Thus it had come about that when Juno entered the caffè she found Bertino writhing in the travail of chirography. Before him on the table lay a photograph of the First Lady of the Land. She checked an impulse to catch it up and tear it to shreds.
Taking a chair by the table she watched him while he wrote. When he had finished the letter he read it over slowly, then took up the picture of the President’s wife to fold the written sheet around it and place it in the envelope.
“Bah!” she said. “You talk of love. What love! Why don’t you send this picture for the bust instead of that one? Am I not more beautiful?” She drew from her skirt pocket her favourite portrait—the one that showed her gazing wistfully at the moon.
“Anything but that,” he answered. “The next one shall be yours. I swear it, if you will swear to be my wife. Ah, mia preziosa, in this letter there is a fortune for me—for us both. Don’t you see the fine idea it is to have a bust made of such a grand signora? It will make a furore tremendo in America.”
He had put the letter and the picture in the envelope, and in another instant would have sealed it, but Juno sprang to her feet and pointed to the door, crying:
“Quick! Go stop him! That man with the brown hat—my cousin! He has just passed. I must see him. Quick, Bertino!”
He started for the door, but hardly had he reached it before she snatched the envelope from the table, took out the photograph of the President’s wife and put in the one of herself. Bertino ran back and forth in search of the myth with the brown hat, and at length returned, grumbling that no such person was in the street.
“Ah, what a pity!” she said. “I have not seen my cousin since the Feast of the Madonna del Carmelo.”
Bertino licked the gum and sealed the envelope.
“And now, carina,” he said, regarding her tenderly, “the answer that you promised to-day.”