“Give a slow fellow who likes the world better than you do, time to apologize for it,” replied Norman, as familiarly as Eric would have done.  The tone pleased Mae.  She looked up and laughed lightly.  “At any rate,” suggested he, “let’s forget the cruelty now and take the fun.  Three of them are safe and very likely this scrap,” and he touched the dead bird in her hand, “is flying to rejoin his brothers in hunting-grounds that are stocked with angle-worms, and such game.  We are to have a good time to-day, you and I.”

At this moment Eric rushed up.  “Say, Mann,” he cried, “here they come.  They have taken the balcony just opposite, after all.  And Miss Hopkins looks perfectly in a white veil.  And oh! here are the rest of our own party.”

Mae lifted her eyes to the opposite side of the street, but they did not fall to the level of the Hopkins-Rae party, being stopped by something above.  At a high, fourth-story window, beyond the circle of flying fun and frolic, confetti and flowers, Mae saw a wonderful woman’s face, a face with great dark eyes and raven hair.  A heavily-figured white lace veil was pulled low over her brow, and fell in folds against her cheeks.  Her skin was white, the scarlet of her face concentrating in her lips.

There was a strange consonance between the creamy heavy lace and its flowing intertwined figures, and the face it encircled.  A mystery, a grace, a subtle charm, that had the effect of a vivid dream, in its combination of clearness and unreality.  There was life, with smothered passion and pride and pain in it, Mae was sure.  So near to her that her voice could have arched the little distance easily, and yet so far away from her life and all that touched it.

A gentleman attending the lady whispered to her.  She bent her eyes on Mae, and met her glance with a smile, and Mae smiled rapturously back.

Mae had been looking for Bero all that afternoon.  She felt sure he would be there, and very soon she saw him among a crowd of officers sauntering slowly down the Corso.  He looked up at the window opposite.  The veiled lady leaned slightly forward and bowed and waved her white hand.  Bero bowed.  So did the other officers.

Norman Mann and Eric excused themselves long enough to dash over to welcome their friends and then stayed on for a little chat.  These young women were quite gorgeous in opera cloaks and tiny, nearly invisible, American flags tucked through their belts.  They tossed confetti down on every one’s heads, and shouted—­a little over-enthusiastically, but one can pardon even gush if it is only genuine.  That was the question in this case.

The horse race came; and Mae went fairly wild.  When it was over, every body prepared to go home.  King Pasquino had virtually abdicated in favor of the Dinner Kings.  Mae unclasped her tightly strained hands, clambered down from a chair she had perched herself on, smiled a good-bye at the veiled lady, and came away.  She rode home quietly with a big bouquet of exquisite blue violets in her hand.  There was a rose on top and a fringe of maiden’s hair at the edge, and the bouquet was flung from Bero’s own hand up at the side window on the quiet Jesu e Maria, when everyone else but Mae was out on the Corso balcony.