towers of San Gemignano. She would have admired the strange nineteenthcentury statues in front of the Uffizi because they are of famous men."

VI

Ir was raining. Nowhere in the world can it rain as it does in Tuscany. Low, frayed gray clouds drifted against the encircling gray-green mountains. When for a few moments they parted, showing tatters of pale-blue sky, you could see white that was new snow on the higher ridges. In the city it rebounded from the pavement. A raincoat was no protection. Holland Porter had planned to take Leonie for another drive. He came in from the villa to tell her that this would be useless. As the rain slatted against the tan, rubberized curtains of his carozza, he was almost childishly irritated. Since Leonie was only going to be in Florence a month, it seemed the least the weather could do was to stay clear. When he reached the pension he found her in the same mood.

"Let's do something anyway," she said. "What, for example?"

"Go to Rajola's. We could dance. Would you mind awfully?"

"But I don't know how. I haven't for years, you know.”

"Of course you do. Anyway I'll show you."

He agreed.

Rajola's is a dancing establishment, the one Florentine counterpart of the Club de Vingt or Zelli's. It is in an old building not completely remodelled. Frilly decorations add a touch of modernity, however. It has a noisy dance orchestra well versed in the Continental theory that anything discordant is jazz and American. The prices of its highballs and excellent champagne cocktails are high enough to keep it thoroughly in fashion.

The clientele is an assortment. For a large part it consists of those admirable young Florentine counts who hope to endow themselves for life by marrying an American heiress and of those sage American heiresses who think that the abovementioned are just adorable. There is also a handful of inexperienced collegians on a first trip abroad. And a few sub

IT so happened that as they walked out of Rajola's they met Colonel Allentown. His small office, where he did a pleasant business in Florentine real estate, was on the same street. The same one at whose tea Holland Porter met Elena da Ripoli twenty years ago, though he was seventy-five he still went to this regularly. An Englishman either always works or never works. He grumbled courteously, though often a little profanely, at the legend he had invented that he had to do this. He didn't have to, but nothing could have persuaded him to give it up.

When he saw them, his thin, intent face lighted pleasurably. "How'd ye do, Holland? I haven't seen you in a long time." Underlying a typical British accent was a mannerism of biting together some words and drawling out others. Later he would say: "Oh, b't I like Leonie. She's so American. She makes me laarf."

Holland Porter indicated that he did well enough.

"And is this Miss Paulin?" Holland indicated that it was Miss Paulin.

"My deah Miss Paulin, I'm delighted to meet you."

Then he turned to Holland. "She must see my garden. Won't you bring her out to tea on Sunday? You will come to tea on Sunday, won't you, Miss Paulin? Everybody comes to my teas."

Everybody did come to Colonel Allentown's teas. Socially Florence is divided into two factions. No member of either is

on calling terms with any member of the other. Every member of each considers all the members of the other either just a little stupid or just a little "ord'nary." Colonel Allentown delighted in having elderly, black-clad ladies, dangling eyeglasses, come up to him and say: "But I had no idea you knew Mrs. Blyghter. I always thought she was rather-common." He found it especially amusing since Mrs. Blyghter had invariably made the same remark not more than a few minutes previously. He dubbed them the Guelphs and the Ghibellines and always managed to invite a few members of each. For him it was great fun.

But for one who, like Holland Porter, was a true dilettante-one who delights in things-it was infinitely boring. The small talk of Florentine scandlemongery did not interest him. As to how many and what sort of lovers the Principessa Caldezza possessed he hadn't the slightest interest. He was not one of them, thank God! Yet he preferred conversation on this subject to the babble of some lisping art enthusiast or the drawling pauses of some woman compatriot who conceded this was nearly as pretty as southern California.

It was into just this that he was plunged with Leonie. On one side of the bric-à-brac-crowded room stood a man with a face like a pug half metamorphosed to that of a sea-lion by drooping tobaccostained mustaches. He was tearing apart reputations for a couple of countesses whose own could not have been entirely unshopworn. Alone in a corner was the Marchese di Bono, the last of the Sforzas. A distracted octogenarian, in his veins actually, if somewhat incredibly, flowed the blood of the great condottiere. He spilled tea into his saucer and on his trousers. Then he spilled more as he tried to remedy the first-catastrophe with dabs of his handkerchief. By the window the giggly, high-voiced young man with red hair who had once written a book on primitive art was expounding his theories. A cruel observer might have explained him out of Havelock Ellis. Two young ladies, Americans, who taught at a school in Florence listened intently with large eyes.

