Heggen rose too. Helge remained alone at the table. “You don’t imagine that we would let you go alone this time of night?” said Heggen. “You mean to forbid me, perhaps?” “I do absolutely.” “Don’t, Gunnar,” said Jenny Winge. She sent the men away and they sat down at the table in silence, while Jenny, with her arms round Francesca, drew her aside and talked to her soothingly. After a while they came back to the table. But the company was somewhat out of sorts. Miss Jahrman sat close to Jenny; she had got her cigarettes and was smoking now, shaking her head at Ahlin, who insisted that his were better. Jenny, who had ordered some fruit, was eating tangerines, and now and again she put a slice in Francesca’s mouth. How perfectly lovely she looked as she lay with her sad, childish face on Jenny’s shoulder, letting herself be fed by her friend. Ahlin sat and stared at her and Heggen played absent-mindedly with the match-ends. “Have you been in town long, Mr. Gram?” he asked. “I have taken to saying that I came from Florence this morning by train.” Jenny gave a polite little laugh, and Francesca smiled faintly. At this moment a bare-headed, dark-haired woman with a bold, yellow, greasy face entered the room with a mandolin. She was accompanied by a small man in the threadbare finery of a waiter, and carrying a guitar. “I was right, you see, Cesca,” said Jenny, speaking as to a child. “There is Emilia; now we are going to have some music.” “That’s jolly,” said Helge. “Do the ballad singers really still go about here in Rome singing in the taverns?” The singers tuned up “The Merry Widow.” The woman had a high, clear, metallic voice. “Oh, how horrid,” cried Francesca, awakening; “we don’t want that, we want something Italian—_la luna con palido canto_, or what do you think?” She went up to the singers and greeted them like old friends—laughed and gesticulated, seizing the guitar, and played, humming a few bars of one or two songs. The Italian woman sang. The melody floated sweet and insinuating to the accompaniment of twanging metal strings, and Helge’s four new friends joined in the refrain. It was about _amore_ and _bacciare_. “It is a love song, is it not?” “A nice love song,” laughed Miss Jahrman. “Don’t ask me to translate it, but in Italian it sounds very pretty.” “This one is not so bad,” said Jenny. She turned to Helge with her sweet smile: “What do you think of this place? Is it not a good wine?” “Excellent, and a characteristic old place.”