ble. Perhaps she drew the line of speech
at the expression of opinions. Schomberg might have trained her, for
domestic reasons, to keep them to herself. But Davidson felt in honour
obliged to converse; so he said, putting his own interpretation on this
surprising silence:

"I see--not much account. Such bands hardly ever are. An Italian lot,
Mrs. Schomberg, to judge by the name of the boss?"

She shook her head negatively.

"No. He is a German really; only he dyes his hair and beard black for
business. Zangiacomo is his business name."

"That's a curious fact," said Davidson. His head being full of Heyst, it
occurred to him that she might be aware of other facts. This was a very
amazing discovery to anyone who looked at Mrs. Schomberg. Nobody had
ever suspected her of having a mind. I mean even a little of it, I mean
any at all. One was inclined to think of her as an It--an automaton, a
very plain dummy, with an arrangement for bowing the head at times
and smiling stupidly now and then. Davidson viewed her profile with a
flattened nose, a hollow cheek, and one staring, unwinking, goggle eye.
He asked himself: Did that speak just now? Will it speak again? It was
as exciting, for the mere wonder of it, as trying to converse with a
mechanism. A smile played about the fat features of Davidson; the smile
of a man making an amusing experiment. He spoke again to her:

"But the other members of that orchestra were real Italians, were they
not?"

Of course, he didn't care. He wanted to see whether the mechanism would
work again. It did. It said they were not. They were of all sorts,
apparently. It paused, with the one goggle eye immovably gazing down
the whole length of the room and through the door opening on to the
"piazza." It paused, then went on in the same low pitch:

"There was even one English girl."

"Poor devil!"--said Davidson, "I suppose these women are not much better
than slaves really. Was that fellow with the dyed beard decent in his
way?"

The mechanism remained silent. The sympathetic soul of Davidson drew its
own conclusions.

"Beastly life for these women!" he said. "When you say an English girl,
Mrs. Schomberg, do you really mean a young girl? Some of these orchestra
girls are no chicks."

"Young enough," came the low voice out of Mrs. Schomberg's unmoved
physiognomy.

Davidson, encouraged, remarked that he was sorry for her. He was easily
sorry for people.

"Where did they go to from here?