The drums tapped out a strange, intriguing little rhythm while the two banner bearers, practising their rite, did a sort of solemn dance with the great five foot square flags. The object seemed to be to keep up a continual stepping, with the banners never for one moment allowed to lag. Under the arms and up again, out and beneath the dancing feet, and the drums always beating faster and faster. Fascinated, Cynthia watched for the culmination which she knew would come. With a final roll of the drums the banners were flung high, high, almost ... incredibly, to the tops of the houses, then descending, their heavy sticks acting as weights, were caught lightly and skillfully. And the dance, for the moment, was over. There was a slight cheer from the small group that had gathered to watch and a voice behind her said “Gosh, that was great!” It was such a shock to hear, in this scene of the past, a good American voice that Cynthia whirled involuntarily to face the speaker. To her surprise he was all of fifty, with the reddish complexion of a confirmed golf player, a shock of nice thick white hair, gray tweeds, the expensive kind, and a panama hat which he wore in his hand. Cynthia met his smile with one as friendly. “It is nice, isn’t it,” she said, for no particular reason except that one so often does speak to fellow Americans on foreign soil. Then she started to turn away. “They’re having a _prove_, in the Piazza del Campo, this morning,” he informed her. “Perhaps you’d like to see that too?” “Oh are they? Thank you,” said Cynthia, and this time she really did turn away. She had already seen one of the _proves_, the rehearsal for the big race, and thought she’d prefer, instead of seeing this one, to find a place to sketch. With her final cover off to America she was free now to sketch wherever she pleased, and she had an idea that she might work up material for an exhibition, back in New York. The heads to be her main attraction but perhaps a few landscapes to add a little variety to the show. That afternoon she saw the man again. She had taken her sketch box and camp stool, and having hired a tiny barouche, was set down about two miles out of Siena where a little old monastery sat atop a tall hill. Here among the cypresses she could sketch for an hour, or two, or three, nibble her apple and sandwiches, and in the cool of later afternoon pack her box and walk back to town. Cynthia had chosen a shady angle of the wall, and had roughed in her drawing; a bit of a gateway tiled in warm red, and a tall niche where stood a della robbia madonna robed in blue as deep as the Italian sky. Bougainvillea spilled in a fountain of magenta over the wall, and Cynthia was struggling with this riot of color when she heard the _clopity-clop_ of horses’ hoofs, but did not look up. Color dried so swiftly in this warm dry air, one had no time for distractions.