At this moment, a small beggar, who had been pleading unnoticed at her side, was lifted from his feet by a powerful hand, and a shower of soft Italian imprecations fell on Mae’s ear.  She sprang up quickly, “No, no,” she cried in Italian, “how dare you hurt a harmless boy?” She lifted her face full toward that of the man who had inspired her wrath, and her eyes met those of the Piedmontese officer.  She blushed scarlet.

“Pardon, a thousand pardons,” began he.  “It was for your sake, Signorina.  I saw you shake your hand that he should leave you, and I fancied that the little scamp was troubling the foreign lady.”

Mae laughed frankly, although she was greatly confused.  The officer and the beggar boy behind him waited expectantly.  “I shook my hand at my thoughts,” she explained.  “I did not see the boy.  Forgive me, Signor, for my hasty words.”

The officer enjoyed her confusion quietly.  He threw a handful of small coin at the beggar, and bade him go.  Then he turned again to Mae.  “I am sorry, Signorina, that your thoughts are sad.  I should think they would all be like sweet smiles.”  He said this with an indescribable delicacy and gallantry, as if he half feared to speak to her, but his sympathy must needs express itself.

Mae was, as we have seen, in a reckless, wild mood.  She did not realize what she was doing.  She had just broken down all barriers in her mind, was dead to her old life, and ready to plan for Heaven.  And here before her stood a wonderful, sympathizing, new friend, who spoke in a strange tongue, lived in a strange land was as far removed from her old-time people and society as an inhabitant of Saturn, or an angel.  She accepted him under her excitement, as she would have accepted them.  No waiting for an introduction, no formal getting-acquainted talk, no reserve.  She looked into the devoted, interested eyes above her, and said frankly: 

“I was feeling all alone, and I hate Rome.  I thought I would like to play I was dead, and plan out a Heaven for myself.  It should not be in Rome.  And then I suppose I shook my fist.”

“Where would your Heaven be?” asked the Piedmontese, falling quickly, with ready southern sympathy, into her mood.  Mae seated herself on the bench and made room for him at her side.

“Where should it be?” she repeated.  “Down among the children of the sun, all out in the rich orange fields, by the blue Bay of Naples, I think, with Vesuvius near by, and Capri; yes, it would be in Sorrento that I should find my heaven.”

The officer smiled under his long moustaches.  “For three days,—­at a hotel, Signorina.”

“No, no; with the peasants.  I am tired and sick of books, and people, and reasons.  Shall I give you a day of my Heaven?”

Bero smiled and bent slightly forward and rested his hand lightly on the stick of her parasol, which lay between them.  “Go on,” he said.