The canzonet ended, she walked off without bowing to or glancing at the audience, but the men, one and all, their eye thirst still unslaked, joined in Signor Di Bello’s frantic demand for an _encore_. On she came with stolid countenance and began the song all over again, although the women had set up a hissing that matched the strength of the applause. Signor Di Bello called the flower girl into the box, bought an armful of her wares, and threw them wildly on the stage. They fell in a shower on all sides of Juno. Instantly she stopped, put her arms akimbo, and while the orchestra played on, glared blackly at her vehement admirer. Flowers for a Neapolitan of the Porto! Blossoms that have poison in their breath! Stupid Di Bello! Stupid Genovese! Twelve years in Mulberry, and to forget the hatred that Neapolitans of Naples have for natural blooms! Perhaps you thought she was from the country, like most of the people there. Bah! In such a serious matter one ought to be sure. It was the women’s golden chance. They started a titter of derisive laughter that became a gale and swept through the theatre. Juno moved toward the box, trampling the odious flowers, and spat in the face of Signor Di Bello. Then she left the stage, followed by an outpour of boorish gibes. “_Infame! infame!_” It was the voice of Bertino, crying loudly from the last row of benches, under the gallery hard by the door. With a firing emotion that he did not know was the green fever, he had watched the doings of his uncle, and when the bright colours rained about her, brushing her cheeks and hair, and whisking her shoulders, he thought with a heart-fall of the wretched blossom his hand had bestowed a week before at the Wooden Bunch. _Madre Santissima!_ His uncle kissed her with lovely flowers, and he, miserable soul, kissed her with a spot of yellow paint. But when the people laughed and sneered, and he saw her anger kindle, her cause was his own. The pigs and sons of pigs! To laugh at her! At his queen, the _amorosa_ of his dreamland, by sunglow and starshine, asleep or at work. Grander than the dames of Genoa palaces, more beautiful than the peaches of California. And his uncle! The old mooncalf! He was the cause of it all. Served him right that kiss she gave him back. Ha-ha! But these jeers, these hounds yelping at his queen! “_Infame! infame!_” The people thought he meant it for Juno, and took up the cry, which did not subside until the Bay of Naples and the cone of Vesuvius rolled up from the bottom, and the second comedy began. Signor Di Bello had no appetite for this, and he left the box, passing out amid the nudges and snickers of the first families of the Genovesi, Milanesi, and Torinesi, who were there in force along with the flower of the Calabriani, Napolitani, and Siciliani. But he put a good face on the matter, and at the door hailed the _impresario_: “Ha, Signor Grabbini! Your singer has at least one liquid tone.” And he disappeared, chuckling. CHAPTER V