Spring penetrated even into the big house where Gabrie lived. Regina had always seen the stairs damp, greasy and muddy; but to-day they were quite dry, the landings washed; an open door revealed a passage with polished floor. From the first storey, which represented the luxury of a book-keeper, to the fourth, inhabited by the ex-organist, the inhabitants had cleaned up the house to receive the Easter warmth--enemy of that great enemy of the poor, winter. Regina had an undefined feeling of pensive pleasure as she heard her green silk petticoat rustling up the silence of the stairs. She was not consciously thinking of her silk petticoat, nor of the comfort of her life, the short, well-lighted stair of her own dwelling, her two drawing-rooms, her Savings-bank book, her subscription to the Costanzi; but the certainty of all these possessions illumined her heart, and made her a little sentimental. She felt herself a person of consequence, sun-warmed like Easter, violets in her hand, bringing the breath of spring up that stair of poverty, of workers, students, failures. She would have liked to leave a violet on the threshold of every Apartment. She remembered an anæmic young student whom she had once seen coming out of N. 8, his lips blue, his eyes pale as faded hyacinths, buttoned up in a threadbare though clean overcoat; and she wished she might meet him to-day to greet him and make him understand that she loved the poor, whom once she had despised. But the young man did not come out, and she climbed on till she had reached a door where a card, fixed with four wafers, informed the visitor that this Apartment had the good fortune to shelter. MARIO ENNIO COLORNI, _Ex-Organist and Professor of the Violin_. It was not impressive to Regina, as she had seen it already. She had visited Gabrie several times. In the first instance the Master had written praying her to "scrutinise whether the environment were dangerous or doubtful, as all the houses in the San Lorenzo quarter were reputed to be." Signora Colorni opened the door, a little woman with a black cap and blue spectacles. She did not immediately recognise the visitor, and hesitated childishly about allowing her to enter. Regina made her smell the violets, and said, in the Mantuan dialect-- "Don't you know me? How is Gabrie?" The little woman, whom typhus fever had left bald, dumb, and nearly blind, smiled gently. Her little face was the face of a child who has put on Grandmother's cap and spectacles for fun. Regina walked on into the Apartment, crossed the passage, which was very clean and in which was a great smell of cooking, went into the little parlour, the half-shut window of which was veiled by a curtain of yellowish muslin. Through the open door she saw that Gabrie's room, in process of arranging by Signora Colorni, was empty. She turned. The dumb woman smiled, and waved her hand to the window. "What? Out? But she wrote to me she was ill in bed!"