The details of this day were very like those of the last.  Norman and Eric vibrated between the Madden and Hopkins balconies; the crowd was great; confetti and flowers filled the air; and up above it all, circled by her crown of misty, heavy lace-work, shone out the beautiful, wonderful face of the strange lady.  She dropped smiles from under her long black lashes and from the corners of the rare, sweet mouth over the heads of the idlers to Mae, who looked up to catch them.  There was a resting, almost saving influence, Mae’s excited soul believed, in the strange face; and her eyes sought it constantly.  She had been quite oblivious to the friends about this beautiful stranger, but once, as her eyes sought the Italian’s, she saw her arise with a sudden flash of light on her face, and hold out a white hand.  A head bent over it, and as it lifted itself slowly, Mae saw once more the well-known features of the Signor Bero.

She looked down toward the street quickly and a sharp pain filled her heart.

She had lost her only friend in Rome, so the silly girl said to herself.  If he knew that wonderful woman, and if she flashed those weary, great eyes for him, how could he see or think of any other?  Moreover, it was very vexatious to have him there.  If she smiled up at the girl, Bero might think she was watching him, trying to attract his notice.  So Mae appeared very careless and played she did not see him at all, at all.  Yet she could not resist looking up now and then for one of the rare smiles.  They seemed like very far between “nows and thens” to Mae, averaging possibly a distance of four minutes apart.  But that is as one counts time by steady clock-ticks, and not by heart-beats.

Meanwhile, what could she do with her eyes?  They would wander once in a while over to the opposite balcony, at just such moments as when Norman Mann was picking up Miss Rae’s fan and receiving her thanks for it from under her drooped eyelids, or choosing a flower for himself, “the very, very prettiest, Mr. Mann,” before she threw the rest to the winds and the passing gallants.

As Mae grew reckless her eyes grew bright.  There were few passers-by who were not attracted by the flash of those eyes.  The sailor lads, as they trundled past in their ship on wheels, left the barrels of lime from which they had been pelting the pleasure-seekers to throw whole handfuls of flowers up to the Jesu e Maria balcony; a set of hale young Englishmen picked out their prettiest bonbons for the same purpose; and one elderly, pompous man, who drove unmasked and with staring opera glasses up and down the Corso, quite showered her with bouquets, which he threw so poorly, and with such a shaky old hand, that the street gamins caught them all except such as he craftily flung so that they might assuredly tumble back to the carriage again.  And Mae, though she had felt the pleased gaze of a good many eyes before, had never quite put its meaning plainly to herself.  She was apt, on such occasions, to feel high-spirited, excited, joyous, but now she realized well that she was being admired, and she led on for victory ardently.