As Holland Porter entered, he was introduced to the lady from Des Moines,

who was also among those present. It seems Allentown told her that there was going to be another American. She insisted upon meeting him.

"It does you good to talk to some one from your own part of the world after all these foreigners, dontcher know," she said after he had been given that pleasure. "Land, it don't seem to me I've spoken to anybody but Frenchmen and Eyetalians for a year, it seems. I can't make them understand me. The only Italian I ever spoke to before was our vegetable man, dontcher know. Louie Bagucci his name was, but we always called him Tony."

In the midst of this was Leonie, poised and assured of herself. When he escaped and was talking to Allentown's servant Maria, who was solid and pleasant like Giuseppina, Leonie engaged lightly in the ping-pong game of conversation and outpointed all these veteran players of it. She paused before each person and said. something charming or gracious. What she said was acknowledged. She made a favorable impression with all of them. Holland Porter was amazed.

66

How did she do it, he asked himself. What was her formula? 'She doesn't like most of these people or think any more of them than I do. Yet she is perfectly sincere in being nice to them."

His quickened pulses sent a warm blood coursing through him. He realized that he had felt that way only once before!

"Good-by, Mary. Wave your hand at Mary, Jimmy. By-by, Mary! Jimmy says by-by.'

Some of this heard, but much unheard, was answered similarly from the steamer. It was a good-natured crowd.

One passenger, however, did not take part in the general joyousness. He was a young American with blond hair and steady features and steady brown eyes. A little humorless, you thought. A little inclined to take himself seriously. Not wholly unlikable, however, in spite of his solid, grim jaw.

His farewell was solemn. A friend of his own age-perhaps twenty-five-came down to the dock with him. There was no banter or jests.

"So long, David. Good luck to you." "Thanks, old man. I guess I'll need

it."

"Oh, you'll come out all right; don't worry. I haven't got the slightest doubt."

The trip over did not bring him added cheerfulness. The other passengers formed small groups to play deck-tennis and shuffle board, or discovered that two and only two could sit comfortably behind a lifeboat in the moonlight. He walked alone, looking gloomily at the sea-gulls. Occasionally, it is true, he had a drink, but he downed it as if it were cough medicine. The blue Azores did not interest him, neither did the snow-clad Atlas Mountains. He did not even get off the Garibaldi when she halted at lavenderand-gold Palermo.

When they reached Naples he was the first ashore. While the others entertained plans of climbing in the funicular to the creamy feather on top of Vesuvius or sailing toward violet Capri across the most beautiful bay in all existence, he assembled his baggage and secured a porter. "Treno. Rome. Firenze," he directed him, under the impression that he was speaking fluent Italian. Presently he was jolting north.

Now that he was actually in Italy he felt let down, empty. After all, was there any chance that he would accomplish anything by having crossed the ocean? Their parting had been absolute, final. They had both allowed themselves to get angry.

"I wonder if you realize that you have been both rude and offensive."

"Of course. I always am. It's the nature of the beast."

"And it won't do you any good to be sarcastic, my conceited young man.' "Wrong, as usual."

"Oh, you're so clever. But I want to tell you one thing. I think you're hateful. I think you're rotten selfish and completely stuck on yourself. I don't want to ever see you again."

This gave him the opportunity to retire victorious. "You won't!"

A hill crowned with a pink villa went by. The train was running through a fireformed country of vines and cedar-trees. Distant blue mountains had veined snow on their summits. "How long will it take to get to Florence?" he wondered. "Will this damn train be late? Of course it will. Do you suppose that she will even see me when I get there? Why did I ever quarrel with her in the first place? It was my fault. I had no business being jealous. Oh, my God!"

IX

"BUT if I love her, why shouldn't I marry her? Why is that so silly?"

"Because you're sixty, and she can't be twenty-four, if she is that old. There you have the excellent reason, my good fellow."

"I have money." "You're sixty."

"I can keep us both comfortable." "More than twice her age."

"We both have the same tastes; like the same sort of things.' "But you're sixty, Holland Porter. It wouldn't be fair to her." "Why not?"

Ever since Colonel Allentown's tea Holland Porter had carried on this debate with himself. There was no respite from it.

"Why not let her decide?" he cried suddenly.

He went into the library. On his stiff blue-gray paper he wrote a note to her. Would she take tea with him the next day?

But now, as he stood in the garden waiting for her to walk laughing in among