hour, as I was the only signora. I answered him with a little faint song, to which again he replied. I never was so happy, never felt so free from all that could annoy. Probably Adam and Eve had some such delight in the mere feeling that they were alive. And so I sat there, hour after hour, half asleep, half fainting with the heat, in which I seemed to float. If I had been called on then to say what God is, I should have said, He is a fire that burns without consuming. Fire and its attendant heat were the perfection of all things, and coldness was misery――but a pure, clear fire which an anemone could pass through unscathed.” The Signora drew a breath that was half a sigh, and took up the folded paper from her lap. “How happy I am in Italy in the summer!” she said, half to herself. “I can work in the cool months, but I live in the hot ones.” “Bianca wants me to read this rhyme? It is a summer rhyme, too, and commemorates a little incident of my first summer here――a visit to _Santa Maria della Vittoria_. You have not been there yet. It is very near, just out on the _Via della porta Pia_, which the new people call _Venti Settembre_, because the invaders came in that way on the 20th of September. They try to keep the anniversary, and to make the city look as if the people cared for it, but it is a dreary pretence. A military procession, a few flags hung out here and there from houses of government officials and foreigners, chiefly Americans――that is all.” She read: Never so fair a rose as this, I think, E’er bloomed on a rose-tree; So sweet a rose as this, I surely know, Was never given to me. Like the reviving draught to fainting lips, The gentle word to strife, Cool, fresh, and tender, in a bitter hour, It dropt into my life. Hid in the silence of a darkened room, With sleepless eyes I lay, And an unresting mind, that vainly strove To shut its thoughts away. When through the loosened _perslane_ slipped A sunbeam, sharply bright, That cleft the chamber’s quiet duskiness, And put my dreams to flight. Before the windows, in a dusty square Fretted by restless feet, Where once a palace-garden had unrolled Its alleys green and sweet, Men rooted up a fountain-base that lay Whitened like bleaching bones, Or into new walls piled, with a weary care. The weary, ancient stones. And all about the slowly-growing work, In warlike mantles drest, Disputing with the spade for every sod, The angry poppies prest. And when I thought how fate uproots always My gardens, budding sweet, The hot _scirocco_ of an angry pain Blew me into the street. The unveiled heights of sapphire overhead Dazzled the lifted eyes; The sun, in lovely splendor, blazed from out The keystone of the skies; And Rome sat glowing on her seven hills, Yellow with fervid heat, And scorched the green Campagna, where it crept And clung about her feet.