Roma was leaning on the parapet with David Rossi behind her, when suddenly she began to weep. She wept violently and sobbed.
"What is it?" he asked, but she did not answer.
After a while she grew calm and dried her eyes, called herself foolish, and began to laugh. But the heart-beats were too audible without saying something, and at length she tried to speak.
"It was the poor boy at the inn," she said; "the sight of his sweet face brought back a scene I had quite forgotten," and then, in a faltering voice, turning her head away, she told him everything.
"It was in London, and my father had found a little Roman boy in the streets on a winter's night, carrying a squirrel and playing an accordion. He wore a tattered suit of velveteens, and that was all that sheltered his little body from the cold. His fingers were frozen stiff, and he fainted when they brought him into the house. After a while he opened his eyes, and gazed around at the fire and the faces about him, and seemed to be looking for something. It was his squirrel, and it was frozen dead. But he grasped it tight and big tears rolled on to his cheeks, and he raised himself as if to escape. He was too weak for that, and my father comforted him and he lay still. That was when I saw him first; and looking at the poor boy at the inn I thought ... I thought perhaps he was another ... perhaps my little friend of long ago...."
Her throat was throbbing, and her faltering voice was failing like a pendulum that is about to stop.
"Roma!" he cried over her shoulder.
"David!"
Their eyes met, their hands clasped, their pent-up secret was out, and in the dim-lit catacombs of love two souls stood face to face.
"How long have you known it?" she whispered.