"You have seen something of that, haven't you?"
"I have."
"In London?"
"Yes. There's an old quarter on the fringe of the fashionable district. It is called Soho. Densely populated, infested with vice, the very sewer of the city, yet an asylum of liberty for all that. The refugees of Europe fly to it. Its criminals, too, perhaps; for misery, like poverty, has many bedfellows."
"You lived there?"
"Yes."
Roma was wiping her fingers with the sponge, and looking sideways out of the window. "And your old friend, Doctor Roselli—he lived in Soho?"
"In Soho Square when I knew him first. The house faced to the north, and had a porch and trees in front of it."
The sponge had dropped to the floor, but Roma did not observe it. She took up a tooth-tool and began to work on the clay again.
"A little more that way, please—thanks! Do you think your friend had a right to renounce his rank and to break up his family in Italy? Think of his father—he would be broken-hearted."