There were introductions. Oliver gave her the prolonged and peculiarly earnest handshake which implied that his whole eager nature leaped to welcome the friend of his friend, and turning back to Justin instantly forgot all about her. He exhibited his copy to them, and told them how good it was, and what a great many people whom they did not know had said about it. His vanity was so fresh and real, so unadulterated by false modesty, that Laura should have humoured him. But she was too young, I suppose, to find it charming. It is curious how intolerant youth always remains of that youthfullest of sins. She listened, however, with merciless attention, as he talked them out of the gallery and down the staircase and along the street to a restaurant. When they all sat down together to lunch he was still talking, and Mrs. Cloud had said but half-a-dozen words and Laura not one. It was not until the meal was nearly over that he became aware, with the uncanny sensitiveness of the egoist, that his circle was incomplete, that some one, somewhere, was not fully appreciating him. It could not be Mrs. Cloud ... because he openly adored Mrs. Cloud, and had always been grievous that she would not let him paint her.... (How should he dream, when admiringly he had tried to tease her into consent, that the pretty faint colour in her cheek was not a flush of pleasure, that Mrs. Cloud was one of those rare women who honestly believe themselves to be plain.) He did not quite understand her, he admitted; but he knew he was a favourite, because she always welcomed him so kindly.... It could not be Mrs. Cloud who was obstructing him.... Remained the girl with the red hair, and, as she lifted them, the eyes.... At once he turned to her with that intimate abruptness, that serene assumption of her interest in him that was, Laura began to understand, his chief charm for Justin, who always needed helping over his preliminaries. Justin, she observed through her lashes, waited, smiling, for her answer, sure that she, too, must be finding this Oliver irresistible. It would certainly have soothed her to realize that he was anticipating with equal satisfaction her own effect upon Oliver; but she never dreamed that he was proud of her. How should she, when he did not know it himself? Yet he must have been, for he found himself distinctly irritated when he heard Laura tell Oliver that she thought Florence was very nice. He felt that she was not doing herself justice. “Nice!!” Oliver rose like a trout to that fly. “Don’t you?” Laura looked surprised. He drew eloquent breath. “‘Nice!’ Dear lady, we’re speaking of Florence—Buondelmonte’s Florence—Dante’s Florence—_Fiorenza, dentro dalla cerchia antica_——Don’t you realize? _They_ walked and talked out in that square. From where we sit we can see Savonarola burn. This isn’t a town. It’s Florence, watering her flowers with heart’s blood these thousand years.” “That’s right, old man,” Justin encouraged him.