Edith, as Mae paused for breath.
+
+"I'm only afraid," said Mae, "that after I had been down there a week,
+I should forget English, buy a contadina costume, marry a child of the
+sun, and run away from this big world with its puzzles and lessons,
+and rights and wrongs. Imagine me in my doorway as you passed in your
+travelling carriage, hot and tired on your way--say to Sorrento. I would
+dress my beautiful Italian all up in scarlet flowers and wreathe his big
+hat and kiss his brown eyes and take his brown hand, and then we would
+run along by the bay and laugh at you stiff, grand world's folks as we
+skipped past you."
+
+"We shall know where to look for you, if ever you do disappear," said
+Norman Mann.
+
+"But, my dear Mae," added Albert, "though this is amusing, it is utterly
+useless."
+
+"Amusing things always are," said Mae.
+
+"The question is, shall we or shall we not go to Rome for the winter?"
+
+"Certainly, by all means, and if I don't like it, I'll run away to
+Sorrento," and Mae shook her sunny head and twinkled her eyes in a
+fascinating sort of way, that made Eric feel a proud brotherly pleasure
+in this saucy young woman, and that gave Norman Mann a sort of feeling
+he had had a good deal of late, a feeling hard to define, though we have
+all known it, a delicious concoction of pleasure and pain. His eyes were
+fixed on Mae, now. "What is it?" she asked. "You will like Rome, I am
+sure." "No, I never like what I think I shall not."
+
+"It might save some trouble, then, if I ask you now if you expect to
+like me," said he, in a lower tone. "Why certainly, I do like you very
+much," she replied, honestly. "What a stupid question," he thinks,
+vexedly. "Why did I tell him I liked him?" she thinks, blushingly. So
+the waves of anxiety and doubt begin to swell in these two hearts as
+the outside waves beat with a truer sea-motion momently against the
+steamer's side.
+
+Between days of sea-sickness come delightful intervals of calm sea and
+fresh breezes, when the party fly to the hurricane deck to get the very
+quintessence of life on the ocean wave. One morning Mrs. Jerrold and
+Edith were sitting there alone, with rugs and all sorts of head devices
+in soft wools and flannels, and books and a basket of fruit. The matron
+of the party was a tall, fine-looking woman, a good type of genuine
+New England stock softened by city breeding. New Englanders are so many
+propositions from Euclid, full of right angles and straight lines, but
+easy living and the dressmaker's art combine to turn the corners gently.
+Edith was like her mother, but softened by a touch of warm Dutch blood.
+She was tall, almost stately, with a good deal of American style, which
+at that time happened to be straight and slender. She was naturally
+reserved, but four years of boarding-school life had enriched her store
+of adjectives and her amount of endearing gush-power, and she had
+at least six girl friends to whom she sent weekly epistles of some
+half-dozen sheets in length, beginning, each one of them, with "My
+dearest ----" and ending "Your devoted Edith."
+
+As Edith and her mother quietly read, and ate grapes, and lolled in a
+delightfully feminine way, voices were heard,--Mae's and Norman's. They
+were in the middle of a conversation. "Yes," Mae was saying, "you
+do away with individuality altogether nowadays, with your dreadful
+classifications. It is all the same from daffodils up to women."
+
+"How do we classify women, pray?"
+
+"In the mind of man," began Mae, as if she were reading, "there are
+three classes of women; the giddy butterflies, the busy bees, and the
+woman's righters. The first are pretty and silly; the second, plain
+and useful; the third, mannish and odious. The first wear long trailing
+dresses and smile at you while waltzing, the second wear aprons and give
+you apple-dumplings, and the third want your manly prerogatives, your
+dress-coat, your money, and your vote. Flirt with the giddy butterflies,
+your first love was one. First loves always are. Marry the busy bee.
+Your mother was a busy bee. Mothers always are. And keep on the other
+side of the street from the woman's righter as long as you can. Alas!
+your daughter will be one."
+
+"Well, isn't there any classifying on the other side? Aren't there
+horsemen and sporting men and booky men, in the feminine mind?"
+
+"Perhaps so. There certainly are the fops, and nowadays this terrible
+army of reformers and radicals, of whom my brother Albert here is the
+best known example."
+
+"What is it?" asked Albert, looking up abstractedly from his book, for
+he and Eric had sauntered up the stairs too, by this time.
+
+"They are the creatures," continued Mae, "who scorn joys and idle
+pleasures. They deal with the good of the many and the problems of the
+universe, and step solemnly along to that dirge known as the March of
+Progress. And what do they get for it all? Something like this. Put down
+your book, I'm going to prophesy," and Mae backed resolutely up against
+the railing and held her floating scarfs and veils in a bunch at her
+throat, while she prophesied in this way:
+
+"Behold me, direct lineal descendant of Albert Madden, speaking to my
+children in the year 1995: 'What, children, want amusement? Want to see
+the magic lantern to note the effects of light? Alas! how frivolous.
+Listen, children, to the achievements of your great ancestor, as
+reported by the Encyclopedia. "A. Madden--promoter of civilization and
+progress, chiefly known by his excellent theory entitled The Number of
+Cells in a Human Brain compared to the Working Powers of Man, and that
+remarkable essay, headed by this formula: Given--10,000,000 laboring
+men, to find the number of loaves of bread in the world." Here,
+children, take these works. Progressimus, you may have the theory, while
+Civilizationica reads the essay. Then change about. Ponder them well,
+and while we walk to the Museum later, tell me their errors. Then I will
+show you the preserved ears of the first man found in Boshland by P. T.
+Barnum, jr.' Oh, bosh," said Mae suddenly, letting fly her streamers,
+"what a dry set of locusts you nineteenth century leaders are. You are
+devouring our green land, and some of us butterflies would like to turn
+our yellow wings into solid shields against you, if we could. There,
+I've made a goose of myself again on the old subject. Edith, there's the
+lunch bell. Take me down before I say another word." Exeunt feminines
+all.
+
+"Where did the child pick up all that?" queried Albert.
+
+"'All that' is in the air just now," answered Norman. "It is a natural
+reaction of a strong physical nature against the utilitarian views of
+the day. Miss Mae is a type of--"
+
+"O, nonsense, what prigs you are," interrupted Eric, "Mae is jolly. Do
+stop your reasoning about her. If you are bound to be a potato yourself
+to help save the masses from starvation, don't grumble because she grew
+a flower. Come, let us go to lunch too."
+
+Conversation was not always of this sort. One evening, not long after,
+there was a moon, and Edith and Albert were missing. Eric was following
+a blue-eyed girl along the deck, and Mae and Norman wandered off by
+themselves up to this same hurricane deck again. The moonlight was
+wonderful. It touched little groups here and there and fell full on the
+face of a woman in the steerage, who sat with her arms crossed on her
+knee and her face set eastward. She was singing, and her voice rose
+clearly above the puff of the engine and the jabber below. There was a
+chorus to the song, in which rough men and tired looking women joined.
+The song was about home, and once in a while the girl unclasped her arms
+and passed her hands over her eyes. Mae and Norman Mann looked at her
+silently. "I suppose we don't know when we make pictures," said Mae.
+"Don't we?" asked Norman pointedly. Mae looked very reprovingly out from
+her white wraps at him, but he smiled back composedly and admiringly,
+and drew her hand a trifle closer in his arm. And saucy Mae began to
+feel in that sort of purring mood women come to when they drop the
+bristling, ready-for-fight air with which they start on an acquaintance.
+Perhaps, if the steamer had been a sailing-vessel, there would have
+been no story to tell about Mae Madden, for a long line of evenings,
+and girls singing songs, and hurricane decks by moonlight, are dangerous
+things. But the vessel was a fast steamer, and was swiftly nearing land
+again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+ROME, February, 18--.
+
+MY DEAR MAMMA:--Yes, it is Rome, mamma, and everybody is impressed.
+The boys talk of emperors all the time; Edith is wild over Madonnas
+and saints, and Mrs. Jerrold runs from Paul's house to Paul's walks and
+Paul's drives and Paul's stand at the prisoner's bar, and reads the Acts
+through five times a day, in the most religious and Romanistic spirit.
+No one could make more fuss over a patron saint, I am sure. For my part,
+I feel as if I were in the most terrible ghost story. The old Romans are
+all around me. Underneath the street noises, I seem to hear cries, and
+in the air I half see a constant flashing of swords and scars and blood,
+and I can't even put my foot on the Roman pavement without wondering
+which dead Caesar my saucy Burt boot No. 2 is walking over. I shouldn't
+mind trampling old Caligula, but I don't like the thought on general
+principles. I feel all out of place, so modern and fixed up and
+flimsy. If I could get into old picturesque clothes and out of the
+English-speaking quarter, I should not be so oppressed and might worship
+Rome. But I seriously think I shall die if I stay here much longer.
+There's a spirit-malaria that eats into my life. I feel as if all the
+volumes of Roman history bound in heavy vellum, that papa has in his
+study, were laid right on top of my little heart, so that every time it
+beats, it thumps against them, and I assure you, mamma, its worse than
+dyspepsia. If I could only get out on a New England hillside, where
+there were no graves more important than those of grasshoppers and
+butterflies! What should I do when I got there? Take off my hat, and
+scream for joy, and feel free and glad to be in a fresh country, with
+rich, warm, untainted earth and young life.
+
+But all this is nonsense, mamma, and I shouldn't be writing it, if
+I hadn't just come from the catacombs of St. Calixtus. To think of
+Albert's insisting upon going there the very first thing! But so he
+did, and so we went, and talked solemnly about the Appian Way, and saw
+everybody's tombs and ashes, and quoted poetry, until I stuck a pin in
+Albert's arm and sang Yankee Doodle, to keep from crying. Then, oh, how
+shocked they looked. Even Mr. Mann seemed ashamed of me. When we reached
+the place, we each took a candle and the guide led the way down into
+the bowels of the earth. Mamma, they are very unpleasant. There were two
+German youths along, and green lizards crawled all over. They winked at
+me. The way grew so narrow that we had to walk one by one through lines
+of wall perforated with holes for dead bodies. Once in a while we would
+come to a small chapel, for miserable variety's sake, and be told to
+admire some very old, very wretched painting. Jonah and the whale were
+represented in a double-barreled miracle picture. Not only was the whale
+about to swallow Jonah, but he was only as large as a good-sized brook
+trout, while Jonah towered away above him like a Goliath. I found myself
+wondering if the guide had convulsions, and, if he should have one now,
+and die, how many days would pass before we should eat each other. And
+would they take me first, because I am youngest and plumpest? Albert
+would make good soup bones, and Eric's shoulder serve as a delicious
+fore-quarter. And by the time we came to the top again, I was all ready
+to cry. And then, mamma, I did an awful thing. Mr. Mann exclaimed: "Why,
+Miss Mae, how frightened you look. You are quite white." And I answered
+very sharply: "What a disagreeable man you are. I'm not frightened at
+all." I said it in a dreadful tone, and how his face changed. He looked
+so strangely. Everybody was still but Albert, and he said, "Why, Mae,
+you are very rude to Mr. Mann." Even then I didn't apologize. So here we
+are at sword's points, and all the rest sympathizing with my foe, who
+is only on the defensive. Why am I such a belligerent? I can't conceive
+where I got my nature, unless from that very disagreeable dear old
+grandpapa of papa's, who fought the whole world all his life. But how
+egotistic I am, even to my mother. Of course you want to know how we
+are lodged and clothed and fed. We have taken apartments, as I presume
+Albert wrote you, on the Via San Nicolo da Tolentino, quite near the
+Costanzi hotel, which is in the height of the fashion as a hotel; near
+too, which is better, to Mr. Story's studio and the old Barberini palace
+and the Barberini square and fountains. Off behind, is that terrible
+church of the Cappucini, with its cemetery underneath of bones and
+skulls and such horrors. I like the apartments very much, principally
+because I have made three staunch friends and one good enemy, in the
+kitchen. The padrona,--she's the woman who keeps the house, and serves
+us, too, in this case--though Mrs. Jerrold has a maid to wait on the
+table and care for our rooms--well, the padrona is my first friend. Her
+cousin, a handsome southern Italian, is here on a visit, and she is not
+only my friend, but my instructress. She tells me lovely stories about
+her home and the peasants and their life, while I sit on the floor with
+Giovanni,--friend number three and eldest son of the padrona,--and even
+Roberto, my enemy, the crying baby of three years, hushes his naughty
+mouth to listen to Lisetta, for that is the cousin's name. I am so
+glad I studied Italian as hard as I did for my music, for it comes very
+easily to me now, and already I slip the pretty words from my halting
+tongue much more smoothly and quickly than you would imagine I could.
+Mrs. Jerrold isn't quite satisfied, and would prefer the Costanzi, only
+she doesn't believe in letting us girls stay at large hotels. She and
+Edith are shocked at my kitchen tastes, so that I generally creep off
+quietly and say nothing about it. It is strange for me to have to keep
+anything secret, but I am learning how.
+
+As for our clothes, O, mamma, Edith is ravishing in a deep blue-black
+silk, with a curly, wavy sort of fringe on it, and odd loopings here
+and there where you don't expect to find them. What can't a Parisian
+dressmaker do? They have such a wonderful idea of appropriateness, it
+seems to me. Now, at home you know we girls always wear the same sort
+of thing, but Madame H---- says no, Edith, and I should dress very
+differently; and now Edith's clothes all have a flow, and sweep, and
+grace about them, and her silks rustle in a stately way as she walks,
+while my dresses haven't any trimming to speak of, but are cut in a
+clinging, square sort of way, with jackets, and here and there a buckle,
+that makes me feel half the time as if I were playing soldier in a
+lady-like fashion. But what a budget this is. How shocked the people
+here would be. They take travel so solemnly, mamma, and treat Baedeker,
+like the Bible,--and here am I crushing down Rome, and raising Paris on
+top of it. Indeed, I can't help it, for Paris is utterly intoxicating.
+It takes away your moral nature and adds it all into your powers of
+enjoyment. Well, good-bye, my dear, and keep writing me tremendous
+letters, won't you; for I do love you dearly.
+
+Your loving daughter,
+
+MAE.
+
+
+Mae felt a great deal better when she had finished the letter, and, like
+a volatile girl as she was, buttoned her Burt boots and Paris gloves,
+singing gaily a dash from Trovatore in a very light-hearted manner.
+
+"Why, you look like a different girl," cried Eric, as she entered the
+parlor, where he and Mr. Mann were sitting. "Mrs. Jerrold, Edith, and
+Albert have gone on in a carriage, and you are left to my tender care;
+will you ride or walk?"
+
+"How can you ask? My feet are quite wild. No wonder I am a different
+girl. Are we not going to the Pincian hill to look at the live world and
+people? I have just unlocked the stop-gates and let the blood bound in
+my veins as it wants to."
+
+"It has been taking the cinque-pace, I should say from your long face
+to-day."
+
+"O, it has only been trying to keep step with the march of the ages, or
+some such stately tread, but it was hard work, and now the dear life
+of me hops, skips and jumps, like this," and Mae seized her brother and
+danced across the room, stopping very near Mr. Mann, who stood with his
+back to them, drumming on the window pane. She looked at him quizzically
+and half raised her eyebrows.
+
+Eric shook his head, and said aloud in his outspoken way: "You owe him
+an apology, Mae, for this morning's rudeness."
+
+Mr. Mann turned quickly. "I am surprised, Eric. Let your sister find out
+for herself when she is rude."
+
+"Bless me," cried Eric, "what is the row?"
+
+Mae looked determined. "Are you going to the Pincian with us?" she
+asked.
+
+"No, I am going to stay home."
+
+"Well, good-bye, then. Come, Eric." The door closed behind them.
+
+Mr. Mann stood by the window and watched them walk away. Mae, with her
+eager, restless, fresh life showing out in every motion; Eric, with his
+boy-man air and his student swing and happy-go-lucky toss of his head.
+Mr. Mann smiled and then he sighed. "That's a good boy, so square and
+fair and merry--and a queer girl," he added. "Rome isn't the place for
+her. She must get away, though why I should take care for her, or worry
+about her, little vixen. I don't see." Still he smiled as one would over
+a very winning, very wicked child, and shortly after took his hat and
+went to the Pincio, after all.
+
+Meantime, the brother and sister had walked gaily along, passed the
+Spanish Steps, and were on the Pincian hill. Here, Mae was indeed happy.
+The fine equipages and dark, rich beauty of the Italians delighted her,
+and she and Eric found a shaded bench, and watched the carriages drive
+round and round, and criticised, and admired, and laughed like two idle
+children. They bought some flowers, and Mae sat pulling them to pieces,
+when they caught sight, down the pathway, of two approaching Piedmontese
+officers.
+
+"O," cried Mae, and dropped her flowers, and clasped her hands, and
+sprang to her feet, "O, Eric, are they gods or men?"
+
+The Piedmontese officer is godlike. He must be of a certain imposing
+height to obtain his position, and his luxurious yellow moustaches and
+blue black eyes, enriched and intensified by southern blood, give him a
+strange fascination. The cold, manly beauty and strength of a northern
+blonde meet with the heat and lithe grace of the more supple southerner
+to produce this paragon. There is a combination of half-indolent
+elegance and sensuous langour, with a fire, a verve, a nobility, that
+puts him at the very head of masculine beauty. Add to the charms of
+his physique, the jauntiest, most bewitching of uniforms, the clinking
+spurs, the shining buttons, the jacket following every line of his
+figure, and no wonder maidens' hearts seek him out always and young
+pulses beat quicker at his approach.
+
+Mae's admiration was simply rapturous. Utterly regardless of the pretty
+picture she herself made, of her vivid coloring and sparkling beauty,
+she stood among her dropped flowers until the two pairs of eyes were
+fixed upon her. Then she became suddenly aware of her attitude and with
+quick feminine cunning endeavored to transfer her admiration to some
+beautiful horses cantering by, exclaiming in Italian, that the officers
+might surely understand she was thinking only of the fine animals: "O,
+what wonderful horses!"
+
+The foreign pronunciation, Eric's amusement, Mae's confusion, were not
+lost upon the men. Their curiosity was piqued, their eyes and pride
+gratified. They sauntered leisurely past, only to turn a corner and
+quicken their steps again toward the bench where Eric and Mae were
+seated. They found the brother and sister just arising, and followed
+them slowly.
+
+An Italian is quick to detect secrets. The two had not proceeded far
+before one said to the other; "Eh, Luigi, we are not the only interested
+party."
+
+Luigi looked slowly around and saw a crowd of Italian loungers gazing
+at the little stranger with their softly-bold black eyes full of
+admiration. He shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Bah, they gaze in that
+way at all womankind. See, now they are watching the next one," and as
+he spoke, the boys turned with one accord to stare at a young Italian
+girl, who pressed closer to the side of her hook-nosed old duenna:
+
+"It is not those loungers that I noticed," replied the other. "Look
+there," and he waved his hand lightly toward the left, where, under a
+large-leafed tree, gazing apparently in idleness, stood a young man.
+
+"Ah," said Luigi, still incredulous, "he sees nothing but Rome; he is
+fresh from over the seas."
+
+"No, no, watch his eyes," replied the other.
+
+They were assuredly fixed, with a keen searching glance, on a little
+form before them, and as Eric and Mae suddenly turned to the left, the
+stranger, half carelessly, but very quickly, crossed to another path,
+from which he could watch them, but be, in his turn, unobserved.
+
+"Jealous," laughed Luigi, shrugging his shoulders again. "Her lover,
+probably."
+
+"No," replied Bero, "but he may be some time." Then after a moment's
+pause, "Good evening," he said carelessly. "I am going to say my prayers
+at vespers. I've been a sorry scamp of late."
+
+Luigi laughed disdainfully and lightly. "You want to get rid of me?
+Well, be it so. I don't want to lose my heart over a little foreigner. I
+have other game. However, Lillia shall not know of it. Addio, Bero." So
+Luigi went off the other way, and Bero, with a flushed face, followed
+Mae at a distance, and kept an eye on the stranger, flattering himself
+that he was quite unnoticed by those sharp, keen eyes. He was mistaken,
+Norman Mann had seen the officers before they saw him, had watched their
+footsteps, and had a pretty clear idea of the whole affair.
+
+Mae walked on happily, chatting with Eric, and with that vague,
+delightful feeling of something exciting in the air. She knew there was
+an officer behind her, because she had heard the clicking spurs, but she
+only guessed that he might be one of the two who had passed--the
+taller, perhaps,--which, of course, he was. She had, moreover, in some
+mysterious way, caught sight of a figure resembling Norman Mann, trying,
+she thought, to avoid her. Her spirits rose with the half-mystery, and
+she grew brighter and prettier and more magnetic to the two followers as
+she tossed her shoulders slightly and now and then half-turned her sunny
+head.
+
+As for Eric, he was totally unconscious of any secrets. He fancied
+himself and his pretty, nice, little sister all alone by their very
+selves, and he went so far as to expatiate on the vastness of the world,
+and how in this crowd there was no other life that bordered or touched
+on theirs.
+
+To which Mae replied: "You don't know; you may fall in love with one of
+these very Italian girls, or my future husband may be walking behind
+me now." When she had said this, she flushed scarlet and was very much
+ashamed of herself in her heart.
+
+"We must go home now," Eric replied, quite disdaining such sybilistic
+remarks. So they left the hill and went down the Steps in the rich
+afternoon light, and so homewards. Of course the Italian and Mr. Mann
+still followed them; Norman on the other side of the street, the Italian
+in a slyer, less conspicuous manner, by taking side streets, or the next
+parallel pavement, and appearing only at every corner in the distance.
+He appeared, however, close at hand, as Mae and Eric turned into
+their lodgings. His eyes met Mae's. She blushed involuntarily as she
+recognized him, and at once, in that moment, there was an invisible
+half-acquaintance established between the two. If they should ever meet
+again, they would remember each other.
+
+Mae crept off to the kitchen that evening, to beg for another of
+Lisetta's stories, and quite forgot her walk, the officer, and Norman
+Mann while she listened to the
+
+
+STORY OF TALILA.
