homage to a predominance of English-speaking people among the guests; but there was no fire there; that was kindled only by request, and he shivered at the bare aspect of the apartment, with its cold piano, its locked bookcases, and its table, where the London _Times_, the _Neue Freie Presse_ of Vienna, and the _Italie_ of Rome exposed their titles, one just beyond the margin of the other. He turned from the door and went into the dining-room, where the stove was ostentatiously roaring over its small logs and its lozenges of peat, But even here the fire had been so recently lighted that the warmth was potential rather than actual. By stooping down before the stove, and pressing his shoulder against its brass doors, Colville managed to lull his enemy, while he studied the figures of the woman-headed, woman-breasted hounds developing into vines and foliage that covered the frescoed trellising of the quadrangularly vaulted ceiling. The waiters, in their veteran dress-coats, were putting the final touches to the table, and the sound of voices outside the door obliged Colville to get up. The effort involved made him still more reluctant about going out to Mrs. Bowen's. The door opened, and some English ladies entered, faintly acknowledging, provisionally ignoring, his presence, and talking of what they had been doing since lunch. They agreed that it was really too cold in the churches for any pleasure in the pictures, and that the Pitti Gallery, where they had those braziers, was the only place you could go with comfort. A French lady and her husband came in; a Russian lady followed; an Italian gentleman, an American family, and three or four detached men of the English-speaking race, whose language at once became the law of the table. As the dinner progressed from soup to fish, and from the _entree_ to the roast and salad, the combined effect of the pleasant cheer and the increasing earnestness of the stove made the room warmer and warmer. They drank Chianti wine from the wicker-covered flasks, tied with tufts of red and green silk, in which they serve table wine at Florence, and said how pretty the bottles were, but how the wine did not seem very good. "It certainly isn't so good as it used to be," said Colville. "Ah, then you have been in Florhence before." said the French lady, whose English proved to be much better than the French that he began to talk to her in. "Yes, a great while ago; in a state of pre-existence, in fact," he said. The lady looked a little puzzled, but interested. "In a state of prhe-existence?" she repeated. "Yes; when I was young," he added, catching the gleam in her eye. "When I was twenty-four. A great while ago." "You must be an Amerhican," said the lady, with a laugh. "Why do you think so? From my accent?" "Frhom your metaphysics too. The Amerhicans like to talk in that way." "I didn't know it," said Colville.