"But when," his wife persisted, as he turned away, "shall I see Mrs. Greyson? I want to show her the _bambino_." She always spoke in Italian to her husband and her child, and indeed her English had never been of the most fluent. "The _bambino_" the father repeated, smiling. "He will be a _bambino_ to you when he is as big as I am, I suppose. I do not know about Mrs. Greyson, but I will find out, if I can." He left the room and went to the chamber where his swarthy boy of five lay still luxuriously in his crib, although he was fully awake. Nino gave a soft cry of joy at the sight of his father, and greeted him rapturously. "Papa," he asked in Italian, "does the kitty know how much she hurts when she scratches? she made a long place on my arm, and it hurt like fire." "Do you know how much you hurt her to make her do it?" his father returned, smiling fondly. "Oh, but she is so soft and so little, of course I don't hurt her," Nino answered, with boyish logic. "Anyway, she ought not to hurt me. I don't like to be hurt." The foolish, childish words came back to Herman's mind a couple of hours later, as he waited in the boarding-house parlor for Helen Greyson. He smiled with bitterness to think how perfectly they represented his own state of mind. He said to himself that he was tired of being hurt, and rose at the moment to take in both his hands the hands of a beautiful woman, to his eyes no older and no less fair than when he had said good-by to her on his wedding morning, six years before. He tried to speak, but tears came instead of words; choked and blinded, he turned away abruptly, struggling to regain his composure. The meeting after long years of those who have loved and been separated, may, for the moment, carry them back to the time of their parting so completely that all that lies between seems annihilated. The old emotion reasserts itself so strongly, the past lives again so vividly, that there seems to have been no break in feeling, and they stand in relation to one another as if the parting were yet to come. When they had been together a little, the time which lay between them would once more become a reality; but at the first touch of their hands those bitter days of loneliness ceased to exist, and they seemed to stand together again, as when they were saying good-by six years before. With her old time self-control, it was Helen who spoke first, and her words recalled him from the past and its passion, to the present and its duty. "Tell me how Ninitta is," she said, "and the boy. I do so want to see that wonderful boy." The sculptor commanded his voice by a powerful effort. "They are both well," he answered. "The boy is a wonderful little fellow, although perhaps I am not an unprejudiced judge. Ninitta is crazy to show him to you. She has pretty nearly effaced herself since he came, and only lives for his benefit."