+
+Talila was a young girl, destined to be a nun. She was a naughty little
+girl and would make wry faces at the thought, and wish she could be a
+man, a soldier or sailor, instead of being a woman and a nun; and as she
+grew older she would dance all the time, and didn't say her prayers very
+much, and was so bad that the priest sent for her to see him. He told
+her how wicked she was, and that, too, when she was to be the bride of
+the church; but she said the church had many, many brides, and she would
+rather be the bride of Giovanni; and that she loved red-cheeked babies
+better than beads, and songs were nicer than prayers. Should she sing
+him such a pretty, gay one she knew? And the priest could hardly keep
+from laughing at the bright-eyed, naughty, naughty Talila. But he said:
+"If Giovanni does not want to marry you, will you then become the bride
+of the church?" And Talila laughed aloud and tossed her head. "Giovanni
+longs to marry me, Father," she said, "I know that already." But the
+Father sent for Giovanni and gave him money if he would say he did
+not want to marry Talila. At first he would not say so, but the Father
+showed him a purse all full of silver, which Talila's mother had brought
+him, for it was she who had vowed Talila should be a nun. Then the
+Father said: "This is yours if you say as I wish, and if not, you shall
+be cursed forever, and all your children shall be cursed, because you
+have married the bride of the church." Then Giovanni crossed himself and
+took the bag of silver, and the priest sent for Talila, and she heard
+her Giovanni say he didn't want to marry her--she had better be a nun;
+and she threw up her brown arms and screamed aloud, and fell down as if
+dead. And afterwards she was very ill, and when she grew better she had
+forgotten everything and was only a little child, and she loves little
+children, and is ever with them, but she calls them all Giovanni. They
+play together by the bay through the long day, and at night she takes
+them to their mothers, and goes alone to her home. But alas! she
+never tells her beads, or prays a prayer, and sorry things are said of
+her--that God gave her up because she left Him. But the children all
+love her, and she loves them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Edith and Mae had a quarrel one morning. Mae's tongue was sharp, but
+although she breezed quickly, she calmed again very soon. The latter
+fact availed her little this time, for Edith maintained a cold
+displeasure that would not be melted by any bright speeches or frank
+apologies. "Edith," said little Miss Mae, quite humbly for her, as she
+put on her hat, and drew on her gloves, "Edith, aren't you going out
+with me?" "What for?" asked that young person indifferently.
+
+"Why--for fun, and to make up. Haven't you forgiven me yet?"
+
+Edith did not reply directly. "I am going out with mamma to buy our
+dominoes for the Carnival, and to see our balcony. Albert has engaged
+one for us, on the corner of the Corso and Santa Maria e Jesu. I suppose
+you can go too. There will be an extra seat. We'll come home by the
+Pincian Hill."
+
+"Thank you," said Mae, "but I will get Eric and go for a tramp," and she
+left the room with compressed lips and flushed cheeks. In the hall were
+Albert, Eric and Norman, talking busily. "Where are you going Eric,
+mayn't I go too, please?" "I'm sorry Mae, but this is an entirely
+masculine affair--five-button gloves and parasols are out of the
+question."
+
+"O, Ric, I am half lonely." Mae laughed a little hysterically. At that
+moment she caught Mr. Mann's eyes, full of sympathy. "But goodbye," she
+added, and opened the door, "I'm going."
+
+"Alone?" asked Norman, involuntarily.
+
+"Yes, alone," replied Mae. "Have you any objections, boys?" Eric and
+Albert were talking busily and did not hear her. Norman Mann held open
+the door for her to pass out, and smiled as she thanked him. She smiled
+back. She came very near saying, "I'm sorry I was rude the other day,
+forgive me," and he came very near saying, "May I go with you, Miss
+Mae?" But they neither of them spoke, and Norman closed the door with
+a sigh, and Mae walked away with a sigh. It was only a little morning's
+experience, sharp words, misunderstandings; but the child was young, far
+from home and her mother, and it seemed hard to her. She was in a very
+wild mood, a very hard mood, and yet all ready to be softened by a kind,
+sympathetic word, so nearly do extremes of emotion meet.
+
+"There's no one to care a pin about me," said she to herself, "not a
+pin. I have a great mind to go and take the veil or drown myself in the
+Tiber. Then they would be bound to search for me, and convent vows and
+Tiber mud hold one fast. No, I won't, I'll go and sit in the Pincian
+gardens and talk Italian with the very first person I meet and forget
+all about myself. I wish Mr. Mann wouldn't pity me. Dear me, here I am
+remembering these forlorn people again. I wish I could see mamma and
+home this morning,--the dear old library. Why the house is shut up and
+mamma's south. I forgot that, and here am I all alone. It is like being
+dead. There, I have dropped a tear on my tie and spoiled it! Besides, if
+one is dead, there comes Heaven. Why shouldn't I play dead, and make my
+own Heaven?" Here Mae seated herself, for she was on the Pincio by this
+time, and looked off at the view, at that wonderful view of St. Peter's,
+the Tiber, all the domes and rising ruins and afar the campagna. "I
+wouldn't make my Heaven here," thought this dreadful Mae, "not if it is
+beautiful. I'd not stay here a single other day. Bah no!" and she shook
+her irreverent little fist right down at the Eternal City.
+
+At this moment, a small beggar, who had been pleading unnoticed at her
+side, was lifted from his feet by a powerful hand, and a shower of soft
+Italian imprecations fell on Mae's ear. She sprang up quickly, "No, no,"
+she cried in Italian, "how dare you hurt a harmless boy?" She lifted
+her face full toward that of the man who had inspired her wrath, and her
+eyes met those of the Piedmontese officer. She blushed scarlet.
+
+"Pardon, a thousand pardons," began he. "It was for your sake,
+Signorina. I saw you shake your hand that he should leave you, and I
+fancied that the little scamp was troubling the foreign lady."
+
+Mae laughed frankly, although she was greatly confused. The officer and
+the beggar boy behind him waited expectantly. "I shook my hand at my
+thoughts," she explained. "I did not see the boy. Forgive me, Signor,
+for my hasty words."
+
+The officer enjoyed her confusion quietly. He threw a handful of small
+coin at the beggar, and bade him go. Then he turned again to Mae. "I am
+sorry, Signorina, that your thoughts are sad. I should think they would
+all be like sweet smiles." He said this with an indescribable delicacy
+and gallantry, as if he half feared to speak to her, but his sympathy
+must needs express itself.
+
+Mae was, as we have seen, in a reckless, wild mood. She did not realize
+what she was doing. She had just broken down all barriers in her mind,
+was dead to her old life, and ready to plan for Heaven. And here before
+her stood a wonderful, sympathizing, new friend, who spoke in a strange
+tongue, lived in a strange land was as far removed from her old-time
+people and society as an inhabitant of Saturn, or an angel. She accepted
+him under her excitement, as she would have accepted them. No waiting
+for an introduction, no formal getting-acquainted talk, no reserve. She
+looked into the devoted, interested eyes above her, and said frankly:
+
+"I was feeling all alone, and I hate Rome. I thought I would like to
+play I was dead, and plan out a Heaven for myself. It should not be in
+Rome. And then I suppose I shook my fist."
+
+"Where would your Heaven be?" asked the Piedmontese, falling quickly,
+with ready southern sympathy, into her mood. Mae seated herself on the
+bench and made room for him at her side.
+
+"Where should it be?" she repeated. "Down among the children of the sun,
+all out in the rich orange fields, by the blue Bay of Naples, I think,
+with Vesuvius near by, and Capri; yes, it would be in Sorrento that I
+should find my heaven."
+
+The officer smiled under his long moustaches. "For three days,--at a
+hotel, Signorina."
+
+"No, no; with the peasants. I am tired and sick of books, and people,
+and reasons. Shall I give you a day of my Heaven?"
+
+Bero smiled and bent slightly forward and rested his hand lightly on the
+stick of her parasol, which lay between them. "Go on," he said.
+
+"I would fill my apron with sweet flowers and golden fruit--great
+oranges, and those fragrant, delicious tiny mandarins--and I would get
+a crowd of little Italians about me, all a-babbling their pretty, pretty
+tongue, and I would go down to the bay and get in an anchored boat, and
+lie there all the morning, catching the sunlight in my eyes, trimming
+the brown babies and the boat with flowers, looking off at the water
+and the clouds, tossing the pretty fruit, and laughing, and playing, and
+enjoying. Later, there'd be a run on the beach, and a ride on a donkey,
+and a dance, with delirious music and frolic. And then the moon and
+quiet,--and I would steal away from the crowd, and take a little boat,
+and float and drift--"
+
+"Alone?" asked Bero, softly. "Surely, you wouldn't condemn a
+mountaineer's yellow moustache, or a soldier's spurs and sword, if at
+heart he was really a child of the sun also? May I share your day of
+Heaven? It would be paradise for me, too." All this in the same soft,
+deferential manner.
+
+"Well, well," half laughed, half sighed Mae. "All this is a dream,
+unless, indeed, I go home with Lisetta."
+
+"Who is Lisetta?"
+
+"Our padrona's cousin. She is here on a visit. She lives within a mile
+of Sorrento, on the coast. She goes home at the end of Carnival. Oh,
+how I do long for Carnival," continued Mae, frankly and confidentially.
+"Don't you? I am like a child over it, I am trying already to persuade
+Eric--that is my brother--to take me down on the Corso the last night,
+for the Mocoletti. It would be much better fun than staying on our
+balcony."
+
+"Where is your balcony?" asked Bero, stroking his long moustaches.
+
+"It is on the corner of Maria e Jesu, and if I ever see you coming by, I
+shall be tempted to pepper your pretty uniform. How beautiful it is!"
+
+"Yes," replied Bero, again gazing proudly down at his lithe figure, in
+its well-fitting clothes, "but I would be willing to be showered with
+confetti daily to see you. How shall I know you? What is to be the color
+of your domino?" And he bent forward, hitting his spurs against the
+paving stones, flashing his deep eyes, and half reaching out his hand,
+in that same tender, respectful way.
+
+Mae saw the sunlight strike his hair; she half heard his deep breath;
+and, like a flood, there suddenly swept over her the knowledge that this
+new friend, this sympathizing soul, was an unknown man, and that she
+was a girl. What had she done? What could she do? Confusion and
+embarrassment suddenly overtook her. She bent her eyes away from those
+other eyes, that were growing bolder and more tender in their gaze.
+"I--I--" she began, and just at this very inauspicious moment, while
+she sat there, flushed, by the stranger's side, the clatter of
+swiftly-approaching wheels sounded, and a carriage turned the corner,
+containing Mrs. Jerrold, Edith, Albert, and Norman Mann. They all saw
+her.
+
+Mae laughed. It was such a dreadful situation that it was funny, and she
+laughed again. "Those are my friends," she said, in a low voice. "We
+can walk away," replied the officer, and turned his face in the opposite
+direction. "It is too late; and, besides, why should we?" And Mae looked
+full in his face, then turned to the carriage, which was close upon
+them.
+
+"How do you all do?" she cried, gleefully and bravely. "Isn't there room
+for me in there? Mrs. Jerrold, I would like to introduce Signor--your
+name?"--she said, quite clearly, in Italian, turning to the officer.
+
+"Bero," he replied.
+
+"Signor Bero. He was very kind, and saved me from--from a little beggar
+boy."
+
+"You must have been in peril, indeed," remarked Mrs. Jerrold, bowing
+distantly to Bero, and beckoning the coachman, as Mae sprang into the
+carriage, to drive on. "I am sorry to put you on the box, Norman,"
+Mrs. Jerrold added, as Mae took the seat, in silence, that Mr. Mann
+had vacated for her, "and I hope Miss Mae is also." But Mae didn't hear
+this. She was plucking up courage in her heart, and assuming a saucy
+enough expression, that sat well on her bright face. Indeed, she was
+a pretty picture, as she sat erect, with lips and nostrils a trifle
+distended, and her head a little in the air. The Italian thought so,
+as he walked away, smiling softly, clicking his spurs and stroking
+his moustache; and Norman Mann thought so too, as he tapped his cane
+restlessly on the dash-board and scowled at the left ear of the off
+horse. The party preserved an amazed and stiff silence, as they drove
+homeward.
+
+"Eric," cried Norman, very late that same night. "Do be sober, I have
+something to say to you about Miss Mae."
+
+"Norman, old boy, how can a fellow of my make be sober when he has drunk
+four glasses of wine, waltzed fifteen times, and torn six flounces from
+a Paris dress? Why, man, I am delirious, I am. Tra, la, la, tra, la,
+la. Oh, Norman, if you could have heard that waltz," and Eric seized his
+companion in his big arms and started about the room in a mad dance. "You
+are Miss Hopkins, Norman, you are. Here goes--" but Norman struck out
+a bold stroke that nearly staggered Eric and broke loose. "For Heaven's
+sake, Eric, stop this fooling; I want to speak to you earnestly."
+
+"Evidently," replied Eric, with excited face, "forcibly also. Blows
+belong after words, not before," and the big boy tramped indignantly off
+to bed.
+
+Norman Mann was in earnest truly, forcible also, for he opened his mouth
+to let out a very expressive word as Eric left the room. It did him good
+seemingly, for he strode up and down more quietly. At last he sat down
+and began to talk with himself. "Norman Mann, you've got to do it all
+alone," he said. "Albert and Edith and Aunt Martha are too vexed and
+shocked to do the little rebel any good. Ric, oh, dear, Ric is a silly
+boy, God bless him, and here I am doomed to make that child hate me, and
+with no possible authority over her, or power, for that matter, trying
+to keep her from something terribly wild. If they don't look out, she
+will break loose. I know her well, and there's strong character under
+this storm a-top, if only some one could get at it. Damn it." Norman
+grew forcible again. "Why can't I keep my silly eyes away from her, and
+go off with the fellows. You see," continued Norman, still addressing
+his patient double, "she is a rebel, and--pshaw, I dare say it is half
+my fancy, but I hate that long moustached officer. I wish he would be
+summoned to the front and be shot. O, I forgot, there's no war. Well,
+then, I wish he would fall in love with any body but Mae. It must be
+late. Ric didn't leave that little party very early, I'm sure, but I
+can't sleep. I'll get down my Sismondi and read awhile. I wonder if that
+child is feeling badly now. I half believe she is--but here's my book."
+
+Yes, Mae was feeling badly, heart-brokenly, all alone in her room. After
+a long, harrowing talk with Mrs. Jerrold, at the close of which she
+had received commands never to go out alone in Rome, because it wasn't
+proper, she had been allowed to depart for her own room. Here she closed
+the door leading into Mrs. Jerrold's and Edith's apartment, and opened
+her window wide, and held her head out in the night air--the poisonous
+Roman air. The street was very quiet. Now and then some late wayfarer
+passed under the light at the corner, but Mae had, on the whole, a
+desolate outlook--high, dark buildings opposite, and black clouds above,
+with only here and there a star peeping through.
+
+She had taken down her long hair, thrown off her dress, and half wrapped
+herself in a shawl, out of which her bare arms stretched as she leaned
+on the deep window seat. She looked like the first woman--of the
+Darwinian, not the Biblical, Creation. There was a wild, half-hunted
+expression on her face that was like the set air of an animal brought
+suddenly to bay. She thought in little jerks, quick sentences that
+were almost like the barking growls with which a beast lashes itself to
+greater fury.
+
+"They treated me unfairly. They had no right. I shall choose my own
+friends. How dare they accuse me of flirting? I flirt, pah! I'd like to
+run away. This stupid, stupid life!" And so on till the sentences grew
+more human. "I suppose Mr. Mann thinks I am horrid, but I don't care.
+I wish I could see Eric, he wouldn't blame me so. What a goose I am to
+mind anyway. The Carnival is coming! Even these old tombs must give way
+for ten whole riotous days. I must make them madly merry days. I wonder
+how I will look in my domino. I suppose the pink one is mine."
+
+So Miss Mae dried her eyes, picked her deshabille self from the window
+seat, turned up the light, slipped into her pink and white carnival
+attire, and walked to the window again.
+
+"This is the Corso all full of people, and I'll pelt them merrily,
+so, and so, and so!" She reached forth her bare, round arm into the
+darkness, and looked down, where, full under the street light, gazing up
+at her, stood the Piedmontese officer.
+
+It was at that very moment that Norman Mann put down his Sismondi, and
+looked from his window also.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Mae met Mr. Mann at the breakfast table the next morning without the
+least embarrassment. Indeed, the little flutter in her talk could easily
+be attributed to unusually high spirits and an excited and pleased
+fancy. That was how Norman Mann translated it, of course. Really, the
+flutter was a genuine stirring of her heart with inquietude, timidity
+and semi-repentance; but Mae couldn't say this, and it's only what one
+says out that can be reckoned on in this world. So Norman Mann, who saw
+only the bright cheeks and eyes and restless quickening of an eager girl
+and did not see the palpitating feminine heart inside, was displeased
+and half-cold.
+
+Could any one be long cold to Mae Madden? She believed not. She was
+quite accustomed to lightning-like white heats of anger in those with
+whom she came in contact, but coldness was out of her line. Still
+she met the occasion well. "Shall I give you some coffee?" she asked,
+pleasantly. "We breakfast all alone, until Eric appears. Mrs. Jerrold is
+not well, and Edith and Albert are off for Frascati."
+
+"Poor child; how much alone she is," he thought to himself.
+
+"I understand we all go to the play tonight?" queried Mae.
+
+"The thought of Shakspeare dressed in Italian is not pleasant to me,"
+said Mr. Mann, after a silence of a few minutes.
+
+"I am quite longing to see him in his new clothes. There is so much
+softness and beauty in Italian that I expect to gain new ideas from
+hearing the play robed in more flowing phrases. Shakspeare certainly is
+for all the world."
+
+"But Shakspeare's words are so strongly chosen that they are a great
+element in his great plays. And a translation at best is something of a
+parody, especially a translation from a northern tongue, with its
+force and backbone, so to speak, into a southern, serpentine, gliding
+language. You have heard the absurd rendering of that passage from
+Macbeth where the witches salute him with 'Hail to thee, Macbeth! Hail
+to thee, Thane of Cawdor!' into such French as 'Comment vous portez
+vous, Monsieur Macbeth; comment vous portez vous, Monsieur Thane de
+Cawdor!' A translation must pass through the medium of another mind, and
+other minds like Shakspeare's are hard to find."
+
+Norman spoke with so much reverence for Mae's greatest idol that her
+heart warmed and she smiled approval, though for argument's sake she
+remained on the other side.
+
+"Isn't a translation more like an engraver's art, and aren't fine
+engravings to be sought and admired even when we know the great original
+in its glory of color? Then all writing is only translation, not
+copying. Shakspeare had to translate the tongues he found in stones,
+the books he found in brooks, with twenty-six little characters and his
+great mind, into what we all study, and love, and strive after. But
+he had to use these twenty-six characters in certain hard, Anglo-Saxon
+forms and confine himself to them. When he wanted to talk about
+
+     'fen-sucked fogs,'
+
+and such damp, shivery places, he is all right, but when he sings of
+'love's light wings,' and all that nonsense, he is impeded; now open to
+him 'Italian, the language of angels'--you know the old rhyme--and
+see what a chance he has among the "liquid l's and bell-voiced m's and
+crushed tz's." To-night you will hear Desdemona call Othello 'Il mio
+marito,' in a way that will start the tears. What are the stiff English
+words to that? 'My husband!' Husband is a very uneuphonious name, I
+think."
+
+Norman Mann smiled. "Another cup of coffee, if you please--not quite as
+sweet as the last," and he passed his cup. "I believe there is always a
+charm in a novel word that has not been commonized by the crowd. 'Dear'
+means very little to us nowadays, because every school girl is every
+other school girl's 'dear,' and elderly ladies 'my dear' the world at
+large, in a pretty and benevolent way. So with the words 'husband' and
+'wife'; we hear them every day in commonest speech--'the coachman and
+his wife,' or 'Sally Jones's husband,'--but I take it this is when we
+stand outside. That wonderful little possessive pronoun MY has a great,
+thrilling power. 'My husband' will be as fine to your ears as 'il mio
+marito,' which has, after all, a slippery, uncertain sound; and as for
+'my wife'--"
+
+At that moment the coffee cup, which was on its way back, had reached
+the middle of the table, where by right it should have been met and
+guided by the steadier, masculine hand; Norman's hand was there in
+readiness, but instead of gently removing the cup from Mae's clasp, it
+folded itself involuntarily about the white, round wrist, as he paused
+on these last words. Was it the little possessive pronoun that sent the
+sudden thrill through the unexpecting wrist? At any rate it trembled;
+the cup, the saucer, the coffee, the spoon, followed a well known
+precedent, and "went to pieces all at once;" "all at once and nothing
+first just as bubbles do when they burst." And so alas! did the
+conversation, and that burst a beautiful bubble Norman had just blown.
+
+Damages were barely repaired when Eric entered the breakfast room with a
+petulant sort of face and flung himself into a chair. "My! what a head I
+have on me this morning," he groaned. "Soda water would be worth all the
+coffee in the world, Mae; I'll take it black, if you please. How cosy
+you two look. I always take too much of every thing at a party, from
+flirtation to--O, Mae, you needn't look so sad. I'm not the one in
+disgrace now. Mrs. Jerrold, Edith and Albert are just piping mad at you,
+and as for Mann, here,--by the way," and Eric rubbed his forehead, as if
+trying to sharpen up a still sleepy memory, "I suppose you two have had
+it out by this time. Norman sat up till ever so late to talk you over
+with me, Mae. Do thank him for me; I am under the impression that I
+didn't do so last night."
+
+Mae tapped her fourth finger, on which a small ring glistened, sharply
+against the cream jug. "If I were every body's pet lamb or black sheep,
+I couldn't have more shepherd's crooks about me. Have you joined the
+laudable band, Mr. Mann, and am I requested to thank you for that?"
+
+"Not at all. Perhaps your brother's remembrances of last night are not
+very distinct. I certainly sat up for Sismondi's sake, not for yours."
+And he really thought, for the moment, that he told the truth.
+
+"I warn you," continued Mae, rising as she spoke, "that I have a
+tremendous retinue of mentors, and nurses, and governesses already.
+You had better content yourself with the fact that you have four proper
+traveling companions, and bear the disgrace of being shocked as best you
+may by one wild scrap of femininity who will have her own way in spite
+of you all." Mae half laughed, but she was serious, and the boys both
+knew it.
+
+"You flatter me," replied Norman, "I had aspired to no such position,
+but for your brother's sake, if not for your own, I wished to tell Eric
+that the Roman air at midnight was dangerous to your health. I saw you
+had your window open."
