She released her fingers from the young man's grasp with the air of
one crushing a forward insect or removing a bramble from the path, and
she actually beckoned to her sister to come.

Orazio flushed red and he seemed about to speak as Carmela rose from
her seat, but the aunt interposed hurriedly.

"Sit still, Gemma, you are tired or you would not speak so. The lights
hurt your eyes and make your head ache."

"Yes, I am tired," the girl said wearily. "I slept ill last night.
Forgive me, Orazio, if I was cross. I am sorry."

Her dull submission touched Olive with a sudden sense of pity and of
fear, but Orazio was blind and deaf to all things written between the
lines of life, and he could not interpret it.

"I do not always understand you," he said stiffly, and he would not
relax until presently she drew nearer to him of her own accord.

CHAPTER IX

The Vicolo dei Moribondi is the narrowest of all the steep stone-paved
streets that lead from the upper town to the market-place of Siena,
and the great red bulk of the Palazzo Pubblico overshadows it. Olive
had come that way once from the Porta Romana, and seeing the legend:
"_Affitasi una camera_" displayed in the doorway of one of the shabby
houses, had been moved to climb the many stairs to see the room in
question.

It proved to be a veritable eyrie, large, bare, passably clean, and
very well lighted. From the window she saw the hillside below the
church of San Giuseppe, a huddle of red roofs and grey olive orchards
melting into a blue haze of distance beyond the city walls, and the
crowning heights of San Quirico. Leaning out over the sill of
crumbling stone she looked down into the Vicolo as into a well.

The rent was very low, and the woman who had the room to let seemed a
decent though a frowsy old soul, and so the matter was settled there
and then, and Olive had left the house with the key of her new domain
in her pocket.

She had bought a table and two chairs and a shelf for her books at a
second-hand furniture shop near the Duomo, and had given her first
lesson there two days later, and soon the quiet place seemed more like
home to her than the stuffy flat in the Piazza Tolomei. What matter if
she came to it breathless from climbing five flights of stairs? It was
good to be high up above the stale odours of the streets. The window
was always open. There were no woollen mats to be faded or waxen
fruits to be melted by the sun's heat. A little pl