“He has made one Juno,” she said, her thought set on a single phase of his chimera--that whomever he chose for the subject, after that person a bust would be fashioned. “Since he has made one Juno, why not let him make another?” She said it seriously, without guile. “Oh, so many photographs I had taken in Naples! Here, none; I am too poor. Next week I shall have some. But how fine I should look in marble! I have thought of it many a time. Ah, _proprio bella, neh_?” “You would make the finest bust in the world,” he said ardently. “I think so myself,” she nodded, drawing the mantilla under her chin and moving away with her package of freely weighed codfish. He watched her until she turned into the mouth of the Alley of the Moon, whereon her lodgings looked, and the idea that she had put into his head took deeper hold. “Why not?” he asked the tub of olives at the door. “Is there a more beautiful woman in America? It is settled. To-morrow I shall say to her, ‘_Carissima_ Juno, when you are my wife I will send your picture to Armando, that you may be the first bust.’” He stood in the doorway gazing out on the park, assured now that she must be his--for what greater honour could man show to woman?--when his eye met the bronze presence of Italy’s liberator. A withered wreath of laurel, with which the Italian societies had crowned their hero on his last birthday, had dropped over the head and become a lopsided necklace. Bertino saw the half-drawn sword, the bared arm, the conquering air, and his promise to Armando came back: “It shall be some one as great as Garibaldi.” Thus it fell out that the following afternoon, when Juno came to the shop for garlic and spaghetti, and told him that of all things she would like to see herself in marble, he said: “No; it would be false to my friend.” “And you say you dream of me?” “By night and by day.” “And you love me?” “Ah, _si_; Madonna knows.” “Still you will not do me this favour?” “But it is to be the bust of a man.” “Bah! Why not a woman?” “No, no; I can not. It would be treachery to Armando.” None the less, she had spoken the words that sealed the fate of the bust. “Why not a woman, indeed?” Bertino asked himself when she had gone. “But it must be the greatest as well as the handsomest woman in America.” He thought of the picture of the President’s wife that he had seen one night at an illustrated Italian lecture in the Hudson Mission. “By San Giorgio!” he exclaimed, astonished at the grandeur of his own idea. “A bust of her Majesty, the First Lady of America! This is the best thing I ever thought of.”