h swam about. Only
the old gardener knew the secret of how these fish lived through the
chill Florentine winters. Yet, every spring, about the time when the
tourists began to prowl round, the little goldfish were to be seen
again, ready for bread-crumbs and bugs of suicidal tendencies. Forming a
kind of triangle about the basin were three ancient marble benches, such
as the amiable old Roman senators were wont to lounge upon during the
heat of the afternoon, or such as Catullus reclined upon while reading
his latest lyric to his latest affinity. At any rate, they were very
old, earth-stained and time-stained and full of unutterable history, and
with the eternal cold touch of stone which never wholly warms even under
warmest sun. The kind of bench which Alma-Tadema usually fills with
diaphanous maidens.

At this particular time a maiden, not at all diaphanous, but mentally
and physically material, sat on one of these benches, her arms thrown
out on either side of the crumbling back, her chin lowered, and her eyes
thoughtfully directed toward the little circle of disturbed water where
the goldfish were urging for the next crumb. Now, as Phoebus was
somewhere near four in the afternoon, he was growing ruddy with effort
in the final spurt for the western horizon. So the marbles and the
fountain and the water and the maiden all melted into a harmonious
golden tone.

Merrihew was not so poetical as to permit this picture to go on
indefinitely; so he stole up from behind with all the care of a
practised hunter till he stood directly behind the maiden. She still
dreamed. Then he put his hands over her eyes. She struggled for a brief
moment, then desisted.

"It is no puzzle at all," she declared. "I can smell horse, horse, and
again horse. Mr. Merrihew--"

"Yes, I know all about it. I should have fetched along a sachet-powder.
I never remember anything but one thing, Kitty, and that's you." He came
round and sat down beside her. "There's no doubt that I reek of the
animal. But the real question is," bluntly, "how much longer are you
going to keep me dangling on the string? I've been coming up here for
ten days, now, every afternoon."

"Ten days," Kitty murmured. She was more than pretty to-day, and there
was malice aforethought in all the little ribbons and trinkets and
furbelows. She had dressed expressly for this moment, but Merrihew was
not going to be told so. "Ten days," she repeated; and mentally she
recounted the p