nflower, and thoughtlessly, while it hung
there, with nervous fingers scattered the seeds as he went his way. So
that the dove cooed in her little swelling throat, gathered what Luigi
spilled, and, startled at last by a frisking hound, flew up and alighted
on the tray which Luigi's other hand poised airily on his head, and was
borne along with all the company of fair white things there in the
sunshine.

The street-urchins warned Luigi of the intruder among his wares, and
then, slyly putting up his hand, the boy tossed the seeds in a shower
about the tray. Off flew the dove, and back with the returning gust she
fluttered, and, pausing only to catch her seed, she came and went,
wheeling in flashing circles round his head as he pursued his path.

It was at the pretty picture he thus presented, as, having left the
market-place, he came upon the higher streets of the town, that a lady,
looking from her window, made exclaim. The kind face, the pleasant
voice, attracted him; in a moment after, while she was yet thinking of
it, the door was pushed partly open, a dark boy, smiling, appeared,
followed by the unslung tray, and a voice like a flute said,--

"_Sono io_,--it is I. Will the lady buy?"

And then the image-vender showed his wares.

The lady chaffered with him a moment, and at its close he was evidently
paying no attention to what she said, but was listening to a voice from
the adjoining room, the clear voice of a girl singing her Italian
exercises.

His face was in a glow, he bent to catch the words with signalling
finger and glittering eyes; it was plainly neither the deftly sweet
accompaniment nor the melody that charmed him, but the language: the
language was his own.

With the cadence of the measure the sound was broken capriciously, the
book had been thrown down, and the singer herself stood balancing in the
doorway between the rooms, a hand on either side,--still lightly
trilling her scales, smiling, beaming, blue-eyed, rosy. The sunbeam that
entered behind the shade swinging in the wind fell upon the beautiful
masses of her light-brown hair, and illumined all the shifting color
that played with such delicate suffusion upon her cheek and chin; her
face was a deep, innocent smile of joy; she would have been dazzling but
for the blushes that seemed to go and come with her breath and make her
human; and so much did she embody one's ideal of the first woman that no
one wondered when all called her Eve, althoug