"Yes," De Ruyter went on. "She had the oval face and the olive complexion the Greeks left behind them in Sicily. She was not pretty, if you like, but she had the calm beauty of a race of sculptors. Her profile might have come off a Syracusan coin. And to see such a face here, in the city that was New Amsterdam and is New York!" "We haven't time down here to think of Syracuse and New Amsterdam," said Suydam; "we are too busy thinking about New York. And if we ever do think of Sicily it is only to remember that the Sicilians we have here are the hottest tempered of all the Italians, the most revengeful and vindictive." "If I didn't know," the novelist remarked, "that the Italians had developed their mercantile faculty at the expense of all their artistic impulses, I should wonder how it was that scions of the race of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci and Raffael of Urbino could now be willing to live in a house as hideous as that!" and with a sweep of his hand he indicated a lofty double tenement, made uglier by much misplaced ornament. "It isn't even picturesque by decay. In fact, this whole region is in better repair than I had expected." "Look at the house behind you," answered his companion. The house behind them was one of the oldest tenements in the street. The balconies of its fire-escape were as cluttered as those of the neighboring dwellings; and every window gave signs that the room behind was inhabited. Yet the building, as a whole, seemed neglected. "This house does seem out at elbows and dishevelled," De Ruyter admitted. "It looks like a tramp, doesn't it?" "It does not look very clean," said Suydam. "And the back building is dirtier yet. That's where we are going, if you like." "Well," De Ruyter answered, "if there is local color to be found anywhere round here, I guess we shall find a fair share of it in this place." "This way, then," Suydam said, plunging into a covered alleyway, which extended under the house, and led into a small yard paved with uneven flag-stones, and shut in on all four sides by the surrounding buildings. Even on that sunny pure morning there was a dank chill in the air, and there were patches of moisture here and there on the pavement. "The new building laws don't allow back buildings of this sort," Suydam explained. "But there are thousands of them in the city, put up before the new laws went into effect. Perhaps we had better try the basement first." In one corner of the yard half a dozen steps led down into the basement of the back building. Followed by the novelist, the young man from the University Settlement went down these steps and into the cellarlike room, which occupied about half the space under the back building.