So she was carrying it off, and her smile was only a little self-conscious, only a shade embarrassed, when from among the men standing near the library door, for which she was directly making, there stepped out one to meet her, not unlike a slender needle darting toward a large, rounded magnet as it comes into due range. More sensitive than she, feeling the situation much more uncomfortably for his country-woman than she felt it for herself, a foreign-looking fellow, who had not quite forgotten that he was an American, after a moment's hard struggle against his impulse, hastened forward to shorten for her that uncompanioned course across the floor under ten thousand search-lights. "I'm looking for somebody," said Mrs. Hawthorne, with the smile of a child. The voice which had made one man think of the crimson heart on a valentine reminded this other of rough velvet. He showed his eccentric three front teeth in a responding smile that had a touch of the faun, and asked whimsically: "Will I do?" "Help me to find Mr. Foss, and you'll do perfectly," she said merrily. "I haven't seen him more than just to shake hands this whole evening, and I do want to have a little talk before I go." "If I am not mistaken, we shall find him in the library." He offered his arm. "I may have appeared to be doing something else, Mrs. Hawthorne, but I have really been looking for you the last hour," said the consul when he had been found. "I wanted to have a little talk. How are you enjoying Florence?" "Oh, we're having an elegant time, thanks to that dear wife of yours and that dear girl, Leslie. I don't know what we should have done without them and you." "But the city itself, Florence, doesn't it enchant you?" "We--ell, yes. N-n-n-no. Yes and no. That's it. You want me to tell the truth, don't you? Some of it does, and some of it doesn't. Some of it, I guess, will take me a long time to get used to. It's terribly different from what we expected--I, in particular. You see, I came here because an old friend used to talk so much about it. Florence the Fair! The City of Lilies! He said Italy was the most beautiful country in the world, and Florence the most beautiful city in Italy. So my expectations were way up.--Oh, I don't know; it's hard to tell. I don't exactly remember now what I did expect. I guess my picture of it was something like the New Jerusalem on an Easter day. But I shall get used to this, like to the taste of olives. It must be all right, for the friend I was speaking of had the finest mind I've ever known. I'm green as turnip-tops, of course, but I shall get educated up to it, I suppose. Give me time." "Mrs. Hawthorne, hear me prophesy," said Mr. Foss. "In six months you will love it all. It's the fate of us who come here from new countries. It will steal in upon you, grow upon you, beset and besot you, till you like no other place in the world so well."