Object! On the contrary, they would be flattered. Gaspero settled back to his duties with the triumphant expression of the artist who by sudden inspiration has added the crowning touch to his picture. He composed the days for them on his mental palette, and this one he plainly considered one of his masterpieces. Yesterday had been a failure. Jane and Peripatetica had waked full of plans, but before the breakfast trays had departed they were aware of a heavy sense of languor and ennui which made the pleasantest plans a prospect of weariness and disgust. “If you sit around in a dressing-gown all day we’ll never get anything done,” suggested Peripatetica crossly, as Jane lounged in unsympathetic silence at the window. “Considering that you’ve been half an hour dawdling over your hair and have got it up crooked at last, I wouldn’t talk about others,” snapped Jane over her shoulder without changing her attitude. A strained silence ensued. Peripatetica slammed down a hand mirror and spilled a whole paper of hairpins, 256which she contemplated stonily, with no movement to recover them. A hot wind whirled up a spiral of dust in the street. “My arms are so tired I can’t make a coiffure,” wailed Peripatetica. Jane merely laid her head on the window sill and rolled a feeble, melancholy eye at the disregarded hairpins. The wind sent up another curtain of hot dust. “I don’t know what’s the matter,” complained Jane, “but I don’t feel as if I wanted to see another sight—ever—as long as I live.” “Perhaps this is the sirocco one hears of,” piped Peripatetica weakly. “The guide-book says ‘the effect of it is to occasion a difficulty in breathing, and a lassitude which unfits one for work, especially of a mental nature.’” By this time there could be no doubt of the sirocco. A hot, dry tempest raged, whipping the rattling palms, driving clouds of dust before it, so that Jane could only dimly discern an occasional scurrying cab, or an overtaken pedestrian pursuing an invisible hat through the roaring fog of flying sand. The day had turned to a brown and tempestuous dusk, and the voice of a hoarse Saharan wind shouted around the corners. But that was yesterday. To-day was golden and gracious. Rain in the night had cooled and effaced all memory of the sirocco, and Gaspero was outdoing himself in astonishing and piquant contrasts. He drove them to the Cappucini Convent by the devious route of the Street of the Washerwomen. This roundabout way of reaching the Convent was one of Gaspero’s artful devices.