Her picture made me smile, but it made me feel _very_ sad for her, and it all did seem so useless, when down the hill, not half a mile, Mr. Wake was so lonely, too! But of course I could do nothing about it. After about an hour with Miss Sheila that day, I stood up, and said I guessed I’d better be going, and Miss Sheila said “Oh, no, dear!” But I insisted, and so she kissed me, and I went off, to pause at the end of that rose sheltered terrace and wave back at her. Then I went through the rest of the garden, and past the little chapel where a sweet-faced young girl knelt before the altar--she was about to take the vows, I heard later--and out through the gate and down the very long, wide, shady stone steps that are guarded on either side by tall cypress trees which, there, seemed like sentinels. Then--up a little hill to the Piazza at Fiesole, which was wild with a high, hot breeze, and there I took the car that clanged its way down the hillside into sultry Florence. That day began my visiting Miss Sheila, and I went up to Fiesole by myself four times in the next two weeks, and then again with Viola, and Leslie and Ben Forbes--who seemed to linger on--and it was on that last afternoon that Miss Sheila said, “Bother! Why didn’t I think of Sam! I wanted to meet him, and you knew it, Jane! Why didn’t you speak of asking him to-day?” I hadn’t thought that she would want him, and I said so, for I had supposed that the party was to be sort of a family affair because of Leslie’s and Ben’s engagement. “Well,” said Miss Sheila, “no matter. Bring him up Sunday afternoon.” Sunday was a beautiful day in spite of the fact that there was no air stirring and a feeling of weight over everything. Leslie said she knew it would rain--she was angry over it, because she and Ben had planned to motor in the Cascine and then out somewhere in the country--but I said I thought it wouldn’t, _without_ rapping on wood; and as I may have said before, it never hurts to rap on wood, whether you are superstitious, or not. But I didn’t. Instead, I placed my entire trust in Fate and put on a white lawn dress and the hat I had bought at the Mercato Nuovo which I had trimmed with some flowers that cost very little. At one I started out with Sam, for he had asked me to go somewhere and have lunch with him before we started up to the Convent on the hillside. We had a good time over our lunch--which we had in the coolest and most shadowed outdoor café we could find--and Sam ordered the green macaroni which is manufactured in Bologna--and some cold chicken and a salad, and some wine of course, and then a sweet that is very famous in Rome, and wonderfully good. And as we ate we talked the way we always do, which is hard.