low to kiss it; and though his blue eyes were full of laughter, I think that behind the laughter there was a great deal of real fondness and admiration.

IV

Half-way down the long straight avenue of ilex-trees that led from the castle to the principal entrance of the garden, Annunziata, in her pale-grey pinafore (that was so like a peplum), with her hair waving about her shoulders, was curled up in the corner of a marble bench, gazing with great intentness at a white flower that lay in her lap. It was the warmest and the peacefullest moment of the afternoon. The sun shone steadily; not a leaf stirred, not a shadow wavered; and the intermittent piping of a blackbird, somewhere in the green world overhead, seemed merely to give a kind of joyous rhythm to the silence.

"Mercy upon me! Who ever saw so young a maiden so deeply lost in thought!" exclaimed a voice.

Annunziata, her reverie thus disturbed, raised a pair of questioning eyes.

A lady was standing before her, smiling down upon her, a lady in a frock of lilac-coloured muslin, with a white sunshade.

Annunziata, who, when she liked, could be the very pink of formal politeness, rose, dropped a courtesy, and said: "Buon giorno, Signorina."

"Buon giorno," responded the smiling lady. "Buon giorno—and a penny for your thoughts. But I'm sure you could never, never tell what it was you were thinking so hard about."

"Scusi," said Annunziata. "I was trying to think of the name of this flower." She stooped and picked up the flower, which had slipped from her lap to the ground when she rose. Then she held it at arm's length, for inspection.

"Oh?" asked the lady, smiling at the flower, as she had smiled at its possessor. "Isn't it a narcissus?"

"Yes," said Annunziata. "It is a narcissus. But I was trying to think of its particular name."

The lady looked as if she did not quite understand. "Its particular name?"

"It is a narcissus," explained Annunziata, "just as I am a girl. But it must also have its particular name, just as I have mine. It is a soul doing its Purgatory—a very good soul. If you are very good, then, when you die, you do your Purgatory as a flower. But it is not such an easy Purgatory—oh, no. For look: the flower is beautiful, 

 Prev. P 32/130 next