nd rubbing the ball of his thumb across the tips of his
fingers, said, with a fine, handsome smile:

"Pennies! Money! You can't earn money in Naples. Ah, Naples is
beautiful, but she is poor. You live in the sun, and you earn
fourteen, fifteen pence a day--"

"Not enough," she said.

He put his head on one side and tilted his brows, as if to say "What
are you to do?" And the smile on his mouth was sad, fine, and
charming. There was an indefinable air of sadness or wistfulness
about him, something so robust and fragile at the same time, that
she was drawn in a strange way.

"But you'll go back?" she said.

"Where?"

"To Italy. To Naples."

"Yes, I shall go back to Italy," he said, as if unwilling to commit
himself. "But perhaps I shan't go back to Naples."

"Never?"

"Ah, never! I don't say never. I shall go to Naples, to see my
mother's sister. But I shan't go to live--"

"Have you a mother and father?"

"I? No! I have a brother and two sisters--in America. Parents, none.
They are dead."

"And you wander about the world--" she said.

He looked at her, and made a slight, sad gesture, indifferent also.

"But you have Madame for a mother," she said.

He made another gesture this time: pressed down the corners of his
mouth as if he didn't like it. Then he turned with the slow, fine
smile.

"Does a man want two mothers? Eh?" he said, as if he posed a
conundrum.

"I shouldn't think so," laughed Alvina.

He glanced at her to see what she meant, what she understood.

"My mother is dead, see!" he said. "Frenchwomen--Frenchwomen--they
have their babies till they are a hundred--"

"What do you mean?" said Alvina, laughing.

"A Frenchman is a little man when he's seven years old--and if his
mother comes, he is a little baby boy when he's seventy. Do you know
that?"

"I _didn't_ know it," said Alvina.

"But now--you do," he said, lurching round a corner with her.

They had come to the stables. Three of the horses were there,
including the thoroughbred Ciccio was going to ride. He stood and
examined the beasts critically. Then he spoke to them with strange
sounds, patted them, stroked them down, felt them, slid his hand
down them, over them, under them, and felt their legs.

Then, he looked up from stooping there under the horses, with a
long, slow look of his yellow eyes, at Alvina. She felt
unconsciously flattered. His long, yellow look lingered, holding her
eyes. She wondered what he was thinkin