Her eyes were wide
open again, and bright with zeal for his instruction. "You have dined
already. That is a certain truth, because this meal is dinner, and you
have eaten it. But to-night you are going to a dinner of ceremony--and
that is different. A dinner of ceremony does not count. It is the same
as a supper. My uncle himself once went to a dinner of ceremony at
Bergamo. No, it will not be gluttony for you to go to a dinner of
ceremony."

"You speak like a little pope," said John, with enthusiasm. "In matters
of Faith and Morals I believe you are infallible. If you could guess the
load you have lifted from my conscience!" And he pushed a hearty ouf.

"I am glad," said Annunziata. And then she attempted to hark back.
Curiosity again lighting her eyes, "This form that you have seen in the
garden--" she began.

"Don't try to change the subject," John interrupted. "Let us cultivate
sequence in our ideas. What I am labouring with hammer and tongs to drag
from you is the exact date at which, somewhere between the years of our
salvation 1387 and 1455, you sat for your portrait to the beatified
painter Giovanni of Fiesole. Now, be a duck, and make a clean breast of
it."

Annunziata's eyes clouded. A kind of scorn, a kind of pity, and a kind
of patient longanimity looked from them.

"That is folly," she said, on the deepest of her deep notes, with a
succession of slow, reflective, side-wise nods.

"Folly--?" repeated John, surprised, but bland. "Oh? Really?"

"Sit for my portrait between the years 1387 and 1455,--how could I?"
scoffed Annunziata.

"Why? What was to prevent you?" innocently questioned he.

"_Ma come!_ I was not yet alive," said she.

John looked at her with startled eyes, and spoke with animation.

"Weren't you? Word of honour? Are you sure? How do you know? Have you
any definite recollection that you weren't? Can you clearly recall the
period in question, and then, reviewing it in detail, positively attest
that you were dead? For there's no third choice. A person must either be
alive or dead. And how, if you weren't alive, how ever did it come to
pass that there should be a perfect portrait of you from Giovanni's
brush in the Convent of Saint Mark at Florence? Your grave little white
face, and your wise little big eyes, and your eager little inquisitive
profile, and your curls flowing about your shoulders, and your pinafore
that's so like a peplum,--there they all are, precisely as I see them