ll else was still, and the silence was sweet and deep.

She turned back to her work and looked at it again. It thrilled her now.
She walked to and fro in the studio and felt as if she were walking on
the stars. She was happy, happy, happy!

Then the city began to sound on every side. Cabs rattled, electric trams
tinkled, vendors called their wares in the streets, and the new Rome,
the Rome of the Kings, awoke.

Somebody was singing as he came upstairs. It was Bruno, coming to his
work. He looked astonished, for the lamps were still burning, although
the sunlight was streaming into the room.

"Been working all night, Donna Roma?"

"Fear I have, Bruno, but I'm going to bed now."

She had an impulse to call him up to her work and say, "Look! I did
that, for I am a great artist." But no! Not yet! Not yet!

She had covered up the clay, and turned the key of her own compartment,
when the bell rang on the floor above. It was the porter with the post,
and Natalina, in curl papers, met her on the landing with the letters.

One of them was from the Mayor, thanking her for what she had done for
Charles Minghelli; another was from her landlord, thanking her for his
translation to Paris; a third was from the fashionable modiste, thanking
her for an invitation from the Minister. A feeling of shame came over
her as she glanced at these letters. They brought the implication of an
immoral influence, the atmosphere of an evil life.

There was a fourth letter. It was from the Minister himself. She had
seen it from the first, but a creepy sense of impending trouble had made
her keep it to the last. Ought she to open it? She ought, she must!

"MY DARLING CHILD,--News at last, too, and success within hail!
Minghelli, the Grand Hotel, the reference in London, and the
dead-and-buried nightmare have led up to and compassed everything!
Prepare for a great surprise--David Rossi is _not_ David Rossi,
but a _condemned man who has no right to live in Italy_! Prepare
for a still greater surprise--_he has no right to live at all_!

"So you are avenged! The man humiliated and degraded you. He
insulted me also, and did his best to make me resign my portfolio
and put my private life on its defence. You set out to undo the
effects of his libel and to punish him for his outrage. You've
done it! You have avenged yourself for both of us! It's all your
work! You are magnificent! And now let us draw th