siders invariably stirred her to a high pitch of excitement, and left her afterwards with a paradoxical sense of turmoil and vacuum within her mind and throughout her entire body. She walked wearily to the window, longing for some of the cool night air from the garden. But as she pushed out the casement windows with a heavy, careless gesture, she became suddenly aware of voices speaking in an undertone. Quickly, she drew herself together, and, after stepping back into the room a way, she looked down into the garden, where Adrian and Tony were standing.

Adrian had tilted her brother's head back as a designer might arrange a mannikin, and was scrutinzing the fine, soft features. The night air brought his voice up to her, sad and half-humorous.

"No, I am afraid that you will not pass for a Greek god. You will have to content yourself with being something like a faun. And this tangled garden is far from Olympian I do not think that you could persuade the mountain gods to walk here. They are jealous of their independence on the mountain, and there is such defeat in a valley garden."

She could not see Adrian's face, but Tony was turned towards her, and

his expression was one of adulation.

Adrian took his hand from her brother's face.

"You have such soft skin!" he exclaimed.

Tony looked aside, a little shamefacedly. "My beard is very light."

"Ah, what a charming creature!"

And Tony's voice, slightly pleased and perplexed:

I've never known any one to talk the way you do.'

"I hope not."

"Are you teasing me?"

しい

Why do you say that?

"No, I am always dead serious." But there was a note of amusement in his voice.

"I don't understand you, but I try hard to . . . "

"No, no, you mustn't."

But WHY? I don't think you think much of my intelligence."

"It is unspoiled. I like it so."

A silence, then Tony's concerned voice. Adrian's voice was unusually reserved.

tired."

"Your moods change so quickly

"Is anything the matter?" "Nothing, nothing at all. I am

I can never keep up with you."

"You don't have to. Stay in one place, and by and by I will come back to you." Then, rapidly and exhuberantly, "Ah, Tony, Tony, Tony, little Tony!" And he dug his hands into his pockets.

Tony's quick laughter. "I don't understand you at all."

Come, you must show me the way out," insisted Adrian, and as they walked away, he partly turned his gaze backward, as though he had sensed an audience. Domenica closed the window in mixed wonder and disgust. "My gentle Tony," she exclaimed to herself, "the barbarians have descended on Rome."

That night Domenica slept restlessly. Chaotic scenes and images moved across her vision and vanished before she could bring them into focus. Occasionally a fragment was poised before her in lucid detail: a hand balanced in a momentary gesture, or the embroidery on the corner of a blue fan. The fragments became more frequent until they obscured her sight in an endless mosaic, and then shattered apart and slipped away with a sound like distant, self-conscious laughter.

As the scene crystallized, she found that the laughter was nothing more than the faint music cast into the night by the motion of a wide, dark river. She was lying at the margin of the water, and almost unendurable pressure weighted her back. By turning her head painfully, she was able to discover a pair of ponderous stone wings arching from her shoulders. It seemed wise to temporarily resign herself until she understood the situation more fully,