I dared not make a movement in return. At that moment I might have betrayed more than ever again I could hide. But the woods were now of another hue; the invisible lark was still singing, albeit a sadder strain. We decided that Alicia is to enter Barnard next week and commute with me on the daily train. *CHAPTER XXI* Dear God! How I cry out for peace, and there is no peace! Who would have looked for disaster at the plump hands of Gina Visconti? Yet, as though she had willfully shut the door of my livelihood in my face, that innocent girl has abruptly cut me off. I cannot go back to Visconti’s. That accursed dinner, which instinct made me shun, was the cause and occasion of it all. I had begun foolishly to feel myself at home in the Visconti household. When the housemaid informed me that the _signorina_ would be down directly, I strolled into the drawing-room leisurely, not in the least surprised that I was apparently the only guest, and gazed again at the shining new furniture, costly and glistening, for the _n_th time wondering how it continued to stay so new. There is a scattering of saccharine pictures on the walls that invariably make me smile: Cherry Ripe, the Old Oaken Bucket, Sweet Sixteen; a glittering small marble of Cupid and Psyche and a crayon enlargement of the very stout lady that was Gina’s mother. Why, I wondered, do not modern Italians stick to their own old masters? I once bought a very fair copy of Pope Julian II in Florence for fifty lire. Even Gina’s energetic modernism, however, seemed unable to exorcise the peculiar airless odor of an Italian’s drawing-room, due largely, I suppose, to hermetically sealed windows and constantly lowered shades. Gina came down directly, as had been promised, in a very pretty satin evening frock that struck me as too light for a girl as full-bodied as she. That is a detail, however, which was superseded in my mind by the query as to why she should feel it necessary to romp into a room rather than walk. But I know she aspires to be hyper-American. Her greeting is always warm and her energy was the one touch of ozone in that stuffy drawing-room. A moment later entered her father, his dark-red face pardonably gleaming like a moon through the haze at the charms of his only daughter. For Gina is not only pretty—she is eminently modish, to the last wave of her rich black hair. "Is she a fine American girl—or is she not, eh?" Visconti’s half-proud, half-defiant look seems to challenge all present.