Of course it seemed about sixteen times as bright as it really was, because both the halls and Mr. Paggi’s rooms had been dark, and it seemed more good to be out than I can describe. After I blinked my eyes into adjustment with the outdoor glare, I stole a side glance at Leslie and wondered what sticking it out--if she _could_ stick it out--would do for her? I knew that she would either flare up and leave it all, or that she’d have to change, and I remembered how Howard McDonald, who is Elaine’s brother, had learned to keep his temper by playing baseball. The training, and the having to abide by decisions that he thought unfair had been _fine_ for him, and after a season of playing short-stop, everybody wondered whether he had changed, or whether they’d been mean? “_Will you--can you stand it?_” I questioned inside, and Leslie answered, almost immediately, quite as if I’d put my wonder into words. “I am going to go through with it,” she stated through set teeth. “If I die of disease from living in that frightful hole, or from shocked, shattered nerves after a lesson, perhaps Aunt Sheila _may_ have a question or two to ask of herself!” “He couldn’t have known who you _are_, dear,” said Viola, who was groping around to find the right key. Leslie laughed shortly. “Aunt Sheila said I depended on that,” she confided. “That was during one of her all-too-frequent moments of flattery. Sometimes I think I have been the most misunderstood girl who has ever lived! And oh, how I ache, alone, in my fumbling through the dark!” She stared ahead like everything after that; I guess she was trying to look dramatic. Viola said, “Poor _darling, I_ understand.” And then Leslie said, “I--” (her voice dropped and broke) “I am close to fainting--I need _tea_--” and so they went to Doney’s which is the fanciest restaurant in Florence and marked “expensive” in Baedeker. After the remark about Siamese triplets I didn’t intend to have her think _I_ wanted to be asked to her party, so I said, “I must leave you here--” although I had no idea where I was, or where I should be going. “Must you, really?” Leslie asked so vaguely, that I got mad all over again and answered with, “I generally say what I mean,” which of course was _not_ polite. Then, feeling a little ashamed of myself, I turned and left them and began to wonder which Italian I should ask where I was and where I was going--in English; but I kept passing them, and going farther and farther all the time because the doing it seemed hard. Then suddenly I saw some one who was ahead of me, and I hurried, for I knew the gray homespun coat and the swing of the gray hat brim. “Wait!” I called, and he turned, and then he was laughing down at me, and saying, “I just went up all those stairs that lead to the Pension Dante to hunt you, and found you out--and found _where_ you were--now tell me about it!”