She handed me the letter, and took up her book; and presently she laid the book down again; and looked at the letter, and then at me—and went out.
She did not come in again that evening; in the morning, there was no rose-bud on my table. And when I came at night, with a bouquet from Pietro’s at the corner, she asked me—“who had written my letter?”
“A very dear friend,” said I.
“A lady?” continued she.
“A lady,” said I.
“Keep this bouquet for her,” said she, and put it in my hands.
“But, Enrica, she has plenty of flowers; she lives among them, and each morning her children gather them by scores to make garlands of.”
Enrica put her fingers within my hand to take again the bouquet; and for a moment I held both fingers and flowers.
The flowers slipped out first.
I had a friend at Rome in that time, who afterward died between Ancona and Corinth; we were sitting one day upon a block of tufa in the middle of the Coliseum, looking up at the shadows which the waving shrubs upon the southern wall cast upon the ruined arcades within, and listening to the chirping sparrows that lived upon the wreck—when he said to me suddenly—“Paul, you love the Italian girl.”