+
+"Did you look through the ceiling, pray?" Mae retorted from the
+door-way. "Eric, ring if you want anything. Rosetta is close at hand."
+
+"I have put my foot in it this time," said Eric, clumsily. "I am real
+sorry, Norman, old boy."
+
+Norman did not feel like being pitied, and this remark of Eric's roused
+him. He fairly ground his teeth and clenched his hands, but his big
+brown moustache and the tablecloth hid these outer manifestations of
+anger. "Don't be a goose, Ric," he said. "What possible difference can
+all this make to me? Your sister is young and quick."
+
+Now, it was Eric's turn to wince. Was he giving this fellow the
+impression that he thought his sister's opinions would affect him?
+Horrible suspicion! Boys always fancy everybody in love with their
+sister. He must cure that at once. "Of course," he replied quickly, "I
+know you and Mae never agree, that you barely stand each other. But I
+didn't know but you would prefer to be on good terms with her, for all
+that."
+
+"Miss Mae can choose the terms on which we meet. I shall be content
+whatever her decision. What are your plans for the day?"
+
+Lounging Eric straightened himself at once. "I was a perfect fool last
+night," he confessed, "and I must rely on you, old fellow, to help me
+out. I made engagements for two weeks ahead with Miss Hopkins and Miss
+Rae. At any rate, I'm booked for the play to-night. Now, I can't take
+two girls very well. That is, I can, but I thought you might like a
+show. You may have your choice of the two. Miss Rae, by the way, says
+she's wild to know you; thought you were the most provoking man she ever
+saw; and that you were--nonsensical idea--engaged to Mae. All because
+you wouldn't look at her the other day when she passed you two, But you
+can go with Miss Hopkins, if you prefer."
+
+"Are they pretty?" asked Norman, apparently warming to the task, "and
+bright?"
+
+"I should say they were. Miss Hopkins has gorgeous great eyes,--but Miss
+Rae is more your style. Still, you may have your choice."
+
+"Silly boy; you're afraid to death that I shall choose Miss Hopkins.
+Well, if they are not over stupid and flirtatious--"
+
+"Stupid! Oh, no,"--Eric scouted that idea--"and flirtatious, perhaps.
+Miss Hopkins rolls her eyes a good deal, but then she has a frankness, a
+winning way."
+
+"Well," laughed Norman, "you're such a transparent, susceptible
+infant-in-arms that I'll go with you."
+
+"As shepherd," suggested Eric, "as long as Mae won't have you. But come,
+we must go down and call on these people. It won't do at all for you to
+appear suddenly this evening, and say, 'I'll relieve my friend here of
+one of you.'"
+
+"Oh, what a bore. Is that necessary? Won't a card or a box of Stillman's
+bon-bons do them? Well, if it must be, come along, then."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+It was evening, and the brilliantly lighted theatre was crowded to
+overflowing. Of course there were English who scowled at the Americans,
+and Americans who smiled on every one and ate candy while Othello
+writhed in jealous rage, and a scattering of Germans with spectacles and
+a row of double-barrelled field glasses glued over them, and Frenchmen
+with impudent eyes and elegant gloves, and a general filling in of
+Italians, with the glitter here and there of nobility, and still oftener
+of bright uniforms. Finally there was a modicum of true gentry, and
+these not of any particular nation or class. It is pleasant to name our
+party immediately after referring to these goodly folks. They had a fine
+box, and although their ranks were thinned by the loss of two cavaliers,
+nobody seemed to care. Albert and Edith were perfectly happy side by
+side, and Mrs. Jerrold was well contented to observe her daughter's
+smile as Albert spoke to her, and the look of manly protection in his
+eyes, as his gaze met Edith's.
+
+As for Mae, she had that delicious feminine pride which is as good
+a stimulant as success to women--in emergencies. And to-night was an
+emergency to this small, excitable, young thing. Her eyes were very dark
+from the expansion of the pupil. They possessed a rare charm, caught
+from a trick the eyelids had of drooping slowly and then suddenly
+and unexpectedly lifting to reveal the wide, bright depths, that
+half-concealed, half-revealed power, which is so tantalizing. Mae was
+dressed in this same spirit to-night, and she was dimly conscious of it.
+The masses of tulle that floated from her opera hat to her chin and down
+on her shoulders, revealed only here and there a glimpse of rich brown
+hair, or of white throat. Her cheeks were scarlet, her lips a-quiver
+with excitement and pleasure. She formed a pretty contrast to Edith,
+who sat by her side. Miss Jerrold leaned back in her chair quietly,
+composedly. She fanned herself in long sweeps, looked pleased,
+contented, but in no wise displaced or surprised--thoroughly well-bred
+and at home. She might have had a private rehearsal of Othello in her
+own dramatic hall the evening before, from her air and mien. Mae, on the
+contrary, was alert, on the qui vive, as interested as a child in each
+newcomer, and, after the curtain rose, in every tableau.
+
+Such a woman can not fail to attract attention, as long as she is
+herself unconscious. The world grows blase so speedily that it enjoys
+all the more thoroughly the sight of freshness, verve, life,--that is,
+the male portion of the world. Women's great desire, as a rule, is
+to appear entirely at ease, city-bred, high-bred, used to all things,
+surprised by none.
+
+So there were a great many glasses turned toward Mae that evening.
+Very probably the young women in the next box accepted a share of these
+glances as their own, and, in a crowd where the French and Italian
+elements predominate, or largely enter, they could not have been far
+wrong. Every girl or woman who pretends to any possible charm is quite
+sure of her share of admiration from these susceptible beings. The
+young ladies of the next box had that indescribable New York air, which
+extends from the carefully brushed eyebrows quite to the curves of the
+wrist and hand. Praise Parisian modes all you will, but for genuine
+style, a New York girl, softened a trifle by commonsense or good taste,
+leads the world--certainly if she is abroad. For there she soon finds
+it impossible to go to the extremes that American air seems to rush
+her into. Three months, or perhaps, if she is observant, three days
+in Paris, teach her that the very biggest buttons, or the very largest
+paniers, or the very flaringest hats are not for her, or any lady,
+and by stepping back to size number two, she does not detract from her
+style, while she does add to her lady-likeness.
+
+These two girls, it may be surmised, were no other than Miss Hopkins and
+Miss Rae, whom chance or fate or bungling Eric Madden, who bought the
+tickets, had seated side by side with the Maddens and Jerrolds. It was
+bothersome, when Norman and Eric had played truant at any rate, but
+there was no help for it; so after a little Eric introduced them all
+round, and the two parties apparently merged into one, or broke up into
+four, for tete-a-tetes soon began. It was a little hard that three girls
+should have each a devoted servant, and that only one, and that one,
+Mae, should be obliged to receive her care from the chaperon; but so it
+was.
+
+Nevertheless, Mae bore herself proudly. She was seated next Miss Rae,
+separated only by the nominal barrier of a little railing, while just
+beyond sat Norman, his chair turned toward the two girls. The stranger
+insisted on drawing Mae into the conversation, partly for curiosity's
+sake, to watch her odd face and manners, partly from that genuine
+generosity that comes to the most selfish of women, when she is
+satisfied with her position. It is pleasant to pity, to be generous; and
+Miss Rae, having the man, could afford to share him now and then, when
+it pleased her, with the lonely girl by her side. But Miss Rae's tactics
+did not work. Mae replied pleasantly when addressed, but returned
+speedily and eagerly to Mrs. Jerrold or a survey of the house, with
+the frank happiness of a child. She was all the more fascinating to the
+admiring eyes that watched her, because she sat alone, electrified by
+the inspiration and magnetism from within, and did not need the stimulus
+of another voice close by her side, breathing compliments and flattery,
+to brighten her eyes and call the blushes to her cheeks. Norman Mann saw
+the eyes fixed on her, and they vexed him. At the same time, he liked
+her the better on that very account.
+
+And at last the curtain rose.
+
+It was just as Desdemona assures her father of her love for Othello,
+that Mae became conscious of a riveted gaze--of a presence. Lifting her
+eyes, and widening them, she looked over to the opposite side of
+the house, and there, of course, was the Piedmontese officer again,
+handsomer, more brilliant than ever, with a grateful, soft look of
+recognition in his eyes.
+
+Mae was out of harmony with all her friends. She was proud and lonely.
+The man's pleased, softened look touched her heart strangely. There was
+almost a choke in her throat, there were almost tears in her eyes, and
+there was a free, glad, welcoming smile on her lips.
+
+Norman Mann saw it and followed it, and caught the officer receiving it,
+and thought "She's a wild coquette."
+
+And Mae knew what he saw and what he thought.
+
+Then a strange spirit entered the girl. Here was a man who vexed her,
+who piqued her, and who was rude, for Mae secretly thought it was rude
+to neglect Mrs. Jerrold, as the boys did that evening, and yet who was
+vexed and piqued in his turn, if she did what he didn't like and looked
+at another man.
+
+And then here was the other man. Mae looked down at him.
+
+Bless us! who is to blame a young woman for forgetting everything but
+the "other man" when he is a godlike Piedmontese officer, with strong
+soft cheek and throat, and Italian eyes, and yellow moustaches, and
+spurs and buttons that click and shine in a maddening sort of way?
+
+Of course, in reality, everybody is to blame her, we among the very
+virtuous first. In this particular case, however, we have facts, not
+morals, to deal with. Mae did see Norman Mann talking delightedly to a
+pretty girl, and she did see the officer gazing at her rapturously, and
+she quite forgot Othello, and gave back look for look, only more shy and
+less intense perhaps, and knew that Norman Mann was very angry and she
+and the officer very happy. What matter though the one should hate her,
+and the other love her, and she--
+
+But, bother all things but the delirious present moment. Never fear
+consequences. There were bright lights, and brilliant people, the hum of
+many voices, the flash of many eyes, and a half secret between her, this
+little creature up in the box, and the very handsomest man of them all.
+
+So while Othello fell about the stage, and ground out tremendous curses,
+Mae half shivered and glanced tremblingly toward Bero, and Bero
+gazed back protectingly and grandly. Once, when Desdemona cried
+out thrillingly, "Othello, il mio marito," Mae looked at Norman
+involuntarily and caught a half flash of his eye, but he turned back
+quickly to his companion and Mae's glance wandered on to Bero and rested
+there as the wild voice cried out again, "il mio marito, il mio marito."
+
+So the evening slid on. Mae smiled and smiled and opened and half closed
+her eyes, and Norman invited Miss Rae to go to church with him, and to
+drive with him, and to walk with him, and to go to the galleries with
+him, "until, Susie Hopkins, if you will believe it, I fairly thought he
+would drop on his knees and ask me to go through life with him, right
+then and there." So Miss Rae confided to Susie Hopkins after the
+victorious night, in the silence of a fourth-story Costanzi bedroom.
+
+Susie Hopkins was putting her hair up on crimping-pins, but she paused
+long enough to say: "Well, Jack Durkee had better hurry himself and his
+ring along, then."
+
+"O, he's coming as quickly as ever he can," laughed Miss Rae, whereat
+she proceeded to place a large letter and a picture under the left-hand
+pillow, crimped her hair, cold-creamed her lips, and laid her down to
+pleasant dreams of--Jack.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Mae was very much ashamed of herself the next morning. She had been
+restored in a measure to popular favor, through Eric, the day before.
+Edith and Albert were home from Frascati, when Eric made his raid
+bravely on their forces combined with those of Mrs. Jerrold. He advanced
+boldly. "It's all nonsense, child, as she is," he said. "It was natural
+enough, to talk with the man," for Mae had made a clean breast of her
+misdoings to him, to the extent of saying that they had chatted after
+the beggar left. "Do forgive her, poor little proud tot, away across the
+sea from her mother. Albert, you're as hard as a rock, and that Edith
+has no spirit in her," he added, under his breath. This remark made
+Albert white with rage. Nevertheless, he put in a plea for his wayward,
+reckless little sister, with effect. After a few more remarks from Mrs.
+Jerrold, Mae came out of the ordeal; was treated naturally, and, as we
+have seen, accompanied Mrs. Jerrold to the play the night before.
+
+Now, it was the next day. Mrs. Jerrold breakfasted in her own room
+again, and spent the hours in writing home letters full of the Peter
+and Paul reminiscences and quotations. Norman and Eric left for the
+Costanzi, and Albert and Edith, armed with books, and note-books, and
+the small camp-stools, again started away together. This last 'again'
+was getting to be accepted quite as a matter of course. Everybody knew
+what it meant. They always invited the rest of the company to go
+with them, and were especially urgent, this morning, that Mae should
+accompany them.
+
+"Why, with mamma in her room you will be lonely," suggested Edith, "and
+you can't go out by yourself."
+
+Mae winced inwardly at this, but replied pleasantly: "I have letters to
+write also, and I'm not in the mood to-day for pictures, and the cold,
+chilling galleries filled with the damp breath of the ages."
+
+So Edith and Albert, nothing loth, having discharged their duty, started
+off. These two have as yet appeared only in the background, and may
+have assumed a half-priggish air in opposition and contrast to Mae.
+They really, however, were very interesting young people. Albert with
+a strong desire in his heart--or was it in his head?--to aid the world,
+and Edith with a clear self-possession and New England shrewdness that
+helped and pleased him. Their travels were enriching them both. Edith
+was trying to draw the soul from all the great pictures and some of the
+lesser ones, and Albert was waking, through her influence, to the world
+of art. This morning they were on their way to the Transfiguration to
+study the scornful sister. They were taking the picture bit by bit,
+color by color, face by face. There are advantages in this analytical
+study, yet there is a chance of losing the spirit of the whole. So Mae
+thought and said: "I know that sister now, Edith, better than you ever
+will." This was while she was looping up her friend's dress here,
+and pulling out a fold there, in that destructive way girls have of
+beautifying each other. "See here!"
+
+And down sank Miss Mae on her knees, with her lips curved, and her hands
+stretched out imploringly, half-mockingly. No need of words to say:
+"Save my brother, behold him. Ah, you cannot do it, your power is boast.
+Yet, save him, pray."
+
+"A little more yellow in my hair, some pearls and a pink gown, and you
+might have the sister to study in a living model, Edith," laughed Mae,
+arising.
+
+Edith and Albert were both struck by Mae's dramatic force, and they
+talked of her as they drove to the Vatican. "I wish I understood her
+better," said Edith. "I cannot feel as if travel were doing her good.
+She is changing so; she was always odd, but then she was always happy.
+Now she has her moods, and there is a look in her eye I am afraid of. It
+is almost savage. You would think the beauty in Rome would delight her
+nature, for she craves beauty and poetry in everything. I don't believe
+the theatre is good for her. Albert, suppose we give up our tickets for
+Thursday night."
+
+"But you want particularly to see that play, Edith."
+
+"I can easily give it up for Mae's sake. It would be cruel to go without
+her, and I think excitement is bad for her."
+
+"You are very generous, Edith, and right, too, I dare say. I wish my
+little sister could see pleasure and duty through your steadier, clearer
+eyes."
+
+Then the steady, clear eyes dropped suddenly, and the two forgot all
+about Mae, and rolled contentedly off, behind the limping Italian
+horse. And the red-cheeked vetturino with the flower in his button-hole,
+whistled a love-song, and thought of his Piametta, I suppose.
+
+Meantime, Mae, left to herself, grew penitent and reckless by turns,
+blushed alternately with shame and with quick pulse-beats, as she
+remembered Norman Mann's face, or the officer's smile. She wondered
+where he lived, and whether she would see him soon again. Poor child!
+She was really innocent, and only dimly surmised how he would haunt her
+hereafter. Would he look well in citizen's clothes? How would Norman
+Mann seem in his uniform? She wished she had a jacket cut like his. And
+so on in an indolent way. But penitence was getting the better of her,
+and after vainly trying to read or write, she settled herself down for
+a cry. To think that she, Mae Madden, could have acted so absurdly. She
+never would forgive herself, never. Then she cried some more, a good
+deal more.
+
+About four in the afternoon a very bright sunbeam peeped through her
+closed blinds, and she brushed away her tears, and peace came back to
+her small heart, and she felt like a New England valley after a shower,
+very fresh and clean, and goodly,--just a trifle subdued, however.
+
+She would go to church. She had heard that there was lovely music at
+vespers, in the little church at the foot of Capo le Case. St. Andrea
+delle Frate, was it? It wasn't very far away. She could say her prayers
+and repent entirely and wholly. So she dressed rapidly, singing the
+familiar old Te Deum joyously all the while, and off she started.
+
+The air was cool and clear and delicious and the street-scenes were
+pretty. Mae took in everything before her as she left the house, from
+the Barberini fountain to the groups of models at the corner of the
+Square and the Via Felice; but she did not see, at some distance
+behind her, on the opposite side of the street, the sudden start of a
+motionless figure as she left the house, or know that it straightened
+itself and moved along as she did, turning on to the pretty Via Sistina,
+so down the hill at Capo le Case, to the church below.
+
+She was early for vespers, and there was only the music singing in her
+own happy little heart as she entered the quiet place. The contrast
+between the spot, with its shrines and symbols and aids to faith, and
+all that she had associated with religion, conspired to separate her
+from herself and her past, and left her a bit of breathing, worshiping
+life, praising the great Giver of Life. She fell on her knees in an
+exalted, jubilate spirit. She was more like a Praise-the-Lord psalm of
+David than like a young girl of the nineteenth century.
+
+And yet close behind her, a little to the left, was Bero on his knees
+too, at his pater nosters.
+
+By and by the music began. It was music beyond description; those
+wonderful male voices, the chorus of young boys, and then suddenly, the
+organ and some one wild falsetto carrying the great Latin soul-laden
+words up higher.
+
+All this while Mae's head was bent low and her heart was a-praying.
+
+All this while Bero was on his knees also, but his eyes were on Mae.
+
+The music ceased; the prayers were ended. Mae heard indistinctly the
+sweep of trailing skirts, the sound of footsteps on the marble floor,
+the noise of voices as the people went away, but still she did not move.
+The selah pause had come after the psalm.
+
+When she did rise, and turn, and start to go, her eyes fell on the
+kneeling form. She tried to pass quickly without recognition, but he
+reached out his hand.
+
+"This is a church," said Mae; "my prayers are sacred; do not disturb
+me."
+
+He held his rosary toward her, with the cross at the end tightly clasped
+in his hand. "My prayers are here, too," he said. "Oh, Signorina, give
+me one little prayer, one of your little prayers."
+
+He knelt before her in the quiet, dim, half light, his hands clasped,
+and an intense earnestness in his easily moved Italian soul, that
+floated up to his face. It looked like beautiful penitence and faith
+to Mae. Here was a soul in sympathy with hers, one which met her
+harmoniously in every mood, slid into her dreams and wild wishes,
+sparkled with her enjoyment, and now knelt as she knelt, and asked for
+one of her prayers.
+
+She stood a minute irresolute. Then she smiled down on him a full, rich
+smile, and said in English: "God bless you," The next moment she was
+gone.
+
+Bero made no movement to follow her, but remained quietly on his knees,
+his head bowed low.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I looked in at St. Andrea's, at vespers," said that dear, bungling
+fellow, Eric, at dinner that night, "and saw you Mae, but you were so
+busy with your prayers I came away." There was a pause, and Mae knew
+that people looked at her.
+
+"Yes, I was there; the music was wonderful."
+
+"Mae," asked Mrs. Jerrold, "Do you have to go to a Roman Catholic Church
+to say your prayers?" For Mrs. Jerrold was a Puritan of the Puritans,
+and had breathed in the shorter catechism and the doctrine of election
+with the mountain air and sea-salt of her childhood. Possibly the two
+former had had as much to do as the latter with her angularity and
+severe strength.
+
+"Indeed," cried Mae, impulsively, "I wish I could always enter a church
+to say my prayers. There is so much to help one there."
+
+"Is there any danger of your becoming a Romanist?" enquired Mrs.
+Jerrold, pushing the matter further.
+
+"I wish there were a chance of my becoming anything half as good, but I
+am afraid there isn't. Still, I turn with an occasional loyal heart-beat
+to the great Mother Church, that the rest of you have all run away
+from." "Yes, you have," Mae shook her head decidedly at Edith. "She may
+be a cruel mother. I know you all think she's like the old woman
+who lived in a shoe, and that she whips her children and sends them
+supperless to bed, and gives them a stone for bread, but she's the
+mother of all of us, notwithstanding."
+
+"What a dreadful mixture of Mother Goose and Holy Bible," exclaimed
+Eric, laughingly, while Mae cooled off, and Mrs. Jerrold stared
+amazedly, wondering how to take this tirade. She concluded at last that
+it would be better to let it pass as one of Mae's extravagances, so she
+ended the conversation by saying: "I hope, Eric, you will wait for your
+sister, if you see her alone, at church. It is not the thing for her to
+go by herself."
+
+"No," added Albert, "we shall have to buy a chain for you soon."
+
+"If you do," said Mae quietly, "I'll slip it." And not another prayer
+did she say that night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+It was the first day of Carnival. The determination to enjoy herself
+was so strong in Mae, that her face fairly shone with her "good time
+coming." She popped her head out of the doorway, and flung a big handful
+of confetti right at Eric, but he dodged, and Norman Mann caught it in
+his face. Then, seeing a try-to-be-dignified look creeping upon Mae, he
+seized the golden moment, gathered up such remnants of confetti as were
+tangled in his hair and whiskers, and flung them back again, shouting:
+"Long live King Pasquino! So his reign has begun, has it?"
+
+"Yes; King Pasquino is lord, now, for ten whole days," and she slowly
+edged her right hand about, to take aim again at Norman. He saw her, and
+frustrated the attempt by catching it and emptying the contents out
+upon the floor. The little white balls rolled off to the corners and the
+little hand fell slowly by Mae's side. "Why not go down to the Corso,
+you and I, and see the beginning of the fun?" suggested Norman.
+
+"Come along," cried Mae, "you, too, Eric," and the three started off
+like veritable children, in a delightful, familiar, old-time way.
+Arrived at their loggia, they found an old woman employed in filling,
+with confetti, a long line of boxes, fastened to the balustrade of the
+balcony. Little shovels, also, were provided, for dealing out the tiny
+missals of war upon the heads below. There were masks in waiting, some
+to be tied on, while others terminated in a handle, by a skilful use of
+which they could be made as effective as a Spanish lady's fan. Mae chose
+one of these latter.
