"Yes, aunt."

"Why are you sitting in the darkness? I have a horror of darkness. You know that quite well."

Roma turned on the lights.

"Have I been speaking? What have I been saying?"

Roma tried to prevaricate.

"You are telling me a falsehood. You know you are. You gave me that drug to make me tell you my secrets. But I know what I told you and it was all a lie. You needn't think because you've been listening.... It was a lie, I tell you...."

The Sister came back at that moment, and Roma went to her room. She did not write her usual letter to David Rossi that night. Instead of doing so, she knelt by Elena's little Madonna, which she had set up on a table by her bed.

Her own secret was troubling her. She had wanted to take it to some one, some woman, who would listen to her and comfort her. She had no mother, and her tears had begun to fall.

It was then that she thought of the world-mother, and remembered the prayer she had heard a thousand times but never used before.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of death--Amen!"

When she rose from her knees she felt like a child who had been crying and was comforted.

IX

For some days after this the house was in a tumult. Men in red caps labelled "Casa di Vendita" were tearing up carpets, dragging out pieces of furniture and marking them. The catalogue was made, and bills were posted outside the street door announcing a sale of "Old and New Objects of Art" in the "Appartamento Volonna." Then came the "Grand Esposizione"--it was on Sunday morning--and the following day the auction.

Roma built herself an ambush from prying eyes in one corner of the apartment. She turned her boudoir into a bedroom and sitting-room combined. From there she heard the shuffling of feet as the people assembled in the large dismantled drawing-room without. She was writing at a table when some one knocked at the door. It was the Commendatore Angelelli, in light clothes and silk hat. At that moment the look of servility in his long face prevailed over the look of arrogance.

"Good-morning, Donna Roma. May I perhaps...."

"Come in."

The lanky person settled himself comfortably and began on a confidential communication.

"The Baron, sincerely sorry to hear of your distresses, sends me to say that you have only to make a request and this unseemly scene shall come to an end. In fact, I have authority to act on his behalf--as an unknown friend, you know--and stop these proceedings even at the eleventh hour.

Only a word from you--one word--and everything shall be settled satisfactorily."

Roma was silent for a moment, and the Commendatore concluded that his persuasions had prevailed. Somebody else knocked at the door.

"Come in," said the Commendatore largely.

This time it was the auctioneer. "Time to begin the sale, Signorina. Any commands?" He glanced from Roma to Angelelli with looks of understanding.

"I think her Excellency has perhaps something to say," said Angelelli.

"Nothing whatever. Go on," said Roma.

The auctioneer disappeared through the door, and Angelelli put on his hat.

"Then you have no answer for his Excellency?"

"None."

"_Bene_," said the Commendatore, and he went off whistling softly.

The auction began. At a table on a platform where the piano used to stand sat the chief auctioneer with his ivory hammer. Beneath him at a similar table sat an assistant. As the men in red caps brought up the goods the two auctioneers took the bidding together, repeating each other in the manner of actor and prompter at an Italian theatre.

The English Sister came to say that the Countess wished to see her niece immediately. The invalid, now frightfully emaciated and no longer able to sit up, was lying back on her lace-edged pillows. She was plucking with shrivelled and bony fingers at her figured counterpane, and as Roma entered she tried to burst out on her in a torrent of wrath. But the sound that came from her throat was like a voice shouted on a windy headland, and hardly louder than the muffled voices of the auctioneers as they found their way through the walls.

Roma sat down on the stool by the bedside, stroked the cat with the gold cross suspended from its neck, and listened to the words within the room and without as they fell on her ear alternately.

"Roma, you are treating me shamefully. While I am lying here helpless you are having an auction--actually an auction--at the door of my very room."

"Camera da letto della Signorina! Bed in _noce_, richly ornamented with fruit and flowers." "Shall I say fifty?" "Thank you, fifty." "Fifty."

"Fifty-five." "Fifty-five." "No advance on fifty-five?" "Gentlemen, gentlemen! The beautiful bed of a beautiful lady, and only fifty-five offered for it!..."

"If you wanted money you had only to ask the Baron, and if you didn't wish to do that, you had only to sign a bill at six months, as I told you before. But no! You wanted to humble and degrade me. That's all it is. You've done it, too, and I'm dying in disgrace...."

"Secretaire in walnut! Think, ladies, of the secrets this writing-desk might whisper if it would! How much shall I say?" "Sixty lire." "Sixty."

"Sixty-five." "Sixty-five." "Writing-desk in walnut with the love letters hardly out of it, and only sixty-five lire offered!..."

"This is what comes of a girl going her own way. Society is not so very exacting, but it revenges itself on people who defy the respectabilities. And quite right, too! Pity they could not be the only ones to suffer, but they can't. Their friends and relations are the real sufferers; and as for me...."

The Countess's voice broke down into a maudlin whimper. Without a word Roma rose up to go. As she did so she met Natalina coming into the room with the usual morning plate of forced strawberries. They had cost four francs the pound.

Some time afterwards, from her writing-table in the boudoir-bedroom, Roma heard a shuffling of feet on the circular iron stairs. The people were going down to the studio. Presently the auctioneer's voice came up as from a vault.

"And now what am I offered for this large and important work of modern art?"

There was a ripple of derisive laughter.

"A fountain worthy, when finished, to rank with the masterpieces of ancient Rome."

More derisive laughter.

"Now is the time for anti-clericals. Gentlemen, don't all speak at once.

Every day is not a festa. How much? Nothing at all? Not even a soldo?

Too bad. Art is its own reward."

Still more laughter, followed by the shuffling of feet coming up the iron stairs, and a familiar voice on the landing--it was the Princess Bellini's--"Madonna mia! what a fright it is, to be sure!"

Then another voice--it was Madame Bella's--"I thought so the day of the private view, when she behaved so shockingly to the dear Baron."

Then a third voice--it was the voice of Olga the journalist--"I said the Baron would pay her out, and he has. Before the day is over she'll not have a stick left or a roof to cover her."

Roma dropped her head on to the table. Try as she might to keep a brave front, the waves of shame and humiliation were surging over her.

Some one touched her on the shoulder. It was Natalina with a telegram: "Letter received; my apartment is paid for to end of June; why not take possession of it?"