Harwood straightway volunteered to undertake the preliminary reconnaissance, while Frau Stern engaged to penetrate to Emma herself.

On a beatific afternoon we sat in council on Dennis’s terrace awaiting the envoys.  Below, the misty plain rose on and on till it gathered into an amber surge in Monte Morello and rippled away again through the Fiesolan hills.  Nearer, torrid bell-towers pierced the shimmering reek, like stakes in a sweltering lagoon.  In the centre of all, the great dome swam lightly, a gigantic celestial buoy in a vaporous sea.  The spell that bound us all was doubly potent that day.  The sense of a continuous life that had made the dome and the belfries an inevitable emanation from the clean crumbling earth, lulled us all, and we hardly stirred when Harwood bustled in, saying, “Cheer up.  I have seen Crocker, and it isn’t there.”  “You mean,” said the cautious Dennis, “that Crocker still possesses only the hole, aperture, frame, or niche that the missing St. Michael may yet adorn.”  “I only know that it isn’t there now,” growled Harwood.  “I deal merely in facts, but you may get theories, if you must have them, from Frau Stern, who heroically forced her way to Emma over Crocker’s prostrate form.”

As he spoke we heard Frau Stern’s timid, well-meaning ring, and in a moment her smile filled the archway.

“We don’t need to ask if you have news,” cried Mrs. Dennis from afar.

“If I haf news.  Guess what it is.  It is too lovely.  You cannot think?  Well, there will be a baby next autumn, what you call it?” “Michaelmas, I suppose,” grunted Harwood through his pipe-smoke and subsided into indifference.

“All this is most charming and interesting, Frau Stern,” expostulated Dennis, “but, as our enthusiastic friend Harwood delicately hints, what we really let you go for was to locate the Missing St. Michael.”  “I haf almost forgot that,” she apologised as she nibbled her brioche, “Emma was so happy.  But for the bothersome St. Michael there is no change.  I saw it in what she calls her new den.  She laughed to me and said, ’I cannot let him have it, you see, you would all say he married me for it.’”

“Bravo!” shouted Dennis and Harwood in unison, and the Sage added with unction, “So she has not been able to renounce us utterly.”

“It is not now for long,” rejoined Frau Stern, “it is only to the time we haf said.”  “Michaelmas,” repeated Harwood disgustedly.

“Yes, that is it,” she pursued tranquilly, “Emma told me in confidence, ’To Crocker I cannot give it because of you all, but to our child I may, and it shall do with it what it will.’  Now do you prevail, Misters Dennis and Harwood?”

“We are a bit downcast but not discomfited,” acknowledged Dennis, while Harwood remained glumly within his smoke.  “Emma has escaped us, but she still pays us the tribute of a subterfuge.  It is enough, we will forgive her, even if her way lies from us dozers here.  For to-day the same sunshine drenches her and us.  It is a bond.  Let us enjoy it while we may.”