+
+The Corso was alive with vendors of small bouquets and bon-bons and
+little flying birds tied in live agony to round yellow oranges. The
+fruit in turn was fastened to a long pole and so thrust up to the
+balconies as a tempting bait. If bought, the birds and flowers were
+tossed together into the streets to a passing friend. As Mae was gazing
+rapturously over the balcony, laughing at the few stragglers hurrying
+to the Piazza del Popolo, admiring the bannered balconies and gay
+streamers, several of these little birds were thrust up to her face,
+some of them peeping piteously and flapping their poor wings. She put up
+her hands and caught the oranges, one--two--three--four. In a moment
+she had freed the fluttering birds and tossed the fruit back into the
+street. "Pay them, Eric," she cried indignantly; "Why, what is this?"
+for one of the little creatures, after vainly flapping its wings, had
+fallen on the balcony. Mae picked it up. It half opened its eyes at her
+and then lay still in her hands.
+
+"It is dead," said Mae, quietly, going up to Norman. "Oh! Mr. Mann, I
+thought Carnival meant real fun, not cruelty. Isn't there anywhere in
+this big world where we can get free from such dreadful things? Well!"
+she added, impatiently, as Norman paused.
+
+"Give a slow fellow who likes the world better than you do, time to
+apologize for it," replied Norman, as familiarly as Eric would have
+done. The tone pleased Mae. She looked up and laughed lightly. "At any
+rate," suggested he, "let's forget the cruelty now and take the fun.
+Three of them are safe and very likely this scrap," and he touched
+the dead bird in her hand, "is flying to rejoin his brothers in
+hunting-grounds that are stocked with angle-worms, and such game. We are
+to have a good time to-day, you and I."
+
+At this moment Eric rushed up. "Say, Mann," he cried, "here they come.
+They have taken the balcony just opposite, after all. And Miss Hopkins
+looks perfectly in a white veil. And oh! here are the rest of our own
+party."
+
+Mae lifted her eyes to the opposite side of the street, but they did not
+fall to the level of the Hopkins-Rae party, being stopped by something
+above. At a high, fourth-story window, beyond the circle of flying fun
+and frolic, confetti and flowers, Mae saw a wonderful woman's face, a
+face with great dark eyes and raven hair. A heavily-figured white lace
+veil was pulled low over her brow, and fell in folds against her cheeks.
+Her skin was white, the scarlet of her face concentrating in her lips.
+
+There was a strange consonance between the creamy heavy lace and its
+flowing intertwined figures, and the face it encircled. A mystery, a
+grace, a subtle charm, that had the effect of a vivid dream, in its
+combination of clearness and unreality. There was life, with smothered
+passion and pride and pain in it, Mae was sure. So near to her that her
+voice could have arched the little distance easily, and yet so far away
+from her life and all that touched it.
+
+A gentleman attending the lady whispered to her. She bent her eyes on
+Mae, and met her glance with a smile, and Mae smiled rapturously back.
+
+Mae had been looking for Bero all that afternoon. She felt sure he would
+be there, and very soon she saw him among a crowd of officers sauntering
+slowly down the Corso. He looked up at the window opposite. The veiled
+lady leaned slightly forward and bowed and waved her white hand. Bero
+bowed. So did the other officers.
+
+Norman Mann and Eric excused themselves long enough to dash over to
+welcome their friends and then stayed on for a little chat. These young
+women were quite gorgeous in opera cloaks and tiny, nearly invisible,
+American flags tucked through their belts. They tossed confetti down on
+every one's heads, and shouted--a little over-enthusiastically, but one
+can pardon even gush if it is only genuine. That was the question in
+this case.
+
+The horse race came; and Mae went fairly wild. When it was over, every
+body prepared to go home. King Pasquino had virtually abdicated in favor
+of the Dinner Kings. Mae unclasped her tightly strained hands, clambered
+down from a chair she had perched herself on, smiled a good-bye at the
+veiled lady, and came away. She rode home quietly with a big bouquet of
+exquisite blue violets in her hand. There was a rose on top and a fringe
+of maiden's hair at the edge, and the bouquet was flung from Bero's own
+hand up at the side window on the quiet Jesu e Maria, when everyone else
+but Mae was out on the Corso balcony.
+
+"It is dreadful to grow old," said Mae, breaking silence, as the
+carriage clattered over the stony streets.
+
+"My dear," expostulated Edith, "you surely don't call yourself old. What
+do you mean?"
+
+"I fancied I could take the Carnival as a child takes a big bonbon and
+just think with a smack of the lips, 'My! how good this is.' But here
+I am, wondering what my candy is made of all the time, and forgetting,
+except at odd moments, to enjoy myself for trying to separate false from
+true, and gold from gilt. Still, what is the use of this stuff now! I'll
+remember that horse race, for there I did forget myself and everything
+but motion. How I would like to be a horse!" And the volatile Mae seized
+the stems of her bouquet for whip and bridle and gave a little inelegant
+expressive click-click to her lips as if she were spurring that
+imaginary steed herself.
+
+Norman smiled. "We can't keep children for ever, even--"
+
+"The silliest of us?"
+
+"Even the freshest and blithest."
+
+"O, dear, that is like a moral to a Sunday-school book," said Mae;
+"don't be goody-goody to-night."
+
+"What bad thing shall I do to please your majesty, my lady Pasquino?"
+
+"Waltz," said Mae. So, after dinner, Edith and Eric sang, and Norman and
+Mae took to the poetry of motion as ducks take to water, and outdanced
+the singers.
+
+"Thank you," said Mae, smiling up at him. "This has done me good." She
+pushed the brown hair back from her forehead and drew some deep breaths
+and leaned back in her chair, still tapping her eager, half-tired foot
+against the floor, while Norman fanned her with his handkerchief.
+
+This time Bero and the strange, veiled lady and Miss Hopkins and
+every other confusing thought floated off, and left them quite happy
+for--well--say for ten minutes.
+
+And ten minutes consecutive enjoyment is worth waiting for, old and
+cynical people say.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning brought back all her troubles, with variations and
+complications, on account of some more misunderstood words.
+
+"I think," said Mae, as she paused to blot the tenth page of a home
+letter, "that likes and dislikes are very similar, don't you, Edith?"
+Then, as Edith did not reply, she glanced up, and saw that her friend's
+chair was occupied by Norman Mann. He looked up also and smiled.
+
+"I am not Edith, you see, but I am interested in your theory all the
+same. Only, as I am a man, I shall require you to show up your reasons."
+
+"Well, I find that people who affect me very intensely either way, I
+always feel intuitively acquainted with. I know what they will think and
+how they will act under given conditions, and I believe we are driven
+into friendship or strong dislikes more by the force of circumstances
+than by--"
+
+"Elective affinities or any of that nonsense," suggested Norman Mann.
+
+"Yes," said Mae, nodding her head, and repeating her original
+statement under another form, as a sort of conclusion and proof to the
+conversation. "Yes, a natural acquaintance may develop into your best
+friend or your worst foe." She started on page number eleven of her
+letter, dipping her pen deep into the ink-stand and giving such a
+particular flourish to her right arm, as to nearly upset the bouquet of
+flowers at her side. It was Bero's gift. Norman Mann put out his hand
+to save it. His fingers fell in among the soft flowers and touched
+something stiff. It felt like a little roll of paper. Indignantly and
+surprisedly he pulled it out. "What is this?" he cried.
+
+Mae sprang forward, her cheeks aflame. "It is mine," she said.
+
+"Did you put it here?" asked Norman.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then how do you know it is yours? Is not this a carnival bouquet, idly
+tossed from the street to the balcony?"
+
+Mae straightened to her utmost height which wasn't lofty then and said
+hastily: "Mr. Mann, this is utterly absurd, and more. I am not a child,
+and if I catch an idly flung bouquet that holds idle secrets, I
+surely have a right to them." She laughed hurriedly. "Come, give me my
+note,--some Italian babble, I dare say."
+
+Norman looked at her for a minute with a struggle in his heart and a
+flash of half scorn, Mae thought, on his face. What was he thinking?
+
+That the child was in danger. He had no doubt in his own mind now that
+the flowers and the note came from Bero and that Mae knew it. He held
+the paper crushed in his hand, while he looked at her.
+
+"I presume you will never forgive me," he said, "but I must warn you,
+not as a mentor or even as a friend," noticing her annoyed air, "but as
+one soul is bound to warn another soul, seeing it in danger. Take care
+of yourself, and there!" And taking the crushed note between his two
+hands, he deliberately tore it asunder and threw the halves on the table
+before her.
+
+"And there, and there, and there!" cried Mae, tearing the fragments
+impetuously, and scattering the sudden little snow flakes before him.
+Then, with a look of supreme contempt, she left the room.
+
+Norman looked down on the white heap that lay peacefully at his feet. "I
+am a fool," he thought.
+
+"Little Mae Madden, little Mae Madden, I am so sorry for you," repeated
+that excited bit of womankind to herself in the silence of her own room.
+"What won't they drive you to yet? How dreadful they think you are? And
+only last night we thought things were all coming around beautifully!"
+
+And she looked at herself pityingly in the glass. A mirror is a
+dangerous thing for a woman who has come to pity herself. She sees the
+possibilities of her face too clearly. And Mae, looking into the mirror
+then, realized to an extent she never had before, that her eyes and
+mouth might be powerful friends to herself and foes to Norman Mann,
+if she so desired. And to-day she did so desire, and went down to the
+Carnival with as reckless and dangerous a spirit as good King Pasquino
+could have asked.
+
+The details of this day were very like those of the last. Norman and
+Eric vibrated between the Madden and Hopkins balconies; the crowd was
+great; confetti and flowers filled the air; and up above it all,
+circled by her crown of misty, heavy lace-work, shone out the beautiful,
+wonderful face of the strange lady. She dropped smiles from under her
+long black lashes and from the corners of the rare, sweet mouth over
+the heads of the idlers to Mae, who looked up to catch them. There was
+a resting, almost saving influence, Mae's excited soul believed, in
+the strange face; and her eyes sought it constantly. She had been quite
+oblivious to the friends about this beautiful stranger, but once, as
+her eyes sought the Italian's, she saw her arise with a sudden flash of
+light on her face, and hold out a white hand. A head bent over it, and
+as it lifted itself slowly, Mae saw once more the well-known features of
+the Signor Bero.
+
+She looked down toward the street quickly and a sharp pain filled her
+heart.
+
+She had lost her only friend in Rome, so the silly girl said to herself.
+If he knew that wonderful woman, and if she flashed those weary, great
+eyes for him, how could he see or think of any other? Moreover, it was
+very vexatious to have him there. If she smiled up at the girl, Bero
+might think she was watching him, trying to attract his notice. So Mae
+appeared very careless and played she did not see him at all, at all.
+Yet she could not resist looking up now and then for one of the rare
+smiles. They seemed like very far between "nows and thens" to Mae,
+averaging possibly a distance of four minutes apart. But that is as one
+counts time by steady clock-ticks, and not by heart-beats.
+
+Meanwhile, what could she do with her eyes? They would wander once in a
+while over to the opposite balcony, at just such moments as when Norman
+Mann was picking up Miss Rae's fan and receiving her thanks for it from
+under her drooped eyelids, or choosing a flower for himself, "the very,
+very prettiest, Mr. Mann," before she threw the rest to the winds and
+the passing gallants.
+
+As Mae grew reckless her eyes grew bright. There were few passers-by who
+were not attracted by the flash of those eyes. The sailor lads, as they
+trundled past in their ship on wheels, left the barrels of lime from
+which they had been pelting the pleasure-seekers to throw whole
+handfuls of flowers up to the Jesu e Maria balcony; a set of hale young
+Englishmen picked out their prettiest bonbons for the same purpose;
+and one elderly, pompous man, who drove unmasked and with staring opera
+glasses up and down the Corso, quite showered her with bouquets, which
+he threw so poorly, and with such a shaky old hand, that the street
+gamins caught them all except such as he craftily flung so that they
+might assuredly tumble back to the carriage again. And Mae, though she
+had felt the pleased gaze of a good many eyes before, had never quite
+put its meaning plainly to herself. She was apt, on such occasions, to
+feel high-spirited, excited, joyous, but now she realized well that she
+was being admired, and she led on for victory ardently.
+
+She tossed back little sprays of flowers, or quiet bonbons, or now and
+then mischievously let drop a sprinkling of confetti balls through her
+half-closed fingers. To do this she drooped her hand low over among
+the balcony trimmings, following the soft shower with her eyes, as
+some straight soldier would wipe the tiny minie balls from his face and
+glance up to see where they came from. If he looked up once, he never
+failed to look again, and generally darted around the nearest corner
+to return with his offering, in the shape of flowers or other pretty
+carnival nonsense. Mae rather satisfied her conscience, which was
+tolerably fast asleep for the time being, at any rate, with the fact
+that she didn't smile at these strangers--she only looked!
+
+Her pleasure was heightened by the knowledge that she was watched. If
+she glanced across quickly, Miss Rae's eyes were invariably fixed on her
+and Norman Mann would be gazing in the opposite direction in the most
+suspicious manner. From above her strange friend leaned over admiringly
+and once, as Mae looked joyously upwards, clapped her white hands softly
+together, while beyond her a tall figure stood motionless, Mae had
+pretended not to see Bero yet, but as the Italian applauded her in this
+gentle manner, her eyes sought his involuntarily. He was gazing very
+fixedly and rapturously down on her, without any apparent thought of the
+beautiful girl by his side. After that, Mae looked up often, in a glad,
+childlike way, for spite of this first lesson in wholesale coquetry, and
+the new conflict of emotions within her mind, she was enjoying herself
+with the utter abandon of her glad nature.
+
+Toward the close of the afternoon, the Italian was suddenly surrounded
+by a great mass of flowers, over which she waved her hand caressingly
+and pointed down at Mae. "For you," the gesture seemed to say. The
+veiled lady appeared to summon several of her friends, for a number of
+gentlemen left the other window and its group of girls, and began the
+difficult task of attempting to toss the bouquets from their height down
+to Mae. This was rendered the more difficult as the Madden balcony was
+covered, and the best shots succeeded in landing their trophies on this
+awning, where they were speedily captured and drawn in by the occupants
+of the next flat, an ogre of an old woman and her hook-nosed daughter,
+who wore an ugly green dress and was otherwise unattractive.
+
+The entire Madden party became interested and stood looking on with
+the most encouraging smiles. The very last bouquet was vainly thrown,
+however, and gathered in by the ogre, when Bero suddenly appeared, a
+little behind the party in the window. The flowers in his hand were of
+the same specimens as those he had given Mae the day before, although
+different in arrangement. He lifted the bouquet quickly to his lips,
+so quickly that perhaps only Mae understood the motion, and flung it
+lightly forward. Mae leaned over the balcony, reaching out her eager
+hands, and caught it in her very finger tips. The party above bowed and
+applauded, as she raised the flowers triumphantly to her face.
+
+So the second day of the Carnival was a success, till they turned their
+backs on the Corso. In the carriage Mrs. Jerrold spoke gently but firmly
+to Mae. "Be a little more careful, dear; don't let your spirits carry
+you quite away during these mad days." Mae smiled, but was silent.
+
+"What a strangely beautiful girl that was in the gallery opposite,"
+Edith said, a moment later. "I wonder if she is engaged to that superb
+man; I fancied I had seen him before. Why, Mae, what in the world are
+you blushing at?" For Mae's face was scarlet. "Why, nothing," replied
+Mae, redder yet; "nothing at all. What do you mean?"
+
+The same thought occurred to Edith and Albert. The officer was Mae's
+chance acquaintance. They both looked grave, and Albert remarked: "It is
+as well to be careful before getting up too sudden an acquaintance with
+your Italian girl. Take care of your eyes."
+
+"Has it come to this?" cried Mae, half jestingly, half bitterly. "Are
+nor my very eyes my own? I shall feel, Albert, as if you were trying to
+bind me in that chain you threatened," and Mae started: her fingers had
+felt another scrap of paper among the flowers, but she did not drop it
+from the carriage, as her first impulse was; she held it tight and close
+in her warm right hand until she was fairly at home and safe in her own
+room. Then she opened and read in an Italian hand, "To my little Queen
+of the Carnival."
+
+Could he have written that as he stood by the wonderful veiled lady,
+with her white mysterious beauty, with the purple shadows about her dark
+eyes, while she--and Mae looked in her glass again. What did she see?
+Certainly a different picture, but a picture for all that. Life and
+color and youth, a-tremble and a-quiver in every quick movement of her
+face, in the sudden lifting of the eyelids, the swift turn of the lips,
+the litheness and carelessness of every motion; above and beyond all,
+the picture possessed that rare quality which some artist has declared
+to be the highest beauty, that picturesque charm which shines from
+within, that magnetic flash and quiver which comes and goes "ere one can
+say it lightens."
+
+The veiled lady's face was stranger, more mysterious, to an artistic or
+an imaginative mind; but youth, and intense life, and endless variety
+usually carry the day with a man's captious heart, and so Bero called
+Mae
+
+     "My little Queen of the Carnival."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Mae's good times were greatly dimmed after this by the thought that she
+was watched. The bouquets which came daily from Bero troubled her also
+not a little. They were invariably formed of the same flowers, and might
+easily attract Edith's attention and possible suspicion. So she
+stayed home from the Corso one day not long after, when she was in
+a particularly Corso-Carnival mood. She wandered helplessly about,
+restless and full of desire to be down at the balcony with the rest. And
+such a strange thing is the human heart, that it was Norman Mann's face
+she saw before her constantly, and she found Miss Rae's little twinkling
+sort of eyes far more haunting than those of her veiled friend.
+
+The rich life in Mae's blood was surging in her veins and must be let
+off in some way. If she had had her music and a piano she might have
+thrown her soul into some great flood-waves of harmony. The Farnesina
+frescoes of Cupid and Psyche over across the Tiber would have helped
+her, but here she was alone, and so she did what so many "fervent souls"
+do--scribbled her heart out in a colorful, barbarous rhyme. Mae had
+ordinarily too good sense for this, too deep a reverence for that world
+of poetry, at the threshold of which one should bow the knee, and loose
+the shoe from his foot, and tread softly. She didn't care for this
+to-day. She plunged boldly in, wrote her verse, copied it, sent it to
+a Roman English paper, and heard from it again two days later, in the
+following way.
+
+The entire party were breakfasting together, when Albert suddenly looked
+up from his paper and laughed. "Look here," he cried. "Here is another
+of those dreadful imitators of the Pre-Raphaelite school. Hear this from
+a so-called poem in the morning's journal:
+
+     'The gorgeous brown reds
+     Of the full-throated creatures of song.'"
+
+"I don't see anything bad in that," said Eric, helping himself to
+another muffin. "What is the matter with you?"
+
+"Matter enough," returned Albert. "Because their masters, sometimes,
+daub on colors with their full palettes and strong brushes, this feeble
+herd tag after them and flounder around in color and passion in a way
+that is sickening."
+
+"Go on," shouted Eric, "he is our own brother, Mae, after all, you see.
+Fancy my Lord Utilitarian turning to break a lance in defence of beauty.
+Edith, you and the picture-galleries are to blame for this."
+
+Mae had been paying great attention to her rolls and coffee, and very
+little apparently to the conversation, but she spoke eagerly now.
+"Their masters do not daub. They do hold palettes full of the strongest,
+richest colors, and dare lay them, in vivid flecks, on their canvas.
+They do not care if they may offend some modern cultivated eyes, used
+only to the invisible blues and shadowy greens and that host of cold,
+lifeless, toneless grays, of refined conventional art. They know well
+enough that their satisfying reds and browns and golds of rich, free
+nature will go to the beating hearts of some of us."
+
+Mae had a way of dashing into conversation abruptly, and the Madden
+family had been brought up on argument and table-talk. So the rest of
+the party ate their breakfast placidly enough. "Mae's right," said Eric,
+a trifle grandly, "only, to change the figure of speech for one better
+fitted for the occasion, they may satiate, though they never starve you.
+But they are wonderfully fine, sometimes. O, bother, I never can
+quote, but there is something about 'I will go back to the great sweet
+mother."'
+
+"Or this," suggested Mae,
+
+     "'And to me thou art matchless and fair
+     As the tawny sweet twilight, with blended
+     Sunlight and red stars in her hair.'"
+
+"I love my masters," continued this young enthusiast, "because they
+fling all rules aside, and cry out as they choose. It is their very
+heart's blood and the lusty wine of life that they give you, not just
+a scrap of 'rosemary for remembrance' and a soothing herb-tea made
+from the flowers of fancy they have culled from those much travestied,
+abominable fields of thought."
+
+"And this from a lover of Wordsworth, who holds the 'Daffodils' and
+'Lucy' as her chief jewels, and quotes the 'Immortality' perpetually!"
+cried Eric. "If any body ever wandered up and down those same fields of
+thought, by more intricate, labyrinthine passages and byways, I'd
+like to know of him. Talk about soothing herbs, bless me, it's hot
+catnip-tea, good and strong, that he serves up in half of his strings
+about--"
+
+"O, Eric, hush," cried Mae, "I am afraid for you with such words on your
+lips. Think of Ananias."
+
+"Before you children go wandering off on one of your poet fights," broke
+in Albert, "let me take you to task, Mae, for stealing; that lusty wine
+you talked of just now is in the poem (?) I hold in my hand."
+
+"Do read it to us," said Edith, "and let us judge for ourselves." So
+Albert began:
+
+
+ALL ON A SUMMER'S DAY.
+
+      "Far away the mountains rise, purpling and joyous,
+     Through the half mist of the warm pulsing day, while nigh
+     At hand gay birds hang swinging and floating
+     And waving betwixt earth and sky,
+       Ringing out from ripe throats
+       A sensuous trickling of notes,
+     That fall through the trees,
+     Till caught by the soft-rocking breeze
+         They are borne to the ears of the maiden.
+
+       Her eyes wander after the sound,
+     And glimpses she catches along
+       Through green broad-leaved shadows,
+     Through sunbeams gold-strong,
+     Of the gorgeous brown reds of the full-throated creatures of song.
+       One hand on her brown bosom rests,
+     Rising and falling with every heart-beat
+       Of the delicate, slow-swelling breasts.
+
+       A lily, proud, all color of amber and wine,
+       Waves peerless there, by right divine
+     Queen o'er the moment and place.
