l thinks that if it were Pippa, she would be singing, as
they had been told.

"Oh, you sing first," retorts the other--

"Then if she listens and comes close . . . I'll tell you,
Sing that song the young English noble made
Who took you for the purest of the pure,
And meant to leave the world for you--what fun!"

So, not the country girl, but she whose black hair discontents her,
sings, and Pippa "listens and comes close," for the song has words as
sweet as any of her own . . . and the red-fingered one calls to her to
come closer still, they won't eat her--why, she seems to be "the very
person the great rich handsome Englishman has fallen so violently in
love with." She shall hear all about it; and on the steps of the church
Pippa is told by this creature, Zanze, how a foreigner, "with blue eyes
and thick rings of raw silk-coloured hair," had gone to the mills at
Asolo a month ago and fallen in love with Pippa. Pippa, however, will
not keep him in love with her, unless she takes more care of her
personal appearance--she must "pare her nails pearlwise," and buy shoes
"less like canoes" for her small feet; _then_ she may hope to feast upon
lampreys and drink Breganze, as Zanze does. . . . And now Pippa sings
one of her songs, and it might have been chosen expressly to please the
country girl. It begins--

"Overhead the tree-tops meet,
Flowers and grass spring 'neath our feet;
There was nought above me, and nought below
My childhood had not learned to know"

--a little story of an innocent girl's way of making out for herself
only the sweetness of the world, the majesty of the heavens . . . and
just when all seemed on the verge of growing clear, and out of the "soft
fifty changes" of the moon, "no unfamiliar face" could look, the sweet
life was cut short--

"Suddenly God took me . . ."

As Pippa sang those words, she passed on. She had heard enough of the
four girls' talk, even were they not now interrupted by a sudden clatter
inside Monsignor's house--a sound of calling, of quick heavy feet, of
cries and the flinging down of a man, and then a noise as of dragging a
bound prisoner out. . . . Monsignor appeared for an instant at the window
as she, coming from the Duomo, passed his house. His aspect disappointed
her--

"No mere mortal has a right
To carry that exalted air;
Best people are not angels quite . . ."

and with that one look at him, she passe