not? I shall not tell tales but I hope for your sake that my wife
won't see you."

"She won't see me again. I am going," she answered.

He would have detained her. "One moment," he said eagerly, but she was
not listening. "I shall miss you."

After all she heard him. "Thank you," she said gravely.

A door was closed on the landing below, and the master of the house
glanced at it apprehensively. He was not sure--

CHAPTER VI

The Aquila Verde was the oldest of the tall houses in the narrow
Vicolo dei Donati; the lower windows were barred with iron worn by the
rains of four hundred years, and there were carved marble pillars on
either side of the door. The facade had been frescoed once, and some
flakes of colour, red, green and yellow, still adhered to the wall
close under the deep protecting eaves.

"It was a palace of the Donati once," the host explained to Olive as
he set a plate of steaming macaroni swamped in tomato sauce before
her.

"I thought it might have been a convent, because of the long paved
corridors and this great room that is like a refectory."

"No, the Donati lived here. Dante's wife, Gemma, perhaps. Who knows!"

Ser Giovanni took up a glass and polished it vigorously with the
napkin he carried always over his arm before he filled it with red
Chianti. He had never had a foreigner in his house before, but he had
heard many tales about them from the waiters in the great
Anglo-American hotels on the Lung'Arno, and he knew that they craved
for warmth and an unlimited supply of hot water and tea. Naturally he
was afraid of them, and he was also shy of stray women, but Olive was
pretty, and he was a man, and moreover a Florentine, and his brother
had come with her and had been earnest in his recommendations, so he
was anxious to please her. "There is no _dolce_ to-night," he said
apologetically. "But perhaps you will take an orange."

When Olive went up to her room presently she found a great copper jar
of hot water set beside the tiny washstand. The barred window was high
in the thickness of the stone wall and the uncarpeted floor was of
brick. The place was bare and cold as a cell, but the bed, narrow and
white as that of Mary Mother in Rossetti's picture, invited her, and
she slept well. She was awakened at eight o'clock by a young waiter
who brought in her coffee and rolls on a tray. She was a little
startled by his unceremonious entrance, but it seemed to be so much a
matter of cour