"The girls she rooms with are just nice exuberant American girls, and are interested in golf and basket-ball and Welsh rabbit and Richard Harding Davis stories and Gibson pictures--and she never even _heard_ of any of them until four months ago. She has a water-color sketch of the villa, that her father did. It's white stucco, you know, with terraces and marble balustrades and broken statues, and a grove of ilex-trees with a fountain in the center. Just think of _belonging_ to a place like that, Miss Prescott, and then being suddenly plunged into a place like this without any friends or any one who even knows about the things you know--think how lonely you would be!" Patty leaned forward with flushed cheeks, carried away by her own eloquence. "You know what Italy's like. It's a sort of disease. If you once get fond of it you'll never forget it, and you just can't be happy till you get back. And with Olivia it's her home, besides. She's never known anything else. And it's hard at first to keep your mind on mathematics when you're dreaming all the time of ilex groves and fountains and nightingales and--and things like that." She finished lamely, for Miss Prescott suddenly leaned back in the shadow, and it seemed to Patty that her face had grown pale and the hand that held the magazine trembled. Patty flushed uncomfortably and tried to think what she had said. She was always saying things that hurt people's feelings without meaning to. Suddenly that old story from her freshman year flashed into her mind. He had been an artist and had lived in Italy and had died of Roman fever; and Miss Prescott had gone to Germany to study mathematics, and had never cared for anything else since. It sounded rather made up, but it might be true. Had she stumbled on a forbidden subject? she wondered miserably. She had, of course; it was just her way. The silence was becoming unbearable; she struggled to think of something to say, but nothing came, and she rose abruptly. "I'm sorry to have taken so much of your time, Miss Prescott. I hope I haven't bored you. Good night." Miss Prescott rose and took Patty's hand. "Good night, my dear, and thank you for coming to me. I am glad to know of Olivia Copeland. I will see what can be done about her geometry, and I shall be glad, besides, to know her as--as a friend; for I, too, once cared for Italy." Patty closed the door softly and tiptoed home through the dim corridors. "Did you bring the matches?" called a sleepy voice from Priscilla's bedroom. Patty started. "Oh, the matches!" she laughed. "No; I forgot them." "I never knew you to accomplish anything yet that you started out to do, Patty Wyatt." "I've accomplished something to-night, just the same," Patty retorted, with a little note of triumph in her voice; "but I haven't an idea how I happened to do it," she added frankly to herself.