She stood drumming on the window-sill, looking down into the busy Piazza Montecitorio far below. A row of "_botti_" stretched across the sunny side, the drivers carrying on an animated conversation among themselves and with one or two flower sellers. The old woman who kept the news-stand at the corner, alternately sorted her newspapers and warmed her fingers over her scaldino, for the air was crisp, it being early in January. Through the Piazza streamed a motley procession of tourists, red-covered Baedeker in hand,--priests in cassock and beaver hat, _popolini_ and girls, and some _Trasteverine_ with coloured stays over white _camicie_, and strings of coral about their necks. Ragna watched them all with fascinated eyes. The variegated Roman crowds were a constant source of interest and delight to her; she could not but feel the charm of their casual, seemingly untrammelled existence. The Romans, she thought, had not a worry in the world, their happy care-free faces drew her; even in the beggar's professional whine she observed a lack of real distress--all seemed to float lightly on the surface of Life, passing the under-currents, the sunken rocks, skimming carelessly over the shallows. She remembered a boy she had seen the day before, breaking his fast on a hunch of bread and a glass of sour wine; his bare feet protruded from tattered trouser-legs, his elbows showed through rents in the sleeves of his ragged jacket. He was a flower-vendor and she had stopped to choose a bunch of flowers from his basket. When she paid him, he thanked her with a brilliant smile, displaying his white teeth, and in halting Italian she asked him what made him so happy. "Happy, Signorina? Of course I am happy,--the sun is warm and I have my bread and wine--!" It was little reason enough, in all conscience, thought Ragna; she wondered what made these people satisfied with the passing sensation, oblivious of ulterior good or ill, and she envied them. Her eyes wandered to the clock on the Parliament buildings opposite,--it was almost eleven. She turned half angrily to Astrid who was gazing into space, still chewing her pen-holder. "Haven't you finished yet?" Astrid started and a look of contrition came over her face. "Oh! I'm awfully sorry Ragna, but I just can't write quickly to-day. Don't wait for me, there's a dear! I'll go out with you this afternoon. I'll be ready by then, I truly will!"