Morals I believe you are infallible. If you could guess the load you have lifted from my conscience!" And he pushed a hearty ouf.

"I am glad," said Annunziata. And then she attempted to hark back. Curiosity again lighting her eyes, "This form that you have seen in the garden—" she began.

"Don't try to change the subject," John interrupted. "Let us cultivate sequence in our ideas. What I am labouring with hammer and tongs to drag from you is the exact date at which, somewhere between the years of our salvation 1387 and 1455, you sat for your portrait to the beatified painter Giovanni of Fiesole. Now, be a duck, and make a clean breast of it."

Annunziata's eyes clouded. A kind of scorn, a kind of pity, and a kind of patient longanimity looked from them.

"That is folly," she said, on the deepest of her deep notes, with a succession of slow, reflective, side-wise nods.

"Folly—?" repeated John, surprised, but bland. "Oh? Really?"

"Sit for my portrait between the years 1387 and 1455,—how could I?" scoffed Annunziata.

"Why? What was to prevent you?" innocently questioned he.

"Ma come! I was not yet alive," said she.

John looked at her with startled eyes, and spoke with animation.

"Weren't you? Word of honour? Are you sure? How do you know? Have you any definite recollection that you weren't? Can you clearly recall the period in question, and then, reviewing it in detail, positively attest that you were dead? For there's no third choice. A person must either be alive or dead. And how, if you weren't alive, how ever did it come to pass that there should be a perfect portrait of you from Giovanni's brush in the Convent of Saint Mark at Florence? Your grave little white face, and your wise little big eyes, and your eager little inquisitive profile, and your curls flowing about your shoulders, and your pinafore that's so like a peplum,—there they all are, precisely as I see them before me now. And how was Giovanni able to do them if you weren't alive? Perhaps you were pre-mortally alive in Heaven? Giovanni's cell, as is well known, had a window that opened straight into Heaven. Perhaps he saw you through that window, and painted you without your knowing it. The name they give your portrait, by-the-by, would rather seem to confirm that theory. What do you 

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