"But he deserves it all, and more—far, far more!"
The stranger looked at the woman's beaming eyes, and said, "You are not his wife—no?"
"Oh, no! I'm only the wife of one of his friends," she answered.
"But you live here?"
"We live in the rooms on the roof."
"Perhaps you keep house for the Deputy?"
"Yes—that is to say—yes, we keep house for Mr. Rossi."
At that moment the room, which had been gloomy, was suddenly lighted by a shaft of sunshine, and there came from some unseen place a musical noise like the rippling of waters in a fountain.
"It's the birds," said the woman, and she threw open a window that was also a door and led to a flat roof on which some twenty or thirty canaries were piping and shrilling their little swollen throats in a gigantic bird-cage.
"Mr. Rossi's?"