+       As the wind bends her coaxingly,
+       Brushes softly the maiden's white hand--
+     That falls with an idle grace,
+       Listlessly closed at her side--
+       With a rippling touch, such as the tide,
+     Rising, leaves on a summer day,
+     On the quiet shore of some peaceful bay.
+
+     There she stands in the heavily-bladed grass,
+       Under the trumpet-vine,
+     Drinking long, deep, intoxicate draughts
+       Of Nature's lusty, live wine.
+     There he sees her as he approaches;
+       Then pauses, as full on his ear
+       There swells, on a sudden, loud and clear,
+         A wonderful burst of song.
+
+       A mad delicious glory; a rainbow rhythm of life,
+       Strong and young and free, a burst of the senses all astrife,
+         Each one fighting to be first,
+     While above, beyond them all,
+     Loud a woman's heart makes call."
+
+"Now, fire ahead," said Eric, "get your stones ready. Mrs. Jerrold, pray
+begin; let us put down this young parrot with her 'lusty, live wine.'"
+
+"Her?" exclaimed Edith. "Him, you mean."
+
+"Not a bit of it; a woman wrote that, didn't she?"
+
+Eric was very confident. Norman agreed with him, and he glanced at Mae
+to discover her opinion. There was a look of secret amusement in her
+face, and a dim suspicion entered his mind, which decided him to watch
+her closely.
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Jerrold, "I will be lenient. You children may throw
+all the stones. It is not poetry to my taste. There's no metre to it,
+and I should certainly be sorry to think a woman wrote it."
+
+"Why?" asked Mae, quickly, almost commandingly. Norman glanced at her.
+There was a tiny rosebud on each cheek.
+
+"Because," replied Mrs. Jerrold, "it is too--too what, Edith?"
+
+"Physical, perhaps," suggested Edith.
+
+"It is a satyr-like sort of writing," suggested Norman.
+
+"I should advise this person," said Edith--
+
+"To keep still?" interrupted Eric.
+
+"No, to go to work; that is what he or she needs."
+
+"That is odd advice," said Mae; "suppose she--or he--is young, doesn't
+know what to do, is a traveler, like ourselves, for instance."
+
+"There are plenty of benevolent schemes in Rome, I am sure," said Edith,
+a trifle sanctimoniously.
+
+"And there's study," said Albert, "art or history. Think what a chance
+for studying them one has here. Yes, Edith is right--work or study, and
+a general shutting up of the fancy is what this mind needs."
+
+"I disagree with you entirely," said Norman with energy. "She needs
+play, relaxation, freedom." Then he was sorry he had said it; Mae's eyes
+sparkled so.
+
+"She needs," said Eric, pushing back his chair, "to be married. She is
+in love. That's what's the matter. Read those two last lines, Albert:
+
+     'While above, beyond them all,
+     Loud a woman's heart makes call.'
+
+"Don't you see?"
+
+"O, wise young man," laughed Edith. But Mae arose. The scarlet buds in
+her cheeks flamed into full-blown roses. "There speaks the man," she
+cried passionately, "and pray doesn't a woman's heart ever call for
+anything but love--aren't life and liberty more than all the love in the
+world? Oh!" and she stopped abruptly.
+
+"Well, we have wasted more time than is worth while over this young,
+wild gosling," laughed Albert. "Let us hope she will take our advice."
+
+Mae shook her head involuntarily. There was a smile on Norman Mann's
+lips.
+
+"Here's health and happiness to the poor child at any rate," he said.
+
+"He pities me," thought Mae, "and I hate him." But then she didn't at
+all.
+
+Mae wandered off to the kitchen, as usual, that day, for another of
+Lisetta's stories. The Italian, with her glibness of tongue and ready
+fund of anecdote, was transformed in her imaginative mind into a
+veritable improvisatore. Talila was not by any means the only heroine
+of the little tales. Mae had made the acquaintance of many youths and
+maidens, and to-day Lisetta, after thinking over her list of important
+personages, chose the Madre Ilkana as the heroine of the occasion. Mae
+had already heard one or two amusing incidents connected with this old
+mother. "I am sure she has a cousin in America," she asserted to-day,
+before Lisetta began, "for I know her well. She knits all the time,
+and is as bony as a ledge of rocks, and her eyes are as sharp as her
+knitting-needles, and her words are the sharpest of all. Her name is
+Miss Mary Ann Rogers. Is she like the Madre Ilkana?"
+
+Lisetta shook her head. "No, no, Signorina, La Madre is as plump and
+round as a loaf of bread, and as soft as the butter on it. She has
+five double chins that she shakes all the while, but then she has stiff
+bristles, like a man's, growing on them, and her knitting-needles and
+her words are all sharp as la Signora Maria Anne R-o-o-g-eers, I doubt
+not. But her eyes! Why, Signorina, she has the evil eye!" This Lisetta
+said in a whisper, while Giovanni shrugged his shoulders bravely, and
+little Roberto cuddled closer to Mae.
+
+"Yes," continued Lisetta, "and so no one knows exactly about her eyes,
+not daring to look directly into them, but as nearly as I can make out
+they are black, and have a soft veil over them, so that you would think
+at first they were just about to cry, when suddenly, fires creep up and
+burn out the drops, and leave her hot and angry and scorching.
+
+"She must be terrible," cried Mae, with a sudden shrinking.
+
+"She IS terrible," replied Lisetta, "but then she is very clever. You
+will see if she is not clever when you hear the story I shall now tell
+you," and Lisetta laughed, and showed her own one double chin, with its
+two little round dimples. Then she smoothed down her peasant apron, bade
+Giovanni leave off pinching Roberto, and commenced.
+
+"The government hates the banditti," began Lisetta, wisely, "and indeed
+it should," and she looked gravely at Giovanni, "for they are very wild
+men, who live reckless bad lives, and steal, and are quite dreadful. But
+we poor, we do not hate them as the government does, because they are
+good to us, and do not war with us, and sometimes those we love join
+them--a brother or a cousin, perhaps,"--and Lisetta's black eyes filled,
+and her lip quivered. "As for the Madre, she loved them all, and said
+they were all relations.
+
+"At this time of which I speak, the soldiers were chasing and hunting
+the banditti very hard, and they had been compelled to hide for their
+lives up among the mountains. There they would have died, had it not
+been for the peasants, who supplied them with food. Small parties of the
+bandits would come out for it. There were two very powerful men of the
+banditti, who were skirmishing about in this way, not far from the
+Madre Ilkana's, when they saw two soldiers, in advance of their company,
+approaching them. The banditti were not afraid for themselves, but they
+wanted to get back to their friends with the bread and meat, so instead
+of fighting, they fled to the Madre. She took them in, and bade them be
+sure they were safe with her. But the soldiers had caught sight of them,
+and they stopped at every house and enquired and searched for them; and
+so, soon they came to the Madre Ilkana's. They charged her in the name
+of the government to give up the banditti in her house. The Madre kept
+on with her knitting, and told them there were only her two sons in the
+house, and mothers never gave up their sons to any one.
+
+"'Ha!' laughed one of the soldiers,' mothers must give up their children
+to King Death, and it is He who wants your bad boys.' Upon which, the
+Madre arose and cursed them. Curses are common with us, Signorina, but
+not La Madre's curses. She talked of their mothers to them, and of their
+sons, and of the Holy Virgin and child, and she cursed them in the name
+of all these, if they dared steal her children from her. They should
+take them over her old dead body, she swore, though her knitting-needles
+and her eyes were her only weapons, and then she turned her eyes full
+upon them, with the evil spirit leering and laughing out of them, and
+the soldiers, one of whom was an officer, fell on their knees and shook
+like leaves, and prayed her to forgive them; saying that they were sure
+her boys were good sons, and no banditti. And while they knelt crouching
+there, La Madre knocked on the floor and in rushed the banditti, armed
+with great knives. They caught and bound the two soldiers, and took away
+their weapons, and jumped on their horses, and fled.
+
+"La Madre took her knitting again, and sat down quietly by the side
+of the bound men, until a half hour later some twelve more soldiers
+cantered up. As they rode by, all the people came to their doorways, and
+the soldiers stopped and asked if they had seen two horsemen. Then La
+Madre gathered up her knitting and went quietly out into the crowd. She
+made a low bow to the man with the biggest feather in his cap, and she
+told him her story. 'I have two sons,' she said, 'whom I love so well.'
+Then she told how the soldiers mistook her sons for banditti, and tried
+to take them from her in her own house. 'Though I am old, I have a good
+life among my friends and neighbors here, and I fought a while in my
+own mind before I said to my sons: Go, my boys, your mother will die for
+you. But I did it. I bade them bind the soldiers and steal away. Then I
+sat guarding the men till you came. You will find them safe in my little
+house there. Now, take me to prison--kill me, but look in my eyes first,
+and then, whoever lays a hand on me, take La Madre Ilkana's curse.'
+
+"And the people all swore that there were two snakes coiled up in La
+Madre's eyes then, and they hissed, and struck out with their fiery
+tongues, and the crowd fell on their knees, and the neighbors all set up
+a great shout of 'La Madre Ilkana,' so that they quite drowned the voice
+of the man with the big feather."
+
+"Is that all?" asked Mae, as Lisetta paused. "What did the soldiers do?"
+
+"O, they hired a passing carriage to take the men whose horses were
+stolen back to Castellamare, and they all cantered off, without saying
+a word to La Madre, and when they had turned a corner of the road, she
+began to laugh. O, how she laughed! All the people laughed with her, and
+the children crowed and the dogs barked, for the rest of that whole day.
+
+"And a neighbor who passed La Madre's at midnight, said she was laughing
+out loud then."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+"Signorina." Mae was passing down the long hall when she heard the
+whisper. She turned and saw Lisetta, with shining eyes and pink cheeks,
+standing at her side. Her pretty plump shoulders were only half covered,
+and the array of colors about her transformed her into a sort of
+personified rainbow. This was Lisetta's Carnival attire, and very proud
+she was of it.
+
+"Why, Lisetta, what do you want, and what makes you so happy?" called
+Mae.
+
+"O, Signorina, the cousins are here,--and others,--all in mask. They
+fill Maria's rooms quite full. It is very gay out there, and they all
+want to see you, Signorina. I have told them how well you speak Italian
+and how you love Italy, and to-night, they say, you shall be one of us.
+So come." All this while Lisetta had been leading Mae swiftly down the
+corridor, until as she said these last words, she reached and pushed
+open the door. A great shout of laughter greeted Mae's ear, and a pretty
+picture met her eyes--gaily decked youths and maidens clapping their
+hands and chattering brightly, while the padrona was just entering the
+opposite doorway, bearing two flasks of native wine, and some glasses.
+
+"'Tis genuine Orvieto," she called out, and this raised another shout.
+Then she caught sight of Mae and bowed low towards her. "Here is the
+little foreign lady," she cried, and a dozen pairs of big black eyes
+were turned eagerly and warmly on Mae. She bowed and smiled at them,
+and said in pleading tones, "O, pray do not call me the 'little foreign
+lady' now. Play I am as good an Italian as my heart could wish I were."
+
+This speech was received with new applause, and the padrona handed
+around the glasses saying: "We must drink first to the health of our new
+Italian. May she never leave us."
+
+"Yes, yes," called Lisetta, lifting high her glass. "Yes, yes," cried
+all, and Mae drank as heartily as any of them. Then she shook her head
+and gazed very scornfully down on her dark, stylish clothes. "I am not
+thoroughly Italian yet," she cried. "Here, and here, and here," cried
+one and another, proffering bits of their own gay costumes, and in a
+moment Mae had received all sorts of tributes--a string of red beads
+from one, a long sash from another, a big-balled stiletto from a third,
+so that she was able from the gleanings to trim herself up into at least
+a grotesque and un-American Carnival figure. Then the Italians with
+their soft tongues began to flatter her.
+
+"How lovely the Signorina would look in a contadina costume--the home
+costume," said Lisetta gravely. "It is so beautiful, is it not?" And
+then those two or three privileged ones, who had seen Lisetta's
+home, went into ecstasies over its many charms. Lisetta, next to the
+Signorina, was the heroine of the occasion. She was from a distance, was
+handsome and clever, and the padrona gave glowing accounts of her full
+purse, and two pretty donkeys, and house by the sea.
+
+They had a very gay time. Such singing, and then dancing and frolicking,
+and such a feline softness in all their gaiety. None of the German or
+Saxon bullying, and barking and showing of teeth; in no wise a game of
+dogs, which always ends in a fight; but a truly kittenish play, with
+sharp claws safely tucked out of sight behind the very softest paws,
+and a rich, gentle curve of motion, inexpressibly witching to our little
+northern maiden, who was fast losing her head amid it all. Mae did not
+reflect that felines are treacherous. She only drew a quick, mental
+picture of the parlor on the other side of the hall, which she compared
+to this gay scene. Mrs. Jerrold filling in dull row after row of her
+elaborate sofa cushion, which was bought in all its gorgeousness of
+floss fawn's head and bead eyes, Edith and Albert hard at work over
+their note books, or reading up for the sights of to-morrow, Mr. Mann
+with his open book also, all quiet and studious. Eric, alone, might be
+softly whistling, or writing an invitation to Miss Hopkins to climb up
+St. Peter's dome with him, or to visit the tomb of Cecilia Metella, or
+the Corso, as the case might be, while here--
+
+As Mae reached this point in her musings, the Italians were forming for
+a dance, so she sprang up to join them. Two or three peasants from the
+country south had wandered up with the world to Rome, for Carnival time,
+then for Lent. They had brought with them their pipes and zitterns.
+In the mornings they made short pilgrimages, playing in front of the
+shrines about the city, or roaming out on the campagna to some quiet
+church. In the evening time they wandered up the stone stairways of the
+great houses, and paused on the landings before the different homes. If
+all was still they passed on, but if there was noise, laughter, sound of
+voices, they laid aside their penitential manner, and struck into dance
+music, flashing their velvety eyes, and striking pretty attitudes,
+aided greatly by their Alpine hats and sheep-skins and scarlet-banded
+stockings.
+
+Three of these peasants had appeared at the padrona's doorway, by a sort
+of magic. They bowed and smiled, and commenced to play. Every one sprang
+up. "Dance," cried they all, and flew for their partners. Mae found
+herself in the midst of the crowd, and having the most willing and
+nimble of feet, she soon toned and coaxed the fashionable waltz on
+which she had started into accord with the more elastic footsteps of her
+companion. There was something in the serpentine, winding and unwinding
+motion, the coaxingness of the steps, that was deliciously intoxicating
+to Mae. The color came to her cheeks, the smile played around her lips,
+and when she paused to breathe, she found the Italians showing their
+white teeth, and clapping their brown hands in her honor, while the
+tallest musician gazed at her from the dark doorway, with the rapt
+reverence he gave to all things beautiful and thrilling. She was a new
+song to him.
+
+"The Signorina is the veriest Italian of us all," cried Lisetta.
+
+"She honors our Italy," called Mae's last partner.
+
+"Her feet are those of a chamois," said one from the north.
+
+"Nay, she flies," replied another.
+
+They all spoke in their earnest manner, and the praises, that fall in
+fulsome flattery in English, were delicate and stimulating as they
+slid in soft Italian from their full, red lips. Mae tossed her head
+carelessly, but she sipped the praises and found them sweet.
+
+"Now for the Tarantella," said the padrona, so Lisetta shook her
+tambourine wildly, and the very prettiest girl of them all, and a big,
+brown boy (happy fellow!) began that coquettish bit of witchery. The
+pretty girl tripped around and around and wreathed her arms over her
+head, and the boy knelt appealingly and sprang up passionately again
+and again, until the clock struck ten, and the party broke up. Mae
+shook hands with a new friend. He was a stone-cutter, and was soon to be
+married, and he poured out all his plans and hopes into her sympathetic
+ears, and told of his pretty bride to be, and of her dowry. Mae, in
+turn, sent her love to the happy bride, and took a charm from her
+watch-chain to go with it, a tiny silver boat, and she sent it with a
+hope that some day they might both sail over to America. At which the
+bridegroom shook his head very decidedly, and kissed Mae's hand and
+bowed himself out. Then, after she had disrobed her of her borrowed
+plumes, all the others kissed her hand and bowed themselves out, and
+Roberto and Giovanni awaked, and got up from the corner, and stood on
+their heads and hallooed as loud as ever they pleased, and the evening
+was over, and Lisetta and the padrona and the boys and Mae were alone.
+
+"Oh, oh, oh," cried Mae, "how perfectly perfect. Do you always have such
+good times as this?"
+
+"At home, yes," replied Lisetta, folding her hands and smiling. "We have
+many a play-day on the bay of Naples." Then she roused herself: "Good
+night, Signorina," she said, "keep your ears open."
+
+Mae had barely reached her room when she appreciated Lisetta's last
+words. She heard music in the street below. She raised her window; Eric
+and Norman lifted the parlor window at the same moment, "Come in here,"
+they cried. So in she ran, took a place between them, and they silently
+listened to the maskers' serenade. The musicians sang at first the
+gayest of tunes, but suddenly, by some subtile impulse, they changed to
+quieter minor airs, and sang songs full of tears and passion and love
+and tenderness. Then they silently turned to go. Norman Mann touched Mae
+on the shoulder. He handed her a bunch of Carnival flowers. They were
+Bero's, but she flung them unhesitatingly into the street, leaning far
+out to watch the singers catch them and separate them in the moonlight.
+They called out loud their thanks--their "Grazie, grazie," as sweet as
+any lily just broken from its stem--and as they turned to go Mae saw
+that each one was decked with a sprig from the bouquet, pulled through
+his button-hole or the riband of his hat.
+
+Only the tallest musician, who walked somewhat apart, carried his flower
+tightly clasped in his hand, and now and again he raised it to his lips.
+He probably dreamed over it that night, and played his dream out in
+a gentle, wistful, minor adoration before the Madonna at the Quattro
+Fontane the next morning.
+
+O, the dreams and poems and songs without words that drop into our lives
+from the sudden flash of stranger eyes, or the accidental touch of an
+unknown hand, or the tender warmth of a swift smile! And if our eyes,
+our touch, our smiles may only have floated off in like manner--as
+dreams and poems and melody--to give added rhythm and harmony to other
+lives.
+
+Mae drew a long sigh, one of those delightful, contented sighs, with a
+smile wrapped up in it. "I am glad you are so happy," said Norman Mann,
+smiling down at her. When Norman spoke like that Mae felt only, O, so
+very content. She quite forgot all grudges against him; she would have
+liked just at that moment to have the world stand quite still. This was
+very different from the ordinary Mae. Usually she longed that it might
+go faster, and would put her pink and white ear quite close to the brown
+earth to hear if it were turning as swiftly as ever it could. "I like
+it to hurry, hurry, hurry," said eager, restless Mae. "I love to live
+quickly and see what's coming next."
+
+But Mae was not in that mood to-night. She leaned out of the window all
+untroubled. If the sun could stand still off behind the world--as he is
+now--and the moon could stand still right before us--as she is now--and
+we could stay right here, we three. Why, no, Eric has gone in and is
+walking up and down nervously. Thus Mae thought, and was quiet. "What
+are you thinking about?" asked Norman. She told him naturally, with her
+eyes on his until she reached the words "and we." Then her eyes fell,
+and she paused.
+
+"Yes," replied Norman, "I have the same feeling," and there was a great
+deal more on the very tippest tip of his tongue. But Mae turned her face
+from him slightly; the moon stole softly behind the flimsiest little
+cloud that any one could have seen through, and he paused, silly fellow.
+These slight withdrawals, that should have urged him on, deceived him.
+He stopped, and then he remembered Mae's past doings, her recklessness,
+her waywardness. It was not time yet to speak what he had in his heart
+to say, and what quivered on his tongue. So he only asked abruptly: "You
+will go with me to-morrow night for one of your gayest frolics, will you
+not? We will go down on the Corso for all the Mocoletti fun. I am very
+anxious to be in another of your good times."
+
+"O, would you like it?" said Mae; "I am so glad. I should delight in it.
+It will be almost too good." She stopped abruptly again, and gave him a
+quick, soft glance, just as the moon rode triumphantly out from behind
+the filmy, flimsy veil, and shone full down on her eyes and hair. It
+fell on a bright, round, glistening ball, tucked in among some half
+curls behind her ear. "What is that?" asked Norman.
+
+"That"--Mae put up her hand and drew it out--"that is my stiletto. I
+forgot to give it back to Lisetta. It is pretty, isn't it?"
+
+Norman took the long needle from her hand and looked at it. "It is not
+as pretty as the flowered stiletto. Why didn't you get one of those?"
+
+"Why, do you not know that those are not worn by free maidens? They are
+one of the added glories of a matron. I like my round, smooth ball
+a great deal better. It means liberty." And she plunged the steel
+tremulously back into her hair.
+
+"We had better go in now; this night air is bad for you." The moon
+blazed scornfully down on Norman Mann as he said this. She had had a
+wide experience, and had rarely seen such a stupid, cowardly fellow, so
+she thought. Yet, after all, Norman only acted in self-defense. Here was
+a girl by his side who gloried, as it seemed to him, in her freedom, and
+that being so, he must get away as soon as possible from that window,
+that moon, and that little girl.
+
+"Well, Norman," cried Eric, advancing eagerly as they turned from the
+window, "when do you really suppose it will come off?"
+
+"Suppose what will come off?" inquired Mae.
+
+"O, I forgot you were here. Well, don't tell any one else. Norman is to
+fight a duel."
+
+"To fight a duel--and be killed?" gasped Mae.
+
+"You have but a poor opinion of my powers," laughed Norman, "although
+the German looked a veteran duellist from his scars. His face was fairly
+embroidered or fancy-worked with red lines. A sort of hem in his nose,
+and tucks and seams all over his cheeks. Notice my knowledge in this
+line, Miss Mae. You ought to be ashamed, Eric, to have spoken of it."
+
+"Isn't it all a joke?" asked Mae, pushing her head out of the window
+again, to hide the sudden white terror in her face. "I didn't suppose
+Americans fought duels when they were off pleasuring." This sentence Mae
+meant to pass as a gay, light, easy speech, to prove that Norman Mann
+and a duel were not such a very dreadful combination to her feminine
+mind.
+
+"NO, it is no joke, but dead earnest," replied Eric. "I am to be his
+second, and you must keep it a great secret, Mae, till it is all over."
