Then there were voices, two, a man’s and a woman’s, the feminine voice light, pleasant, but pitched to a note of amused complaint that was vaguely familiar. Cynthia could not help overhearing. “Why on earth you had to drag me way out here, Gerald! Oh, of course the road was lovely, but we have so little time in Siena and I did want to get in some more shopping ...” “Shopping! Always shopping! Don’t you get enough shops in the States?” replied the man’s voice in very husbandly tones. “Now Gerald, you remember I didn’t really want to come to Siena in the first place, but then of course I had no idea the leather and the iron work was so lovely here.” Leather, that was it! The woman who had bought the cigarette boxes this morning. And the man with her? Cynthia, absent-mindedly wiping her brush on her white skirt said a faint “Darn!” for the color was rose madder and probably would stain ... peered out from behind her wall. The man was her nice gray haired acquaintance. Well, his trip to the monastery was no business of hers. Now how to get that tone of sunlight between the deep leaf-shadows? Ah, that did it! Intent on the success of a trick of the trade, Cynthia forgot the voices and when she came out of her corner an hour later there was no one, native or American, in sight. Cynthia took the two mile walk home through a lemon tinted sunset, ran into another flag rehearsal just at the edge of the town and enjoyed it hugely. So pervasive and insistent was the tap. tap ... tr...r..r..r... tap. tap. of the drums that she seemed, that night to dream about them all night long and she woke the next morning with the distant, dream patter of the rhythm still tapping merrily through her head. In the pale light of early morning the sound was so real she could not banish it with the remainder of her doze and finally hopped out of bed to see if she had been hearing the reality. Sure enough, just down the street the banner-dancers were practicing their strange little steps, and the first rays of sunlight over the housetops caught the gilded tips of the banner staves as they were flung, in the final flourish of the dance, to the house tops. Cynthia remembered the fourteenth of July celebration in Paris and grinned to herself. She was prepared, now, for such festive spirits. Besides that, and all reports to the contrary notwithstanding, the Italians didn’t seem to put so much noise into their celebrations as their French neighbors. But then they let off more steam in just every-day living. When she had finished her brief and early breakfast and emerged to the street she saw that this was truly and whole-heartedly a gala day.