“You mustn’t let me be too inquisitive a travelling companion,” said the nun, “but I notice that you’re in deep mourning. Have you lost some one who was very dear to you?” “My husband.” The nun leaned over and with an exquisite tenderness laid her white and delicate hand on Nancy’s knee. “And you have only this little bright thing left?” she murmured. Letizia had been regarding the nun’s action with wide-eyed solemnity. Presently she stood up on the seat and putting her arms round her mother’s neck, whispered in her ear: “I fink the lady tied up with a handkie is nice.” “You have conquered Letizia’s heart,” said Nancy, smiling through the tears in her eyes. “I’m very proud to hear it. I should guess that she wasn’t always an easy conquest.” “Indeed, no!” “Letizia?” the nun repeated. “What a nice name to own! Gladness!” “You know Italian? My husband’s grandmother was Italian. I often wish that I could speak Italian and teach my small daughter.” “What is Italian, muvver?” Letizia asked. “Italian, Letizia,” said the nun, “is the way all the people talk in the dearest and most beautiful country in the world. Such blue seas, my dear, such skies of velvet, such oranges and lemons growing on the trees, such flowers everywhere, such radiant dancing airs, such warmth and sweetness and light. I lived in Italy long ago, when I was young.” Nancy looked up in amazement as the nun stopped speaking, for her voice sounded fresh and crystalline as a girl’s, her cheeks were flushed with youth, her eyes were deep and warm and lucent as if the Southern moon swam face to face with her in the cold March night roaring past the smoky windows of the carriage. Yet when Nancy looked again she saw the fine lines in the porcelain-frail face, and the puckered eyelids, and middle-age in those grave blue eyes. In Italy, then, was written the history of her youth, and in Italy the history of her love, for only remembered love could thus have transformed her for a fleeting instant to what she once was. At that moment the train entered a tunnel and went clanging on through such a din of titanic anvils that it was impossible to talk, for which Nancy was grateful because she did not want Letizia to shatter the nun’s rapture by asking questions that would show she had not understood a great deal about Italy or Italian. Presently the noise of the anvils ceased, and the train began to slow down until at last it came to a stop in a profound silence which pulsed upon the inner ear as insistently as a second or two back had clanged those anvils. The talk of people in the next compartment began to trickle through the partition, and one knew that such talk was trickling all the length of the train, and that, though one could not hear the words through all the length of the train, people were saying to one another that the signals must be against them. One felt, too, a genuine gratitude to those active and vigilant signals which were