+
+"All over!"--a sudden vision of Norman lying white and motionless with
+a deep wound across his soft, brown temple. Mae closed her eyes. "I
+suppose I might as well tell you about it," said Norman, "now that this
+stupid Eric has let out about the affair, although it may never come to
+anything. I was dining to-night at a little restaurant on the Felice, a
+quiet, homelike place, which a good many artists, and especially women,
+frequent. There is a queer, crazy little American, who thinks herself
+a painter, and is a harmless lunatic, who is a regular guest at this
+restaurant. Everybody smiles at her absurdities, but is ready enough to
+be kind to the poor old creature. To-night, however, I was hardly seated
+when in came a party of Germans, all in mask and Carnival costume. One
+of them was arrayed in exact imitation of this old lady. He had on a
+peaked bonnet and long, black gloves, with dangling fingers, such as she
+invariably wears. These he waved around mockingly and seating himself
+opposite her, he followed her every motion. The ladies at the same table
+rose and went away. Then up gets this big ruffian and sits down on the
+edge of the old lady's chair. I could stand it no longer, but jumping in
+front of him, showered down all the heavy talk I knew in German,
+Italian and French, subsiding at last into my mother tongue, with her
+appropriate epithets. Having sense enough left to know that he could not
+reap the full benefit of English, I pulled out my card, wrote my
+address on it, and threw it on the table, and I rather think that was
+understood. There's no country that I have heard of where men don't know
+what 'we'll fight this out, means.'" Norman was striding up and down the
+room now almost as restlessly as Eric had done, but he seated himself
+again as Mae asked for the rest.
+
+"The rest is very simple, Miss Mae--mere business. I turned to go away,
+and one of his friends approached me to ask for the name of my second.
+I gave Eric's here. He bowed and said: 'He shall hear from me this
+evening, and I came home. The evening has advanced to midnight, but not
+a word yet. No, it is not quite eleven, I see."
+
+"You'll have the choice of weapons if they challenge you," said Eric;
+"you'll take pistols, I suppose? Just think of my living to really
+assist in a 'pistols-and-coffee-for-two' affair!"
+
+"I daresay it will be coffee for two, served separately, and with no
+thought of pistols. I don't really believe it will come to anything.
+There are ways of getting out of it," said Norman, lighting a cigarette.
+
+"Will you refuse to fight?" asked Mae, and her heart, which had been
+white with fear for Norman the second before, flashed now with quick,
+red scorn. Even the Huguenot maiden would, after all, have despised her
+lover if he had quietly allowed her to tie the white handkerchief to
+his arm. Believe it, she loved him far, far better as she clung to him,
+pressed closely to his warm, living heart, because she realized in an
+agony that his honor was strong enough to burst even the tender bonds of
+her dear love, and that he would break from her round arms to rush into
+that ghostly, ghastly death-embrace on the morrow, at the dreadful knell
+of St. Bartholomew bells.
+
+Suppose he had yielded. Suppose we saw him in the picture standing
+quietly, unresistingly, as her soft fingers bound the white badge, that
+meant protection and life, to his arm. Would not she, as well as he,
+have known that it was a badge of cowardice, and that he wore a heart as
+white?
+
+And afterwards, would she have loved the living man, breathing in
+air heavy with the hearts' life of his brothers and friends, as she
+worshiped the dead man, whose cold body rested forever down deep in
+mother earth's brown, soft bosom, but whose very life of life swelled
+the great throng of heroes and martyrs who have closed their own eyes
+upon life's pictures, that those pictures might shine clearer and
+brighter to other eyes?
+
+If the man had yielded, and the picture showed him thus, would we see
+the Huguenot lovers adorning half the houses of the land? Most often
+they are found in that particular corner of the home belonging to some
+maiden--that sacred room of her own, where she prays her prayers, and
+lives her most secret life. I have often wondered at the many girls who
+hang that especial picture over their fire-places. It must be a case of
+unconscious ideality. They realize that love must be so subject to honor
+that heart-strings would break for the sake of that honor, if need be,
+even though the harmonious love-song of two hearts is hushed; and what
+is the love-song of any two beings compared to a life-song of honor
+for the world--those wonderful life-songs that we all know? One of them
+sings itself so loudly to me now, over ages of romance and history, that
+I must let my simple story wait and give way to it for a minute.
+
+There was a man who lived once. If God did not create him, Homer did.
+The Oracle told him that the first man who put foot on the Trojan shores
+would die. He knew this before he started on his voyage for Greece. He
+left a wife and home behind him, whom he dearly loved. I wonder if he
+used to pace the deck of the rich barge, and listen to the men
+chatting around him, and smile as they planned of returning, proud and
+victorious, to their homes and their wives.
+
+All the while under his smile he knew he was to die, not in the glory
+of fight, although his sword swung sharp and bright at his side, in any
+thrilling fashion, to be sung of and wept of by his fellows.
+
+All the while the heavy barge sailed on, and at last land came in sight.
+I wonder if his heart was full when he saw it? Did he remember his wife
+and his home? Did he feel his life strong within him, and eager as a
+battle-horse, as he neared the land where wars were to be fought, and
+glories won?
+
+All the while his heart was firm. He stood the very foremost of them
+all, as they drifted quite in to the green, green shore. Around him
+men talked and laughed, and the sun shone. He may have laid his hand
+commandingly on some youthful shoulders and pushed back the eager boy
+who longed to bound first into this new world. He may have saved him
+thus from death for life. We do not know.
+
+All we do know is, that with his own brave feet he marched ahead of them
+all, solemnly, smilingly, with the oracle in his heart. From the vessel
+to the green, green shore--such a little step. He leaps from the Grecian
+barge to the Trojan land, alive. Does he turn to look at his comrades
+and off eastwards, beyond homewards, with a great thrill before he falls
+dead? We do not know.
+
+All we do know is, that WE thrill now as we see him leaping to his
+death, even over this gap of ages, through these shadows of unreality.
+
+We have left Mae flashing scorn at Norman for a long while, a much
+longer while than she really needed for her flash, for Norman's angry
+start, violent exclamation, and indignant glance convinced her of her
+mistake before he answered her.
+
+"I refuse to fight--I--Great--I beg your pardon, Miss Mae, but of course
+I'll fight. I only hope the fellow isn't such a craven as to let it blow
+over. However, I strongly suspect policy and his friends will keep him
+from it. For my part, I would like to break my lance for the poor woman.
+Any good blow struck for the fair thing, helps old Mother earth a bit, I
+suppose."
+
+"That's your idea of life?" queried Eric, rather gravely. "My efforts
+are all to push Eric Madden on his way a bit."
+
+"And I haven't any idea; I just live," said Mae, "like a black and
+tan dog. I wish I were one. Then the only disagreeable part of me, my
+conscience, would be out of the way. But what has all this to do with
+the duel?" "That has something to do with it, I fancy," said Eric,
+rising and leaving the room hastily, as the bell rang. "No, stay where
+you are. I'll receive him in the little salon." Mae rose and walked to
+the fireside, and looked down on the two small logs of wet wood that
+sizzled on the fire-dogs. The faint, red flame that flickered around
+them, looked sullen and revengeful, she thought, as she watched the
+feeble blaze intently. It seemed hours since Eric had left the room.
+What was Norman thinking? What was the stranger saying out in the little
+salon? No, no, she would not think thus. She would repeat something to
+quiet herself--poetry--what should it be? Ah, here is Eric.
+
+It was Eric. His face was flushed. His lip curled. "Coward! craven!" he
+exclaimed, "Coward, craven."
+
+"Well, tell us about it," said Norman, coolly, but a wave of color
+rushed over his face.
+
+"O, palaver and stuff. Somebody's dreadfully ill--dying, I believe, and
+that somebody is wife, or mother, or son to this brute you challenged.
+He's got to go, the coward. If you are ever in his vicinity again, and
+send him your card, he will understand it and meet you at such place and
+with such weapons as you prefer. Bah--too thin!" and Eric concluded with
+this emphatic statement.
+
+Mae leaned her head against her two clasped hands which rested on the
+mantel-piece. How strangely everything looked; even the dim fire had a
+sort of aureole about it, as her eyes rested there again; but when one
+looks through tears, all things are haloed mistily. Norman turned and
+looked at Mae, as Eric walked impatiently about. She did not move or
+speak. He walked to her side, and stood looking down at her. The faint
+mist in her left eye was forming into a bright, clear globe as large as
+any April raindrop. Mae knew this, and knew it would fall, unless she
+put up her hand and brushed it away, and that would be worse. The color
+rose to her cheeks as she waited the dreadful moment. She was perfectly
+still, her hands clasped before her, her head bent, as the crystal drop
+gathered all the mist and halo in its full, round embrace, and
+pattered down upon the third finger of her left hand--her wedding-ring
+finger--and lay there, clear and sparkling as a diamond!
+
+Norman Mann stooped and laid his hand over it. "You are glad, then!" "I
+should be sorry to have you die," said Mae, but her dimples and blushes
+and drooping eye-lids said, oh, a great deal more. "Good night," she
+fluttered, and ran off.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Mae dreamed happy dreams that night, and awoke with a smile on her lips.
+She dressed with the greatest care, put a touch of the color Norman
+liked at her throat, and fastened a charm he had given her to her
+bracelet. Still, she loitered on her way to the breakfast-room, and when
+she seated herself at the table, a sudden embarrassment made her keep
+her eyes on her plate, or talk to Eric, or Edith, or any one but Norman.
+Yet she was perfectly conscious of his every word and motion. She knew
+he only took two cups of coffee instead of three, and that he helped her
+to mandarins--a fruit of which she was very fond--five times, so that
+she had a plate heaping with golden untouched balls before her. After
+breakfast, she felt a great desire to run away, so she asked Eric to
+take her to the Capitol, and leave her there for a time. "I want to
+see something solid this morning, that has lasted a long while, and the
+marbles will do me good."
+
+Yes, Eric would take her at once. Would she go and get her hat? She
+went for it, and scolded herself all the time for running away when she
+wanted to stay home. Yet, after all, who dares put out one's hand to
+grasp the moon when at last it approaches? No woman, at any rate.
+
+There was a malicious sort of teasing pleasure in running away from
+Norman, mingled with a shrinking modesty; and, besides, he knew the
+way to the Capitol, if he chose to follow, and knew she was to be there
+alone. So, on the whole, Mae went off with a blissful heart.
+
+As she sat down in that celebrated room, immortalized by the Gladiator,
+the Faun and the Antinous, scales seemed to fall from her eyes and a
+weight from her heart. Life meant something more than the mere play she
+delighted in, or the labor she despised. She took it in in this way. She
+realized, first of all, the enduringness of the marbles. They had stood,
+they will stand, for thousands of years. What have stood? What will
+stand? Idle blocks of stone, without form or meaning, or simply three
+beautiful shapes? No; three souls, thinks Mae, three real people,
+and she looks at the abiding faun, freedom and joy of the Satyr, the
+continual sentimental sadness of the Antinous, and the perpetual brave
+death-struggle of the Gladiator. They are living on now, and touching
+our hearts. Their mute lips open other eloquent mouths to speak for
+them. Hawthorne and Byron tell us what the Faun's soul, what the
+Gladiator's soul, look from the white marbles to us, and the world daily
+repeats the story the Antinous whispers in his bent, beautiful head, the
+vanitas vanitatum that our own hearts whisper, when we drop earnest life
+for voluptuous pleasures.
+
+The Faun may smile, although life is only one long play-day in green
+fields and woods, because he is a Faun. The man must sigh, when he has
+drained his wine-cups and laughed his heartiest laugh, and wakes to
+another morning, because he is a man. The cry of humanity echoes in our
+souls. We cannot stifle it; we may hush it, and follow our idle joys,
+but the day comes when we bend our head with Antinous and Solomon and
+the rest of them, and sigh out our vanitas, vanitas also, in the great
+weary chorus.
+
+No need, alas! for a Hawthorne, or Byron, or even a Shakspeare to
+interpret what the Antinous says for us. Our own hearts do it.
+
+Mae caught the spirit of all this, as her eyes roamed out of the window
+on the Sabine hills, where woods and springs sang. She saw the aqueducts
+bounding, even in their ruin, arch after arch, to the treasure house of
+the waters. "They never can reach it, now," thinks she, "never. Suppose
+they cannot, is not the spirit the same?" And now Mae is ready for the
+sudden light that dawns on her soul. She springs to her feet. She is
+alone in the room with the marble men; and they are quiet; even the
+Gladiator bites back his last groan once more.
+
+"The Eternal City," shouts Mae; "I know what it means at last. Oh! Rome,
+Rome, I love you!" and she rests her hand on the windowsill, and looks
+out on Rome. "Why, it is like a resurrection morn. Ruins? Yes, it is all
+ruins, dry bones, and great dead in dust; but there is something more. I
+only saw that graveyard part of it before; now, the spirit of the great
+men, and great deeds, and words, and thoughts, and prayers," cries Mae,
+exultantly. "Why, they are here; not dead, like the rest, but alive, all
+around us. Oh! Rome, Rome, forgive me!"
+
+Now, this might have seemed absurd to the custode, or some other people,
+if they had put their head in at the door just then. But they didn't;
+and, really, it was not absurd. I cannot believe that this small Mae
+Madden is the only being who has had a swift, brilliant awakening from
+the first surface, depressing thoughts of Rome--an awakening to the
+living spirits which float proudly over their vacant shells that lie
+below the old pavements. Once you do feel the strong, rich Roman life
+about you, the decay, the ruin float off on the dust of the ages, before
+the glorified breath of proud matrons and stately warriors, who step
+over the centuries to walk by your side. And the centuries have
+improved them,--have left their grandeur, and nobility, and bravery,
+and civilized them a bit. They form into pageants for you, and fill the
+baths and the palaces, but never crowd the Coliseum for the dreadful
+contests, unless, maybe, for an occasional bull-fight--some great,
+horrid, big bull which would be killed at market to-morrow at any
+rate--and even that is as you please. It is wonderful, truly, once we
+discern the spirits around us, to notice what a miraculous place Rome
+is; how the intervening years of purgatorial flames have turned old Nero
+himself into a fairly benevolent, soft old gentleman, even though his
+estates have crumbled to such an extent that he may put his golden
+palace into the head of his cane, which he always carries now, since his
+chariots have gone away. Where are they? Caligula has even made it up
+with his mother-in-law, and you reflect with joy on that fact, as the
+two flit by your mind's eye, hand in hand. All this nonsense is for
+those of us who HAVE awakenings. The rest of "our party" may sit at
+Spillman's and eat coffee-cakes and sip Lachrymae Christi, while we walk
+alone through the Coliseum, with the crowd of old heathen. They stop,
+every one, at the iron cross in the middle, reared over their carnage
+and mad mirth, and press their lips to it now. The centuries have done
+that. We only, alas! stand gazing mournfully, doubtingly. "Will you
+have another coffee-cake?" says some one, and we remember that we are at
+Spillman's also. And, indeed, we might be more sensible to stay with our
+party always; eat cakes, drink wine, laugh at the old world, vaunt the
+new, read Baedeker and the Bible, say our orthodox Protestant prayers,
+with a special "Lead us not into Romanism" codicil, and go to bed,
+and dream of our own golden houses, Paris dresses, and fat letters of
+credit.
+
+At any rate, Mae Madden was electrified by a great sudden sweep of love,
+a surging rush of reverence for Rome, and makes no doubt in her own
+mind, to this day, that the Faun laughed with her in her joy. In this
+exalted frame of mind, she wandered down through the long halls. She was
+passing from the room of the Caesars when she heard Norman's voice. So
+he had come for her with Eric. She had half fancied he would. She paused
+to listen. It was a ringing elastic voice, in no wise lagging in speech,
+with a certain measurement in its tones, as if he weighed his words and
+thoughts, and gave them out generously, pound for pound, a fair measure
+which our grandmother's recipes approved. Mae smiled to herself. "He has
+loved Rome always. He caught the spirit of it long ago. He will be glad
+to know I have found it also. I wish"--and Mae sighed a scrap of a
+sigh, and looked down at the toe of her boot, with which she drew little
+semi-circles before her.
+
+Mae was truly in a very tender mood to-day. I think if Norman had caught
+sight of her face at that moment, he would have sent Eric off, and right
+there and then, before all the Caesars--why what is the matter? The face
+contracts as if in pain. What was the cause? She had heard Norman say,
+"I'm afraid I was wrong, but I never meant anything by my attentions to
+the girl, Eric. It was really on your account. I never liked Miss Rae
+particularly. I was thrown much with her because you and I have been
+together constantly, but she does not grow on me. I never expected
+you should consider me as her necessary cavalier always. As for this
+evening, I am engaged to Miss Mae, so that settles this matter, but I
+wish that hereafter you would not get me into such scrapes."
+
+Poor Mae! she leaned against Nero--or was it Caracalla?--surely somebody
+very hard and cold and cruel,--and stopped breathing for a moment.
+For she had heard wrong, had misunderstood Miss Rae for Miss Mae, and
+supposed it was of herself that he spoke. Her heart stood still for the
+minutest part of a minute. Then she turned softly and quickly, went back
+to the Gladiator's room, left word with the custode for Eric that she
+wasn't well, and had gone home alone, walked off down the Capitol steps,
+took a cab and drove away.
+
+At home she had a long, earnest talk with Lisetta, after which Lisetta
+had a short, brisk talk with the padrona. "It means money," she said,
+"and I can play I did it for the Signorina's safety." Later, Mae wrote
+a brief, polite note to Norman Mann. She was ill, had gone to bed, and
+wouldn't be able to go to the Corso with him to-night. She tried to
+stifle the hot anger and other emotions out of the words, and read and
+re-read them to assure herself that they were perfectly easy, natural,
+and polite. At last she tore them up and sent this instead:
+
+
+MY DEAR MR. MANN:--Such a pity that we are not to have our fun, after
+all. Yet, perhaps it is just as well. I should be very speedily without
+my light, and the cry of "senza moccolo, senza moccola," must be very
+dispiriting. Have a good time right along. Good-bye--good-bye.
+
+
+Of course, if Mae had not been beside herself with conflicting emotions,
+she would never have sent this note, or repeated the good-bye in that
+echoing, departing sort of way. Norman Mann knit his brow as he read it.
+"What is the row now?" he thought. "What a child it is, anyway. She has
+had the mocoletti fun in her mind since we left America, and now she
+throws it away. Well, there's no help for it; I'm booked for Miss Rae.
+I'll get Eric to see if Mae's really ill. I wonder if she's afraid of
+me, because she cried last night, afraid I took that big tear for more
+than it was worth.
+
+"Mae," said Eric, entering her room an hour later, "Norman feels
+dreadfully that you are not able to go to-night, and so do I. I suppose
+those wretched marbles did it this morning. Couldn't you possibly come?"
+
+"No," replied Mae, rising on her elbow, "but sit down a moment, Eric."
+
+"How pretty you look," said her brother, seating himself by her side.
+Mae's hair was tumbled in brown waves that looked as if they couldn't
+quite make up their minds to curl, much as they wanted to; her eyes
+shone strangely; and the little scarlet shawl that she had drawn over
+her head and shoulders was no brighter than her flushed cheeks. She
+smiled at her brother, but said hurriedly; "Tell me of your plans for
+to-night. I suppose you and Mr. Mann are going with your new friends."
+
+"Yes, Norman will go with me and the girls, but he does it with a bad
+enough grace. He's dreadfully tired of Miss Rae; and, to tell you the
+truth, Mae, she is rather namby-pamby--very different from Miss Hopkins,
+and then, besides, he had so set his heart on going with you to-night."
+
+"O, yes," said Mae, scornfully, and bit her lips.
+
+"Why, Mae, what is the matter with you? You seem to doubt every one
+and everything. You know Norman is truth itself." "Is he?" asked Mae,
+indifferently.
+
+"I've seen for a long time," continued Eric, "that you two were not the
+friends you once were, but I don't understand this open dislike. Doesn't
+it spoil your pleasure? You don't seem to have the real old-fashioned
+good times, my little girl," and Eric pulled his clumsy dear hand
+through a twist of the brown hair caressingly.
+
+"O, Eric," cried Mae, "that is like old times again," and a tear
+splattered down into the big hand. "What, crying, Mae?" "No, dear--that
+is, yes. I believe I am a little bit homesick. I wish I could go
+back behind my teens again. Do you remember the summer that I was
+twelve--that summer up by the lake? I wish you and I could paddle around
+in one of the old flat-bottomed tubs once more, don't you, Eric? We'd go
+for lilies and fish for minnows--that is, we'd fish for perch and catch
+the minnows--and talk about when you should go to college and pull in
+the race, and I should wear a long dress and learn all the college tunes
+to sing with you and your Yale friends. Do you remember, Eric? And
+now, O dear me, you lost your race, and I hate my long gowns.
+O--my--dear--brother--do you like it all as well as you thought you
+would?"
+
+"Why, Mae, you poor little tot, you're sentimental--for you. Yes, I like
+the future as well as I always did. I never gave much for the present,
+at any rate."
+
+"But I did, Eric; I always did, till just now, and now I hate it, and
+I'm afraid of the future, and I'd like to grow backwards, and instead,
+in a month, I'll have another birth-day, and go into those dreadful
+twenties." Then Mae was quiet a moment. "Eric, I was sentimental," she
+said, after a pause. "Really, I do like the future very much. I quite
+forgot how much for the moment."
+
+"You're a strange child, indeed," replied Eric, the puzzled. "Your words
+are like lightning. I had just got melted down and ready to reply to
+your reminiscences by lots of others, and here you are all jolly and
+matter-of-fact again. I was growing so dreadfully unselfish that I
+should have insisted on staying home with you this evening to cheer you
+up a bit."
+
+"And give up the mocoletti! Why, Eric! I shouldn't have known how to
+take such an offer. No, no, trot off and array yourself, and you may
+come back and say good-bye."
+
+"I must say good-bye now, dear, for I dine at the Costanzi with the
+girls and their aunt."
+
+"Now, just now, Eric?"
+
+"Why yes, Mae. You are getting blue again, aren't you? Getting ready for
+Ash Wednesday to-morrow?"
+
+"Oh, no, no, dear. Kiss me, Eric, again. You're a good, dear boy. No; I
+didn't cry that drop at all. Good-bye; and to-morrow is Ash Wednesday.
