nt Sappho, but I fancy Odalisque is a better name
for her. There is no brain or heart, is there?"

"I don't know," she answered uncertainly. "She seldom speaks to
anyone, never to me."

"She is jealous of you probably."

The heats of July tried the boy. He was not so well as he had been in
the spring, and lately he had not been able to help his mother with
her needlework. The hours of enforced idleness seemed very long, and
he watched for Olive's coming with pathetic eagerness. She never
failed to appear on Tuesdays and Saturdays, though the lessons had
been given up since his head ached when he tried to learn. Signora
Aurelia met her always at the door with protestations of gratitude.
"You amuse him and make him laugh, my dear, because you are so fresh,
and you do not mind what you say. It is good of you to come so far in
the sun."

The girl's heart ached to see the haggard young face so white against
the dark velvet of the piled-up cushions. The deep grey eyes lit up
with pleasure at the sight of her, but she found it hard to meet their
yearning with a smile.

Sometimes she found old men sitting with him, grave and potent
signiors, professors from the University, who, on being introduced,
beamed paternally and asked her questions about Oxford and Cambridge.
There were bashful youths too, who blushed when she entered and rose
hurriedly with muttered excuses. If they could be induced to stay,
Olive, seeing that it pleased Astorre to see them shuffling their feet
and writhing on their chairs in an agony of embarrassment before her,
did her best to make them uncomfortable.

"Your friends are all so timid," she said. He looked at her with a
kind of triumph, a pride of possession.

"They do not understand you as I do. Fausto admires you, but you
frighten him."

"Is he Gemma's adorer?" she asked with a careful display of
indifference.

"Yes, he is always _amoroso_."

"Ah! Does he smoke?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Oh, nothing," she said. She did not really believe that the man on
the stairs could have been Fausto. Gemma would not look twice at such
a harmless infant now. When she was forty-five, perhaps, she might
smile on boys, but at twenty-six--

CHAPTER VII

Olive sat in her little bedroom correcting exercises.

It was the drowsy middle of the afternoon and the heat was intense.
All the grey-green and golden land of Tuscany lay still and helpless
at the mercy of the sun. The birds had long ceased singin