ing, long ago, you were put
into the earth with the first things sown. I am merely a leaf, blown
from what branch I do not even know--belonging nowhere, coming from
nothing. I think I see for the first time what you mean, over here, but
just _being_ and not caring to do more than survive from the
gloriousness of all this." She spread her arms out as though
bewildered.

"Now you see," Giovanni answered her, as though there were a new and
strong bond of sympathy between them, "why decorations are unnecessary.
Can you imagine these walls, which for centuries have looked down upon
every great personage of Rome, being decked up like a Christmas tree
because a number of people whose achievements are in no way illustrious
are coming for an hour or two?"

"I think," said Nina, "that I shall dance like a wraith. It seems almost
a sacrilege to bob around and prattle in such surroundings. How silly
their sainted ghosts might think us!"

"I never thought of the old masters as saints exactly. But come,
Mademoiselle--let us pretend--in each of those chandeliers are burning a
hundred wax candles. It is the night of the ball--we open it so--will
you dance?"

Again there appeared a Giovanni that she had never seen before, his lazy
arrogance vanished, as, whisking a handkerchief out of his pocket to
wave in his hand, he became a sprite--a dancing faun, a reincarnation of
the spirit of Donatello.

Twice he traversed the length of the gallery, and then, with a vigor
added to his grace, he caught Nina and swung her with him into his
whirling dance. It had been perfectly done; even in his _abandon_ there
was no lack of ceremony. There was none of the "come along" spirit of
youth in America. He was in this, just as he was in everything else, a
remnant of a past age; he had merely been transformed into a Bacchant!
He was in no way a mere young man who had grabbed a young girl around
the waist and made her dance.

But as the princess watched them, her feelings were strongly at
variance. Admiration played the greater part. Even a much less biased
mind than hers could not have failed to appreciate the wonderful grace
of the man and the girl, for Nina was as graceful as he. Yet the
princess looked vaguely troubled, too, at the thought that Giovanni was
perhaps overstepping his privilege.

"Giovanni! Nina!" she called, but she might as well have appealed to the
wind that blew through the courtyard below, and instead of their heeding
she f