+But we don't sorrow or fast in Paradise, I suppose."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+The Corso was all ablaze. The whole world was there. Under a balcony
+stood a party of peasants. Of this group, two were somewhat aside. One
+of these was tall, dark, a fair type of Southern Italian; the other
+small, agile and graceful, dressed in a fresh contadina costume, with
+her brown hair braided down her shoulders. She seemed excited, and as
+the crowd pressed nearer she would draw back half-fearfully. "Lisetta,"
+she whispered, "I am spoiling your good time. Talk to your friends;
+never mind me. I will follow by your side, and soon I shall catch the
+spirit of it all, too." Saying this, she stepped from under the balcony,
+held out her feeble little taper and joined in the cries around her,
+pausing to blow at any lowered bit of wax that came in her way. It was
+maddening sport; her light was extinguished again and again, but
+she would plead to have it relit, and there was sure to be some
+tender-hearted, kindly knight at hand to help her.
+
+She ran on quickly, fearlessly, gliding and creeping and sliding through
+the crowd, her hair flying, her eyes dancing. Even in the dense throng
+many turned to look at her, and one tall man started suddenly from the
+shadow of a side street, where he had been standing motionless, and
+threw himself before the girl. He put out his arm, grasped her tightly,
+and drew her a few feet into the shadow. "Signorina!" he said. "Hush,
+hush," she whispered then in colder tones. "Let me go, Signor; you are
+mistaken. You, do not know me." He smiled quietly, holding her hands
+clasped in his. "I do not know you, Signorina? You do not know me. Your
+face is the picture always before my eyes."
+
+"Yes, yes, forgive me," she fluttered, "I was startled, and indeed I
+am no Signorina now, but one of your own country peasants. I am with
+Lisetta. Why, where is Lisetta?"
+
+Where, indeed, was she? There were hundreds of contadine in the great
+crowd surging by, but no Lisetta. The little peasant wrung her hands
+quite free from the man's grasp. "I must go home," she said. "I don't
+want any more Carnival."
+
+"No, no," said the officer, quietly, reassuringly. "Get cool. Tell me
+how Lisetta looks and is dressed, and if we can not find her here, I
+will take you up to your friend's balcony."
+
+"O, no, not there. Anywhere else, but not there."
+
+"Why not?" asked Bero.
+
+"Because, because,--yes, I will tell you," said Mae, remembering her
+wrongs, and suddenly moved by the sympathy and softness of the great
+eyes above her,--"because they think I am home ill, and here I am, you
+see," and she laughed a little hurriedly,--"besides, I go away with
+Lisetta to-morrow morning,--hush, let no one hear,--to Sorrento. You
+must never, never tell. How do I look? Will I make a good peasant, when
+once the dear sun has browned my hands and forehead, and I have grown
+Italianized?" And she lifted her face, into which the saucy gaiety had
+returned, up to him temptingly.
+
+His warm blood was kindled. "You are a little child of the sun-god now,"
+he exclaimed, passionately. "May I share some of your days in heaven? I
+am ordered to Naples tomorrow night; shall be only twelve hours behind
+you. May I come on the day after to see you in your new home?"
+
+"O, how delightful! But, perhaps, my lord, our little cottage by the sea
+isn't grand enough for your spurs and buttons and glory. We are simple
+folks you know,--peasants all,--but our hearts, Signor, they are
+hospitable, and such as we have we will gladly give you. What do you say
+to the bay of Naples, and oranges for our luncheon day after tomorrow?"
+And Mae laughed lightly and joyously. Her little burnt taper fell to
+the ground, and she clasped her hands together. "What a happy thing life
+will be!"
+
+"Will you live there and be a peasant forever?" asked Bero, leaning
+forward. "There are villas by the sea, too, Signorina."
+
+Mae didn't hear these last words. Her heart had stood still on that
+"forever." Live there forever, forever, and never see her mother or
+Eric, or,--or any one again! "I hadn't thought of that," she said,
+"I hadn't thought of that." She stood still with her hands clasped,
+thinking. The officer at her side, looking down at her, was thinking
+also. He was fighting a slight mental struggle, a sort of combat he was
+quite unused to. Should he let the child go on in this wild freak? He
+knew the cottage by the sea; the peasant home would be dreadful to her.
+He knew that by that same day after to-morrow, life in lower Italy, with
+the dirty, coarse people about her would be a burden. Yet he hesitated.
+He fought the battle in this way: Should he not stand a better chance
+if he let her go? He had his leave of absence for three weeks (this was
+true; "ordered to Naples," he had called it to Mae). Three weeks away
+from his world, near this winsome, strange, magnetic little being,
+with the bay of Naples, and moonlight, and his own glories and her
+loveliness! He couldn't give up this chance. No, no. He would surely see
+her in a few hours after her troubles began, and comfort her. So he only
+smiled quietly down at her again, as she stood troubled by his side, and
+said: "Lisetta will seek you near your balcony if she knows where it is.
+Don't be troubled."
+
+"But where is my balcony?" asked Mae.
+
+"Come here," said Bero, leading her slightly forward. She looked up and
+saw the quiet side-window, where day after day the officer had flung
+her the sweet flowers when no one was looking. "I know this place very
+well," he said meaningly. Mae smiled a little cheerfully. "You have
+beautiful taste," she replied, "I have never seen such exquisite
+bouquets before."
+
+Bero stroked his moustaches complacently. "You honor me, Signorina. I
+hope you may receive many, many more beautiful flowers--from the same
+hand." He whispered these last words, and Mae turned her head half
+uneasily. She looked up at the balcony. How odd it was that there, but
+a few feet away, were Mrs. Jerrold, Edith, and Albert. She fancied
+she could detect their voices, though she could not see them. The
+Hopkins-Rae window was vacated. "The girls" were probably down on the
+Corso with Eric and Norman, and Mae drew a little nearer to Bero, and
+looked up half appealingly. His eyes were fixed strangely on something
+or some one across the street. Mae followed their gaze, and saw upon the
+opposite balcony the beautiful veiled lady. She held in her hand a long
+rod tipped with a blazing taper.
+
+"O, she is like a vestal virgin with her light, or a queen with a
+sceptre," cried Mae exultingly.
+
+"She may be the vestal virgin, but the queen is by my side," said Bero
+earnestly.
+
+Mae wished he would not talk in this way, and she tried to laugh it off.
+"I have no sceptre or crown; I'm but a poor queen in my common garb."
+
+"We'll have the coronation day after to-morrow," replied Bero, very
+earnestly still.
+
+"Tell me about her," and Mae nodded her head toward the strange lady.
+"There is little to tell," said Bero, in a quiet tone. "Her brother is
+well known in Rome as an artist. He lives there with his sister and an
+old duenna. She wears this mysterious veil constantly, and some fanciful
+people see just as mysterious a cloud resting about her life. I only
+know she is strange and beautiful, and that her name is Lillia."
+
+Yet Bero had seen this woman almost daily for six months. But he only
+knew she was strange and beautiful, and that her name was Lillia.
+
+Mae had never spoken to the veiled stranger, yet if Bero had turned upon
+her and asked, "Who is she?" she would have replied: "I do not know her
+name or where she lives, but I know she struggles, and despairs, and
+smiles over all. And I know her suffering comes from sorrow--not from
+sin." But Mae did not say all this. She only looked at the veiled lady.
+Her vestal lamp had dropped for the moment, and she seemed to be gazing
+far away. A fold of her heavy veil fell over her brow quite down to her
+great dark eyes. They were unshaded, yet they too, seemed clouded for
+the moment. "Her name is Lillia," said Mae, reassuringly to herself.
+"Her name is Lillia. I am sure she is like her name." Bero smiled. Just
+then Lisetta appeared.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Early the next morning, in the misty light, Lisetta and Mae, the latter
+still in her contadina costume, left the house quietly. In an hour the
+train for Naples was to start, but Lisetta wanted to say her prayers in
+Rome on this Ash Wednesday. They wandered into a little church, one of
+the many Roman churches, and knelt side by side, Lisetta with her beads
+and her penance, and Mae with her thoughts, which grew dreary enough
+before the peasant was ready to go. Mae had already entrusted her money
+to Lisetta's keeping--some one hundred and fifty dollars, which she
+had gotten the day before from Albert to buy clothes with--and with her
+money she had also resigned all care. She did not know therefore, until
+the train started, that their seats were in a third-class carriage.
+Every one was hurrying on board, so Mae was obliged to jump in without
+a word, and accept her fate as best she could. It was no very pleasant
+fate. The van was dirty, crowded, garlic-scented. Mae was plucky,
+however, and knew she was to find dirt and dreadful odors everywhere.
+Two months of Rome had taught her that. But it grew very dreadful in the
+close travelling-carriage. There was an old woman at her side, with a
+deformed hand, and two soldiers opposite, who stared rudely at her,
+and made loud, unpleasant remarks; and having no books, and nothing to
+entertain herself with, she was forced to curl up in a corner, and try
+to sleep, which she could not do.
+
+Poor child! it was a hard day. Dull and dreary outside, and within, the
+sickening odors and people. Back in Rome, what were they doing? Had they
+found out that she had gone? And Eric, how was he feeling? No, no, she
+must not think of all this. It belonged to the past. Before her lay
+Sorrento, the bay of Naples, oranges, white clouds, and the children of
+the sun. Mamma was south, too--if she were only going to her. So the day
+dragged on, until with the evening they reached Naples. They spent the
+night with a friend of Lisetta, who rented apartments to English and
+Americans. Mae was fortunate, therefore, in securing an unlet bedroom
+that was comfortably furnished. She enjoyed listening to Lisetta's
+stories of Rome and the Carnival; and after a quiet night in a clean
+bed, awoke tolerably happy and very eager for her first sight of the
+bay. They took an early train out to Castellamare, and as they left the
+city, Mae wondered if Bero were just entering it. But she soon forgot
+him and every one in the blue glories of the bay.
+
+At Castellamare, Gaetano, Lisetta's husband, was awaiting them, with a
+malicious little donkey, tricked out gaily enough in tags of color and
+tinkling bells. It was very quaint and delightful to get into the funny,
+low, rattling cart, and go jogging off, while the feminine sight-seers
+fanned themselves in the windows of the ladies' waiting-room, and
+grumbled, and the poor masculine travellers bartered in poor Italian,
+with their certain-to-conquer enemies, those triumphant swindlers, the
+drivers of the conveyances between Sorrento and Castellamare.
+
+Then they began that wonderful ride along the coast. The horrors of
+the day before rolled away like a mist as the donkey jogged along that
+miraculous drive. Lisetta and Gaetano chattered together, and Mae sat
+very still, with her face to the sea, drinking in all the glory, as she
+had longed and planned. Hope revived in her breast, pride had stood by
+her all the while, and here was glorious nature coming to her aid. She
+was going swiftly to the orange groves and the children of the sun. She
+should see Talila and brown babies and dancing, and at night a great,
+yellow moon would light up the whole scene. So on and on they went,
+the travelling carriages dashing by them now and then, with their three
+donkeys abreast, and the driver cracking his whip, and the travellers
+oh-ing and ah-ing.
+
+"That is the most picturesque peasant I have yet seen," said a gentle
+lady in brown to her husband, as they passed the humble little party.
+"Yes, she is clean, and more like the ideal than the actual peasant, and
+I am very glad I have seen her."
+
+Really, Mae was for the moment, at a quick glance, the ideal peasant.
+Her hands lay in her lap, her face was toward the sea, and her attitude
+and features were all full of that glow of existence that peasant
+portraits possess. She lived and moved and had her being as part of
+a great, warm, live picture. If the lady in brown had not passed so
+quickly, however, she would have seen a something in Mae's face that
+spoiled her for a peasant, an earnestness in her admiration, a sharp
+intensity in her joy, that was very different from the languid content
+of a Southern Italian. Her movements were rather like those of the
+Northern squirrel, which climbs nimbly and frisks briskly, than like the
+sinuous, serpentine motions of the Southern creatures of the soil. We
+are, after all, born where we belong, as a rule, and the rest of us soon
+belong where we are born.
+
+After a time the donkey pattered along towards a little patch of
+houses on the shore. They had already passed a half dozen of similar
+settlements. Very dirty children ran about crying, ugly, old women
+knitted, mongrel dogs and cats barked and yelped and rolled in the mud.
+Bits of orange-peel and old cabbage and other refuse food lay piled near
+the doors. There were, to be sure, young girls with dark eyes, plaiting
+straw, and the very dirt heaps had a picturesque sort of air. An artist
+might linger a moment to look, but never to enter. Yet it was here that
+Mae must enter. This was her new home. The neighbors came crowding about
+curiously, and she was hurried into the little hut that seemed as if
+it were carved roughly from some big garlic, probably by taking out the
+heart of it for dinner. Mae hardly comprehended the situation at first,
+but when she began to realize that this was a substitute for sea breeze,
+and that the coarse clipped patois (which sounded worse in the mass
+than when it fell from Lisetta's lips alone) was in place of the flowing
+melody of speech she had longed for, she grew sick at heart. The folly,
+the dreadfulness of what she had done, swept over her like a flood, and
+with it came dreadful fear. She was helpless,--an outcast. Pride would
+never let her go home. She could go nowhere else. They had her money,
+and here she must live and die. She sat down in a sort of stupor, and
+paid no heed to the squabbling children who pulled at her gown, or the
+dogs who sniffed snappingly at the stranger.
+
+Lisetta, busy with greetings and chattings, quite forgot her for a time,
+and was dismayed when she saw her sitting disconsolately by. "Come,
+Signorina," she cried, "go down to the bay. Here is Talila; she will
+guide you."
+
+Mae looked up quickly at that. Talila, was she here? A few feet from her
+she saw an uncouth woman, with that falling of the jaw most imbeciles
+possess, and a vacancy in her eyes. She had her hand raised and was
+swearing at one of the children. "Talila," repeated Mae, rubbing her
+eyes, and shivering, "but I thought Talila would be different. You said
+she loved children, but this woman swears at them."
+
+"O, dear, we all swear at them, but we love them; you shall see how they
+follow her. Talila, off with you and your babies." And the next moment
+there was a general scamper of brown children headed by this tall,
+vacant-looking woman. "Take the lady to the sea," continued Lisetta. And
+Mae arose, as if in a dream, and followed them.
+
+The half-clad children of the sun ran before her as she had dreamed they
+would; flowers sprang up along the way, but she did not stop to pluck a
+single bud or turn to look at anything. She wandered on in an awful
+sort of fright and came at length to the water's edge. Here there
+were row-boats lying at anchor, into which the children clambered. Mae
+stepped into one of them and sat down in the stern, and looked about.
+All was as she had planned. Her day of heaven was here. She tried to be
+brave. O, she tried very hard. She wanted to love and enjoy the sea, and
+think beautiful thoughts. She roused a little and stretched herself out
+to catch the sunbeams in her eyes, as she had said she would. How warm
+they were. An umbrella would be a luxury--and a book! But these belonged
+to the world she had left so far behind her. The dirty children babbled
+a strange tongue; the water around the boat, by the shore, was covered
+with a scum, and alas! alas! the land of her desire was farther off than
+ever. Then she remembered that Norman Mann had once said: "If you ever
+do disappear I shall know where to look for you." Would he think of it
+now? Would he come for her? If he had only come last night, and would
+drive by now to Sorrento. He would be here soon if he had. Would she
+call him loudly or shrink down in the boat and hide her face in her
+hands till she knew he was a long way past? The rest of them would not
+know where to look for her. They did not know anything about Lisetta,
+and she had promised not to tell even the padrona. (Faithless Lisetta!)
+But of course Norman wouldn't come for her, after what he had said at
+the Capitol. That was what finally drove her away. How unlike him it did
+seem to speak of her in that way to Eric. She thought over his words,
+and as she did so she seemed to see her mistake, and grasp his meaning.
+
+She sprang up in the boat. "It was the other girl--Miss Rae--he was
+speaking of. Oh, oh, oh--and now it is too late. He will hate me
+always."
+
+As she stood there, a carriage rolled by. Some one looked out. "O,
+mamma," said a young voice in English, "look at that pretty little
+peasant," and a kid-gloved hand was stretched through the open window to
+spatter a shower of base coin toward her. It was terrible! The children
+sprang for it, and, fighting and laughing, ran homewards with the
+dreadful Talila. The parti-colored picturesque dress had been a joy to
+Mae. Now she longed to tear it off and die--die! No, she was afraid to
+die. She would have to live, and she didn't know how, and she laughed a
+bitter sort of laugh.
+
+There was a sound of horses' feet again. The road lay almost close to
+the shore just here. A low exclamation, a vault from his horse, which
+was speedily cared for by a dozen boys near at hand, and before Mae knew
+it, the officer was beside her once more.
+
+O, how beautiful it was to see some one from the world, fresh, and
+clean, and fair. Mae gazed at him in delight, and sprang up warmly,
+holding out both her hot hands, "How is Heaven?" asked Bero, as he
+raised the white fingers to his lips.
+
+"That is not the custom with us," said Mae, withdrawing her hand.
+
+"But what is custom in Heaven?" he laughed. "Can't we do as we please in
+our Heaven, Signorina?"
+
+"This isn't our Heaven, and I don't please. O, how could you let me come
+to this dreadful place. Did you know how awful it would be?"
+
+"Shall I tell you why I said nothing? Let me row you away from all
+this," and he began to untie the boat.
+
+"When did you come?" asked Mae,
+
+"I left Rome last night, reached Naples this morning, and here I am as
+soon as possible, Signorina."
+
+Mae felt herself gradually yielding to the spell of this man's soft
+power. She had grown strangely quiet and passive, and she folded her
+hands and looked off seawards in a not unhappy way. She seemed to be
+some one else in a strange dream.
+
+"Are you glad I came?" asked Bero, as he jumped into the boat and sat
+down opposite her. Mae did not reply. She had almost lost the power of
+speech. She only smiled feebly and faintly. Bero had never seen her thus
+before, but he realized dimly that it was he who had changed her, and
+the sense of his own power excited him the more. He bent his proud head
+and flashed his beautiful eyes as he lifted the oars to the locks, and
+silently pulled out toward the bay.
+
+As he rowed he gazed fixedly at her, and the frightened, puzzled child
+could not turn her eyes from his. His look grew softer and tenderer,
+his head bent towards her, the oars moved slower and slower and at last
+stopped imperceptibly. Still the man gazed passionately, claimingly, and
+the girl breathed harder and let her eyes rest on his, as if he had been
+a wondrous, charming serpent, and she a little, unresisting dove. Then
+he spoke.
+
+His words were so low, it seemed as if his eyes had found voice; his
+words were so caressing, it seemed as if they changed to kisses as they
+fell. "Listen," he said, softly, and drew up his dripping oars and let
+the boat drift--"Listen. This is not our Heaven, but I know a villa by
+the sea. There are hills and woods about it; flowers, fruits, and in
+the day, sunshine, at night, moonlight and music; drives, and walks, and
+vines, and arbors. Could you find there your Heaven--with me? May I take
+you to my villa?"
+
+When he ceased, his words dropped slowly into silence, and Mae still
+gazed at him. She saw him come nearer to her, with his eyes fixed on
+hers; she saw his hand leave the oar and move slowly toward hers,
+but she was motionless, looking at the picture he had painted her of
+life--the cloudless days, moonlit nights--the villa by the sea--the
+glowing Piedmontese. Her eyelids trembled, her pulse beat.
+
+Could she take that villa for her home? That man for her husband? She
+had half thought till now in soft luxurious Italian, but 'my home' and
+'my husband' said themselves to her in her own mother tongue. She gave
+a long shiver, and pulled her eyes from his. It was like waking from
+a dream. "No--oh, no; take me home," she gasped, and turned toward the
+shore, where, erect, with folded arms and head bared, stood Norman Mann.
+
+The Italian bit his lip, and said something under his breath, but he
+took the oars and pulled ashore. Mae turned her eyes downward and felt
+the color creep up, up into her cheeks. It seemed eternity. The boat
+was Charon's, and she was drifting to her fate. Norman Mann stood like a
+statue. The wind moved his hair over his forehead, and once Mae saw him
+toss the unruly locks back in a familiar way he had. She did not know
+why, but the tears half came to her eyes as he did it. He stood as
+firm and hard and still as a New England rock, while the Italian swayed
+lithely as he pulled the oars, with the curve and motion of a sliding,
+slippery stream.
+
+The boat came safely ashore. The Piedmontese helped her to land, and the
+three stood silent; but Mae under all her shame felt content to be near
+Norman. His voice broke the quiet, quick and clear. "Are you married?"
+he asked.
+
+"I! married! What do you--what can he mean?"
+
+"Why is this man here, then?"
+
+Mae stood an instant so still that the heavy breaths of the two men were
+distinctly audible, the passionate boundings of Bero's pulse, the long,
+deep throbs of Norman's heart. The officer stepped toward her. Norman
+stood unmoved. The Italian's eye wandered restlessly, his hand fell to
+his sword. Norman's arms were folded, and his face set.
+
+Mae looked at one, then at the other, perplexedly. Then she understood.
+Like lightning, a terrible temptation flashed into her mind. The Italian
+loved her, would shield, protect, honor her. Norman must hate her, would
+always despise her. Should she lift her little weak woman's hand and
+place it in the man's hand ready to claim it, or stand still and be
+crushed by that other hand there?
+
+Ah! she could not do it. She tried once. She held out weakly her right
+hand toward Bero; but the left stretched itself involuntarily to Norman.
+Then the two met in each other's pitiful clasp over her bent head, and
+with a low wailing cry she fell in a little heap on the sand.
+
+When she opened her eyes, they were both bending over her. "Take me
+home," she gasped to Norman. He glared at the officer. "Go!" he said.
+Bero put his hand to his sword. Mae sprang up. "No," she said, gently,
+"no, my friend, for you have always been kind and friendly to me. Pray
+go." Bero was touched by this. This little girl had taken only good from
+him, after all, sympathy and friendliness. Norman was touched also with
+the same thought. Then the officer smiled pleasantly. He shrugged his
+shoulders slightly, regretfully, and bowed and rode away. And so the
+clinking spurs and yellow moustaches and amorous eyes vanished from
+Mae's sight.
