Roma's bosom was swelling under her heavy breathing, her heart was beating violently and her head was dizzy. All the bitterness of the evening was boiling in her throat, and it burst out at length in a flood.

"So that is all your moral protestations come to, is it?" she said.

"Because the Baron is necessary to you and you cannot exist without him, you expect me to buy and sell myself according to your necessities."

"Roma! What are you saying? Aren't you ashamed...."

"Aren't _you_ ashamed? You've been trying to throw me into the arms of the Baron, and you haven't cared what would happen so long as I kept up appearances."

"Oh, dear! I see what it is. You want to be the death of me! You will, too, before you've done. Natalina! Where is...."

"More than that, you've poisoned my mind against my father, and because I couldn't remember him, you've brought me up to think of him as selfish and vain and indifferent to his own daughter. But my father wasn't that kind of man at all."

"Who told you that, miss?"

"Never mind who told me. My father was a saint and a martyr, and a great man, and he loved me with all his heart and soul."

"Oh, my head! My poor head!... A martyr indeed! A socialist, a republican, a rebel, an anarchist, you mean!"

"Never mind what his politics were. He was my father--that is enough--and you had no right to make _me_ think ill of him, whatever the world might do."

Roma was superb at that moment, with her head thrown back, her eyes flaming, and her magnificent figure swelling and heaving under her clinging gown.

"You'll kill me, I tell you. The cognac ... Natalina...." cried the Countess, but Roma was gone.

Before going to bed Roma wrote to the Baron:

"Certain you are wrong. Why waste time sending Charles Minghelli to London? Why? Why? Why? The forger will find out nothing, and if he does, it will only be by exercise of his Israelitish art of making bricks without straw. Stop him at once if you wish to save public money and spare yourself personal disappointment. Stop him!

Stop him! Stop him!

"P.S.--To show you how far astray your man has gone, D. R.

mentioned to-night that he was once a waiter at the Grand Hotel!"

VI

Next morning David Rossi arrived early.

"Now we must get to work in earnest," said Roma. "I think I see my way at last."

It was not John the beloved disciple, John who lay in the bosom of his Lord. It was Peter, the devoted, stalwart, brave individual, human, erring but glorious Peter. "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I build my church."

"Same position as before. Eyes the other way. Thank you!... Afraid you didn't enjoy yourself last night--no?"

"At the theatre? I was interested. But the human spectacle was perhaps more to me than the artistic one. I am no artist, you see.... How did _you_ become a sculptor?"

"Oh, I studied a little in the studios of Paris, where I went to school, you see."

"But you were born in London?"

"Yes."

"Why did you come to Rome?"

"Rome was the home of my people, you know. And then there was my name--Roma!"

"I knew a Roma long ago."

"Really? Another Roma?"

There was a tremor in her voice.

"It was the little daughter of the friend I've spoken about."

"How interest ... No, at the window, please--that will do."

Roma was choking with a sense of duplicity, but save for a turn of the head David Rossi gave no sign.

"She was only seven when I saw her last."

"That was long ago, you say?"

"Seventeen years ago."

"Then she will be the same age as...."

"The first time I saw her she was only three, and she was in her nightdress ready for bed."

Roma laughed a little, but she knew that every note in her voice was confused and false.

"She said her prayers with a little lisp at that time. 'Our Fader oo art in heben, alud be dy name.'"

He laughed a little now, as he mimicked the baby voice. They laughed together, then they looked at each other, and then with serious eyes they turned away.

"You'll think it strange, but I date my first conscious and definite aspiration to the memory of that hour."

"Really?"

"Ten years afterward, when I was in America, the words of that prayer came back to me in Roma's little lisp. 'Dy kingum tum. Dy will be done on eard as it is in heben.'"

For some time after that Roma worked on without speaking, feeling feverish and restless. But just as the silence was becoming painful, and she could bear it no longer, Felice came to announce lunch.

"You'll stay? I want so much to work on while I'm in the mood," she said.

"With pleasure," he replied.

She ate hardly at all, for she was troubled by many misgivings. Did he know her? He did; he must; every word, every tone seemed to tell her that. Then why did he not speak out plainly? Because, having revealed himself to her, he was waiting for her to reveal herself to him. And why had she not done so? Because she was enmeshed in the nets of the society she lived in; because she was ashamed of the errand that had brought them together; and most of all because she had not dared to lay bare that secret of his life which, like an escaped convict, dragged behind it the broken chain of the prison-house.

_David Leone is dead!_ To uncover, even to their own eyes only, the fact that lay hidden behind those words was like personating the priest and listening at the grating of the confessional!