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 back to Roger. His small-featured face was gaunt with sickness. The color high up under his bright black eyes looked crudely put on with a brush. She could not control herself, and casting her body down beside him and clasping his thin hands she cried out, 'Roger, are you really sick? I mean, very sick?'

'Yes, Lanice,' he smiled, 'very, very.'

She could not bear the thought, shuddered, and covered her face with her hands. He remarked quite casually: 'It is all right, Lanice, about dying. You think now that it isn't. But it is something quite natural to the human race. All our ancestors have always done it—successfully. It is quite part of living. I don't mind, so you must not.'

There was a velvet babble of bells from a near-by church, and she saw the pigeons fly homeward through the clear, yellowing air.

'How did she happen to get the fever?' 'This last year while I was hunting about for my canti di ballo, Hittie collected old legends. She wrote down but very little, poor soul. Hers was not the mind of a scholar, nor did she remember very accurately, but it was rousing to hear her tell these old romances. Mr. Browning has told me that since her death he has written out in verse three or four of these dramatic tales of hers. He admired her prodigiously. One of his poems is to be about a lady of the Riccardi who had a bust of herself placed in the window where in life she had watched her lover pass. I think Elizabeth Barrett was almost jealous for her "Roberto mio." Well, there is in the Maremma—you know