+
+As he rode off he was somewhat sorrowful; but he took a picture from his
+pocket and looked at it. "She'll be glad to welcome me back again,"
+he said to himself, pleasantly, "and she belongs to my own land. This
+little foreigner might have pined for her own home, by and by." Then he
+sighed and shook his head. "Alas! this little stranger will dance before
+you often, still!" and he touched his eyes; "but I will put you back
+in your place here, now." This he said, looking at Lillia's picture and
+with his hand on his heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+"Take me home," said Mae again imploringly. "Not back there," as Norman
+drew her hand through his arm and started for the hut, "O no, not even
+for a minute."
+
+"Sit here then," he replied quietly, "while I arrange it with the
+woman," and he walked quickly away. Mae watched him till he entered the
+low doorway, in a sort of subdued, glorified happiness, that would break
+out over her shame and fear. She was afraid he would hate her, at least
+she told herself so, but in reality, everything and everybody and every
+place were fast fading out of this eager little mind. She and Norman
+were together, and she could not help being content. There was a certain
+joy in her weakness and shame, though they were genuine and kept her
+hushed and silent.
+
+Poor Lisetta was very much frightened, but told her story to this angry
+stranger with true Southern palaver. She said the little lady loved
+Italy so, and wanted to be a peasant, and insisted she would run away
+quite by herself if Lisetta would not take her, and so she consented,
+knowing she could, through the padrona, send word to the friends.
+
+"And the man?" asked Norman, impatiently.
+
+"What man? O, the officer. He just rode down this morning for a morning
+call. I never saw him before."
+
+A great weight, as large as the Piedmontese, fell from Norman's heart
+then, and he scattered money among the children recklessly and ordered
+up the donkey; and smiled on the amazed Lisetta all in the same breath,
+and went back to help Mae into the wagon with the lightest kind of a
+heart. It was a strange ride they took back to Castellamare. I think
+they both wished the world could stand still once more. When they had
+arrived at the station they found the next train to Naples was not due
+for two hours. Norman left Mae in the waiting-room for a time. Through
+the window she watched Gaetano and the donkey start homeward, with a
+great sigh of relief. She had time while she was sitting to think, but
+her head was in too great a whirl. She could only feel sorry and ashamed
+and meek and happy, all mixed together. The sensation was odd.
+
+"I have telegraphed Eric that we would start home by the next train,
+that you had only been off for a frolic. I hope we can buy a waterproof
+or shawl and a hat in Naples for you?"
+
+"Yes," said Mae, meekly, "I have my waterproof here. I think I will put
+it on now, please," and she began nervously to untie the shawl strap.
+Norman put her fingers gently aside, and unbuckled it for her. He handed
+her the long deep-blue cloak, which she put tightly about her, drawing
+the hood over her head. "You look like a nun," said Norman, smiling.
+"I wish I were one," replied Mae, with a choke in her throat. She was
+growing very penitential and softened.
+
+"What shall we do now?" asked Mr. Mann. "We have a long time to wait. If
+you feel like walking, we can find a pleasanter spot than this."
+
+"Go anywhere you please," replied Mae meekly. "What is the matter with
+you?"--for Norman had a very amused expression in his brown eyes.
+
+"I hardly recognize you. Not a trace of fight so far, and it must be two
+hours since we met."
+
+"Don't," said Mae, with her eyes down, so of course he didn't, but the
+two just marched quietly along back on the Sorrento road towards some
+high rocks. They sat down behind these, with their faces towards the
+sea, and were as thoroughly hidden from view, as if they had been quite
+alone in the world.
+
+"I suppose they were frightened," asked Mae, "at home--at Rome, I mean."
+"Dreadfully," replied Norman, trying to be sober, but with the glad ring
+in his voice still. "Edith was for dragging the Tiber; she was sure
+you and the seven-branched candlestick lay side by side. Mrs. Jerrold
+searched your trunks and read all your private papers, I am morally
+certain." Then Norman stopped abruptly, and Mae drew the long stiletto
+from her hair nervously and played with it before she said, "And the
+boys?" "Albert was very, very sad, but reasonably sure you would be
+found. We all feared the Italian, but Albert worked carefully, and soon
+discovered that the officer was said to be engaged to a young girl
+with whom he had been seen the day after you left, and that gave him
+courage,"--then Norman stopped again abruptly. "And Eric?" "Eric sat
+down with his face in his hands and cried, Miss Mae, and said, 'I've
+lost my sister, the very dearest little sister in the world.'"
+
+"And you came and found me," said Mae, after a pause, wiping the tears
+from her eyes. "Yes, thank God," said Norman. He was sober enough now.
+"Why did you do it?" asked Mae, "when I had been so naughty, and silly,
+and unkind?" He came very near telling her the reason as she looked up
+at him, but he did not, for she dashed on, "O! Mr. Mann, I have been--"
+
+"Don't confess to me, Miss Mae. Leave all of this till you get home to
+your own, who have a right to your confessions and penitence. Never
+mind what you have been, here you are, and as I have only one more
+handkerchief and your own looks as if it had been sea-bathing, you had
+better dry your eyes and be jolly for the next two hours." This was
+a precarious speech, but Mae only laughed at it, and dried her eyes
+quickly. "But I have one thing to say to you," she said, "and please
+mayn't I?"
+
+"You may say anything you please to me, of course," replied this very
+magnanimous Norman.
+
+"It is not about the miserable past or my doings, but it's about the
+future. I've said good-bye to my dreams of life--the floating and waving
+and singing and dancing life that was like iced champagne. I'd rather
+have cold water, thank you, sir, for a steady drink, morning, noon and
+night. I'm going to be good, to read and study and grow restful,"--and
+Mae folded her hands and looked off toward the sea. "She's a witching
+child," thought Norman. Then she raised her head. "I said it lightly
+because I felt it deeply," she added, as if in reply to his thought. "I
+am going to grow, if I can, unselfish and sympathetic, and perhaps, who
+knows, wise, and any way good."
+
+"There is no need of giving up your champagne entirely. Give yourself
+a dinner party now and then o' holidays. The world is full of color and
+beauty, and poetry you love. All study is full of it--most of all it
+lives in humanity."
+
+"Well," said Mae, "aren't you glad I'm going to change so?"
+
+"I'm glad you're going to give your soul a chance. Your body has been
+putting it down hard of late."
+
+"It's but a weakling," said Mae, with a shake of her head, "and I've
+hardly heard its whimpers at all, but--O, Mr. Mann, if you could have
+seen Talila--she's dreadful."
+
+"Who is Talila? and what has she to do with your soul?"
+
+"O, she's one of those Sorrento people," replied Mae, as if she had
+lived there for years. "I have so much to tell you: it will take--"
+
+"Years, I hope, dear." The last word dropped without his noticing it,
+but Mae caught it and hid it in her heart.
+
+"What made you think of coming for me?" she asked, after a pause, during
+which Norman had hummed a song as she had been writing her name on the
+sand. They were quite on the shore and only a narrow stretch of beach
+separated them from the bay. "You said if you ever came away, you would
+go to Sorrento, and I knew you had a friend in the kitchen who lived
+near Naples. So I searched for her and the padrona, and, finding neither
+of them, set Giovanni a babbling, and learned that the woman Lisetta had
+left that morning for Sorrento. I told the boys I had a mere suspicion
+that I would trace for them. So off I came last night, and by stopping
+and enquiring at every settlement, at last discovered you."
+
+"This is my birth-day; I am twenty years old," said Mae, "Why, what are
+you doing?" For Norman had bent down to the sand also, and had drawn a
+queer little figure there.
+
+"That is you when you were one year old," he laughed, "and you could
+only crow and kick your small feet, and smile now and then, and cry the
+rest of the time."
+
+"That is about all I can do yet," said Mae.
+
+"Here comes number two," and he drew his hand across the sand and
+smoothed the baby image away, leaving in its place a round, sturdy
+little creature, poised dangerously on one foot. "You have walked alone,
+and you have called your father's name, and you're a wonderful child by
+this time."
+
+"This is the three-year-old, white aprons and curls, please observe.
+Now, you recite 'Dickery, dickery dock' and 'I want to be an angel,' and
+you have cut all your wisdom teeth."
+
+"O, Mr. Mann, I haven't cut them yet. Babies don't have them."
+
+"Don't they? Well, you have other teeth in their place, white and
+sharp--but by this time you are four years old."
+
+"Ah, here I begin to remember. You draw the pictures, and I'll describe
+myself. Four years old!--let me see--I had a sled for Christmas, and I
+used to eat green apples. That's all I can remember; and five and six
+years old were just the same."
+
+"O, no, I'm sure you went to church for the first time somewhere along
+there; and isn't that a noteworthy event? I suppose all your thoughts
+were of your button boots and your new parasol?"
+
+"I behaved beautifully, I know; mamma says so; sat up like a lady, while
+you were sleeping, on that very same Sunday, off in some little country
+church, I suppose."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder--sleeping in my brother's outgrown coat into the
+bargain, with the sleeves dangling over my little brown hands."
+
+"It doesn't seem as if they could ever have been very little, does it,
+Mr. Mann?"
+
+Mr. Mann unfolded five fingers and a thumb and surveyed them gravely for
+a moment. "It is strange that this once measured three inches by two and
+couldn't hit out any better than your's could."
+
+Mae had laid her hand on her knee and was looking at it also in the
+most serious manner. Now she doubled it into a small but very pugnacious
+looking fist, which she shook most entrancingly before the very eyes of
+the young man by her side. The eyes turned such a peculiar look upon
+her that she hastened to add: "Go on with your dissolving views. It
+is number eight's turn next. You are the showman, and I am interested
+spectator."
+
+"You insist upon describing my pictures, so I think you are properly
+first assistant to the grand panorama. Here's eight-year-old. Try your
+powers on her."
+
+"Let me see. O, then I read all the while, the 'Fairchild Family'
+and 'Anna Ross,' and I used to wear my hair in very smooth braids, I
+remember. I was ever so good."
+
+"Impossible; you must have forgotten," suggested Norman. "You surely
+whispered in school and committed similar dreadful crimes. Poor little
+prig."
+
+"No, don't," plead Mae; "please don't laugh at the little girl me. I
+love to think of her as so goody-goody. Last night," and Mae lowered
+her voice, "I seemed to see little Mae Madden kneeling down in the old
+nursery in her woolly wrapper saying her prayers," and Mae brought up
+on the prayers very abruptly, and bent over toward the sand and began
+to draw hastily. "Here comes nine-year-old Mae. Mr. Mann, you may do the
+describing."
+
+"O, I suppose there were doll's parties, first valentines, and rides
+with Albert in his buggy, when you clung very tightly to the slight arm
+of the carriage and smiled very bravely up in his face. You must have
+been pretty then."
+
+"No, I was dreadfully ugly. I had broken out two teeth climbing a stone
+wall."
+
+"You had stopped being good?"
+
+"Yes, that only lasted a little bit of a time."
+
+"Miss Mae, I'm sure you were never ugly, but naughty and silly, I dare
+say. Kept a diary now, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes, and went to sleep with Eliza Cooke's poems under my pillow every
+night, and my finger holding the book open at some such thrilling verse
+as this:
+
+         'Say on that I'm over romantic
+           In loving the wild and the free,
+          But the waves of the dashing Atlantic,
+           The Alps and the eagle for me.'"
+
+"Did you wear your hair plaited when you were ten years old?" enquired
+Norman, intensely busy with another drawing.
+
+"O no; I didn't do anything when I was ten years old but get mad and
+make up with my two dearest friends."
+
+"One of whom was your dearest friend one-half of the time and the other
+the rest of it, I suppose."
+
+"Don't be satirical, sir. I had a lover when I was eleven; I used to
+skate with him and write him little notes, folded very queerly."
+
+"Why do you draw twelve and thirteen with their heads down?" asked Mae,
+after a moment.
+
+"Because they read so much; everything they can get hold of, including,
+possibly, a very revised edition of 'Arabian Nights'?"
+
+"Yes," laughed Mae, "and my first novel, 'Villette.'"
+
+"You go to a play for the first time now," suggested Norman. "How you
+clasp your hands and wink your eyes and bite your lips! And next day, in
+front of your mother's pier-glass, how you scream 'O, my love,' and gasp
+and tumble over in a heap in your brown calico, as the grand lady did
+the night before, in her pink silk."
+
+"Brown calico, indeed! I never condescended to die in my own clothes,
+let me assure you. The garret was overhauled, and had been since I was
+a mere baby, for effective, sweeping garments. Let us hurry along over
+fourteen and fifteen. I was sentimental and tried to be so young-ladyish
+then. I used to read history with Albert, and always put on both my
+gloves when I started out, and had great horror of girls who talked
+loud in the street. I learned to make bread, and shirt bosoms, and such
+things."
+
+"Well, here you are in a long dress, Miss Sweet Sixteen. I remember you
+home from boarding school on a vacation."
+
+"What did you think of me?" asked Mae, "didn't we have a nice time that
+summer? O, how silly I was!"
+
+She hurried on, because the eyes had given her that peculiar look
+again, which put her heart in a tremble. "I did have a beautiful time
+at boarding school," she continued, "the darlingest principal and such
+girls."
+
+"Then I suppose you wrote a salutatory in forlorn rhyme to end off
+with," laughed Norman, "and read it, all arrayed in white, in a
+trembling voice, and everybody applauded, and even old Judge Seymour
+admired it, while you were reading, with your pink cheeks and trembling
+hands and quivering voice."
+
+"Abominable! I didn't have the salutatory, and the girl who did, read a
+superb one, as strong and masculine--"
+
+"Then the Judge went to sleep, I'm sure," declared Norman.
+
+"Well," said Mae, "you are leaving out two years," for Norman had leaned
+back against the rock with his arms folded.
+
+"By and by," said Norman, "we all come off to Europe, and some of us go
+through the heart-ache, don't we?"
+
+"Yes," replied Mae, softly.
+
+"But come out ahead one day at Sorrento, perhaps?" asked Norman. To
+which Mae made no direct reply.
+
+"All the Mae Maddens have faded away," she said, looking down at the
+sand again. "The tide is rising." And she walked forward to the ripples
+of water, and then came slowly back and stood before Norman seriously.
+He laughed.
+
+"Why, Mr. Mann," said Mae, "I have been so very, very wicked."
+
+The dreadful Mr. Mann only laughed again.
+
+"You act as if it were all a joke. I never saw you so merry before."
+
+"I have never been as happy before in my life."
+
+"Why?" asked Mae, in a low voice.
+
+"Because I have found you," he answered earnestly, and before she knew
+it Mae was lifted in the strong, manly arms, her pink cheek close to
+Norman's brown one, and his lips on hers. She leaned her face against
+his and clung tightly to him,
+
+"O, Mr. Norman Mann," she said, "do you really want me as much--as I do
+you?"
+
+And Norman, still holding her tightly, bent his hand, with hers clasped
+in it, to the sand, and after the Mae Madden, he wrote another name, so
+that it read:
+
+
+MAE MADDEN MANN.
+
+
+Then he said a great many, many things, all beginning with that
+electric, wonderful little possessive pronoun "my," of which he had
+discoursed formerly, and he held her close all the while, and they
+missed the next train for Naples.
+
+The gay peasant costume fell about the girl's round lithe form like the
+luxuriant skin of some richly marked animal; but out of her eyes looked
+a woman's tender, loving, earnest soul. Norman Mann had saved her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+Edith was quietly married to Albert at Easter time, in the English
+Chapel at Florence. The event was hastened by the sudden appearance of
+Mae's parents, who set sail soon after hearing of the Sorrento escapade
+and the embryonic engagement, which awaited their sanction before being
+announced. Everything was beautifully smooth at last. Edith and Albert
+left the day of their marriage for Munich, and later, Mrs. Jerrold was
+to settle down with them at Tuebingen. The rest of the party were to
+summer in Switzerland; then came fall, and then--what?
+
+Norman thought he knew, and Mae said she thought he didn't, but this
+young woman was losing half her character for willfulness, and Norman
+was growing into a perfect tyrant, so far as his rights were concerned.
+Easter is a season of marriages. Mae read in a Roman paper the betrothal
+announcement of the Signor Bero and Signorina Lillia Taria. "I would
+like to send them a real beautiful present," said she, and Norman did
+not say no. So these two hunted all over Florence, and at length, in
+the studio of a certain not unknown Florentine, they discovered the very
+gift Mae desired--a picture of a young Italian soldier, bringing home
+his bride to his own people. There was the aged mother, proud and happy,
+waiting to bid the dark-eyed girl welcome. "She has a real 'old Nokomis'
+air," laughed Mae. "I know she would have told her son not to seek 'a
+stranger whom he knew not.'" The distant olive-colored hillsides, the
+splashing fountain near at hand, each face, and even the thick strong
+sunshine seemed to bear a tiny stamp with Italy graven on it. "The name
+of the picture is exactly right," said Mae. Under the painting were
+these words: "Italia Our Home."
+
+Norman would hardly have been human if he had not cast a quick glance at
+her as she stood thoughtfully before the picture. Mae was almost as good
+as an Italian for involuntary posing. She had made a tableau of herself
+now, with one hand at her eyes to shade them from the glare of the sun
+that fell fiercely through the window, her head half on one side, and a
+bit of drapery, of lace or soft silk, tight around her white throat. She
+felt Norman's glance, and looked up quickly, and smiled and shook her
+head: "No, Italy is not my home, although I love it so well. There is
+a certain wide old doorway not many miles from New York, and the hills
+around it, and the great river before it, and the people in it, all
+belong together, too. That's where we belong, Norman, in America,
+our home," and Mae struck a grand final pose with her hands clasped
+ecstatically, and her eyes flashing in the true Goddess of Liberty
+style.
+
+"Yes, I believe we do, Mae; I am almost anxious to get back and begin
+work in that young, eager country."
+
+"And so am I," said Mae.
+
+Norman laughed. "To think of your coming down to work, you young
+butterfly."
+
+"It is what we all have to come to, isn't it?--unless we go to that
+creature that finds some mischief still for idle hands to do. I don't
+expect to come to stone-cutting or cattle-driving, but I do expect to
+settle down into a tolerable housewifely little woman, and--"
+
+"And look after me."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so--and myself, and probably a sewing-class and
+the cook's lame son. Heigh-ho-hum! What a pity it is, that it is so
+uninteresting to be good."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Don't be saucy. I do know, perfectly well, that Mae Madden, naughty,
+idle, and silly, may be, after all, not so stupid; but get me good,
+industrious and wise, and it will take all of my time when I'm not
+asleep to keep so. No, there'll be nothing to say about me any more.
+I'll be as humdrum as--"
+
+"As I am."
+
+"You--why Norman, are you humdrum?"
+
+"Of course I am, dreadfully humdrum. If you and I were in a story-book,
+you would have ten pages to my one, to keep the reader awake. But then,
+story-books aren't the end of life. Suppose you, Mae Madden, have been
+odd, full of variety, ready to twist common occurrences into something
+startling and romantic, have you been happy? Haven't you been restless
+and discontented? Now, can't you, grown humdrum and good, be very happy
+and contented and joyful, even if the sun rises on just about the same
+Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the year round? You will not do for
+a story-book then, but won't you do better for life? And, after all,
+a lively murderer is a great deal more sensational than you could ever
+be."
+
+"Even when I ran away?"
+
+"Yes. Now, you see, I have been humdrum again, and half preached a
+sermon."
+
+"All right, sir; so long as you take me for a text, you may preach as
+you want to, and by and by, I dare say, I shall agree with you."
+
+"It would have been a great deal more interesting if you had married
+that Italian."
+
+"How do you know I could have married that Italian, my lord? He is going
+to marry a girl as much more beautiful than I am as--as Bero himself is
+than you--and yet I would rather have you. And now, don't you dare look
+at me in that way. I'll never say another nice thing to you if you do.
+This artist will think we are--"
+
+"Lovers, my dear. And aren't we?"
+
+* * * * *
+
+
+Ten days later Norman entered with a letter for Mae. "Read it to
+me," she said, throwing back the blinds and leaning her elbows on the
+window-cushion.
+
+"It is from Lillia. Would you rather read it yourself?" "O, no." So
+Norman read what Lillia had written in her pretty broken English:
+
+
+"My DEAR MISS MAE:--Thank you of all my heart for your so lovely gift.
+I have had so little home since long, long ago my mother died, and now
+I am to have one as the maid in the picture has. We will marry the fifth
+day of May at five o'clock, and will wish you to be there. Don't forget
+me.
+
+"LILLIA."
+
+
+"Signor Bero has added a postscript, Mae, which you can translate better
+than I." And Norman handed her the letter. Mae translated it thus:
+
+
+"Did you know all that the picture would say to me, Signorina? Receive
+my thanks for it, too, and believe I shall always live worthy of my
+Italy, my wife and friends that I see in the picture, and of another
+friend who lives so far away, whom I shall never see again, if I have
+such a friend. Think of my beautiful Lillia on our wedding day. We shall
+be married at St. Andrea's, at vesper time.
+
+"Bero."
+
+
+"And this is the day," said Mae, dropping the note.
+
+"And the very hour, allowing the bride and the sun a few minutes each,"
+added Norman, glancing at the clock.
+
+They gaze quietly out of the window of their lodgings on the Borgo
+Ognissante, but Mae sees far away beyond the Arno, into the church of
+St. Andrea,--music, and pomp, and beautiful ceremony, and before the
+altar, a woman in her bridal robes, with heavily figured lace falling
+over her black hair and white forehead, and against her soft cheeks and
+shoulders. Her great brown eyes have thrown away the mist of sadness
+for a luminous wedding veil of joy, and she is Lillia, and by her side,
+erect, proud, glorious, with a lingering ray of light falling on his
+golden head, is her happy husband, Bero. They stand before the altar
+of St. Andrea's. "God bless you," says Mae aloud. Then her gaze wanders
+back to the coral and mosaic shops below in the street, and up across to
+the opposite window, where a long-haired, brown-moustached, brown-eyed
+man leans, puffing smoke from his curved lips, and holding his cigarette
+in his slender fingers. She meets his gaze now, as she has met it
+before. "He is wondering what life will bring to these two young people,
+I fancy," says Mae.
+
+"Our own wedding-day, Mae," Norman replies; and they both forget all
+about Lillia, and Bero, and the stranger, and suddenly leave the window.
+The long-haired man puffs his cigar in a little loneliness, and wishes
+that wedding bells might ring for his empty heart too.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mae Madden, by Mary Murdoch Mason
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