“Daddy, see if I know my La Fontaine fable:  Le corbeau et le renard.”

“Very well, let’s hear it,” Signor Odoardo assents, taking the open book from the little girl’s hands.

Doretta begins: 

     “Maitre corbeau, sur un arbre perche,
      Tenait en son bec un fromage;
      Maitre...maitre...maitre...”

“Go on.”

“Maitre...”

“Maitre renard.”

“Oh, yes, now I remember: 

      Maitre renard, par l’odeur alleche,
      Lui tint a peu pres ce langage: 
      He! bonjour...”

At this point Doretta, seeing that her father is not listening to her, breaks off her recitation.  Signor Odoardo has, in fact, closed the book upon his forefinger, and is looking elsewhere.

“Well, Doretta,” he absently inquires, “why don’t you go on?”

“I’m not going to say any more of it,” she answers sullenly.

“Why, you cross-patch!  What’s the matter?”

The little girl, who had been seated on a low stool, has risen to her feet and now sees why her papa has not been attending to her.  The snow is falling less thickly, and the fair head of Signora Evelina has appeared behind the window-panes over the way.

Brave little woman!  She has actually opened the window, and is clearing the snow off the sill with a fire-shovel.  Her eyes meet Signor Odoardo’s; she smiles and shakes her head, as though to say:  What hateful weather!

He would be an ill-mannered boor who should not feel impelled to say a word to the dauntless Signor Evelina.  Signor Odoardo, who is not an ill-mannered boor, yields to the temptation of opening the window for a moment.

“Bravo, Signora Evelina!  I see you are not afraid of the snow.”

“Oh, Signor Odoardo, what fiendish weather!...But, if I am not mistaken, that is Doretta with you...How do you do, Doretta?”

“Doretta, come here and say how do you do to the lady.”

“No, no—­let her be, let her be!  Children catch cold so easily—­you had better shut the window.  I suppose there is no hope of seeing you to-day?”

“Look at the condition of the streets!”

“Oh, you men...you men!...The stronger sex...but no matter.  Au revoir!”

“Au revoir.”

The two windows are closed simultaneously, but this time Signora Evelina does not disappear.  She is sitting there, close to the window, and it snows so lightly now that her wonderful profile is outlined as clearly as possible against the pane.  Good heavens, how beautiful she is!

Signer Odoardo walks up and down the room, in the worst of humors.  He feels that it is wrong not to go and see the fascinating widow, and that to go and see her would be still more wrong.  The cloud has settled again upon Doretta’s forehead, the same cloud that darkened it in the morning.

Not a word is said of La Fontaine’s fable.  Instead, Signor Odoardo grumbles irritably: