The last night before he left the house she sat on his knee by the window looking out beyond the firefly twinkle of Oltrarno, to the silence and solid dark of the solemn company of hills beyond. They had not lighted the lamps because of the mosquitoes, and they had talked till her head dropped against his shoulder. Mrs. Bowen came in to get her. "Why, is she asleep?" "Yes. Don't take her yet," said Colville. Mrs. Bowen rustled softly into the chair which Effie had left to get into Colville's lap. Neither of them spoke, and he was so richly content with the peace, the tacit sweetness of the little moment, that he would have been glad to have it silently endure forever. If any troublesome question of his right to such a moment of bliss obtruded itself upon him, he did not concern himself with it. "We shall have another hot day to-morrow," said Mrs. Bowen at length. "I hope you will find your room comfortable." "Yes: it's at the back of the hotel, mighty high, and wide, and no sun ever comes into it except when they show it to foreigners in winter. Then they get a few rays to enter as a matter of business, on condition that they won't detain them. I dare say I shall stay there some time. I suppose you will be getting away from Florence very soon. "Yes. But I haven't decided where to go yet." "Should you like some general expression of my gratitude for all you've done for me, Mrs. Bowen?" "No; I would rather not. It has been a great pleasure--to Effie." "Oh, a luxury beyond the dreams of avarice." They spoke in low tones, and there was something in the hush that suggested to Colville the feasibility of taking into his unoccupied hand one of the pretty hands which the pale night-light showed him lying in Mrs. Bowen's lap. But he forbore, and only sighed. "Well, then, I will say nothing. But I shall keep on thinking all my life." She made no answer. "When you are gone, I shall have to make the most of Mr. Waters," he said. "He is going to stop all summer, I believe." "Oh yes. When I suggested to him the other day that he might find it too hot, he said that he had seventy New England winters to thaw out of his blood, and that all the summers he had left would not be more than he needed. One of his friends told him that he could cook eggs in his piazza in August, and he said that he should like nothing better than to cook eggs there. He's the most delightfully expatriated compatriot I've ever seen." "Do you like it?" "It's well enough for him. Life has no claims on him any more. I think it's very pleasant over here, now that everybody's gone," added Colville, from a confused resentfulness of collectively remembered Days and Afternoons and Evenings. "How still the night is!" A few feet clapping by on the pavement below alone broke the hush. "Sometimes I feel very tired of it all, and want to get home," sighed Mrs. Bowen. "Well, so do I."