At half past eight, I stood up.
“Well, I guess I’d better go now,” I said, but neither Leslie nor Viola said, “Oh, don’t hurry—” as I supposed people always did, and so I did go. As I reached the door—alone—Leslie spoke:
“We go to see Signor Paggi to-morrow, don’t we?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered, “at one.”
“We might as well go together,” she suggested, “although—” (her tone was too careless, and she avoided looking at me) “we, of course, won’t expect to act like Siamese triplets, will we?”
“I shall be busy a great deal,” I stated, as I felt myself flush, and then I went out, and after a stiff good-night, went down the hall to my own room. It did seem to me that Leslie had been unnecessarily unkind in giving that hint, for I had only gone because I supposed it was polite, and I certainly never would push in! Mother had never let us do that!
I was angry, and as I undressed, I vowed that I would let Leslie entirely alone, and that she could make the first advances—if any at all were ever made—and I wondered what kind of a man could like a girl of Leslie’s type, and what he had said that had made her do a thing that was so evidently distasteful. I was really interested, and I couldn’t help hoping that this man who had been “pushed from her life” had socked it to her hard, (and I found later he had!) and I further hoped—without even trying to help it—that I could squelch her some day. Then I said my prayers and crawled into bed.
As I pulled up the blankets one of the sounds that belong to Florence tinkled in through my widely opened French windows. . . . Somewhere, in some little church or convent, bells were ringing and sounding out steps in mellow tones that floated softly through the air. . . . It was very, very pretty. . . . And I closed my eyes, and I could see lilies-of-the-valley and blue bells growing near ferns. . . . That doesn’t seem very sensible unless you’ve heard those bells, but if you have—on a warm-aired, soft Italian night—you’ll probably understand. Then the bells died gently down to nothing and I heard another sound, and when I heard that I saw people clogging, for it was a banjo, and I got out of bed in a hurry, and skipped over to the window without even waiting to put on my slippers.
I couldn’t see much down in the court, because the wide banners of light that floated out from the doorways only seemed to intensify the shadows, and the banjo-player was sitting on a bench by the side of a back door and not in the light.
But I could hear, and I heard, in a very pretty voice with the soft strum of the banjo creeping through: