Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/57

 he asked after a slight pause; and from a sudden seriousness of manner she knew that he understood.

They went up the wide avenue side by side and were almost alone, for at that late morning hour the garden is deserted.

“It is Lady Fitz-Smith who spoke of me to you?”

“There were others.”

“She is my friend; there are others!” He shrugged his shoulders and smiled unpleasantly.

“There are some who say you are frivolous, and waste your life.”

“There are many in this city who do worse things with their lives than wasting them,” answered Gino dryly.

“In my country it is considered a very wicked thing to waste a life,” said Anne.

“Yours must be a strange, a terrible country,” he answered, evidently amused by her gravity on such a subject. “For us it is already much that we do no harm.”,

“That cannot be,” she protested, “or you would never have had a Risorgimento.”

“Let us say, then, that to me it is enough that I do no harm.”

“But the world needs us—each one of us,” she cried.

Gino Curatulo swung his cane and looked at her