"I heard your speech in the piazza this morning. It would be useless to disguise the fact that some of its references were meant for me."
He did not speak, and she played with the glove in her lap, and continued in the same soft voice:
"If I were a man, I suppose I should challenge you. Being a woman, I can only come to you and tell you that you are wrong."
"Wrong?"
"Cruelly, terribly, shamefully wrong."
"You mean to tell me. … "
He was stammering in a husky voice, and she said quite calmly:
"I mean to tell you that in substance and in fact what you implied was false."
There was a dry glitter in her eyes which she tried to subdue, for she knew that he was looking at her still.
"If … if. … "—his voice was thick and indistinct—"if you tell me that I have done you an injury. … "
"You have—a terrible injury."
She could hear his breathing, but she dared not look up, lest he should see something in her face.
"Perhaps you think it strange," she said, "that I should ask you to accept my assurance only. But though you have done me a great wrong I believe you will accept it."
"If … if you give me your solemn word of honour that what I said—what I implied—was false, that rumour and report have slandered you, that it is all a cruel and baseless calumny. … "
She raised her head, looked him full in the face.
"I do give it," she said.
"Then I believe you," he answered. "With all my heart and soul, I believe you."
She dropped her eyes again, and turning with her thumb an opal ring on her finger, she began to use the blandishments which had never failed with other men.
"I do not say that I am altogether without blame," she said. "I may have lived a thoughtless life amid scenes of poverty and sorrow. If so, perhaps it has been partly the fault of the men about me. When is a woman anything but what the men around have made her?"
She dropped her voice almost to a whisper, and added: "You are the first man who has not praised and flattered me."
"I was not thinking of you," he said. "I was thinking of another, and perhaps of the poor working women who, in a world of luxury, have to struggle and starve."
She looked up, and a half-smile crossed her face.
"I honour you for that," she said. "And perhaps if I had earlier met a man like you my life might have been different. I used to hope for such things long ago—that a man of high aims and noble purposes would come to meet me at the gate of life. Perhaps you have felt like that—that some woman, strong and true, would stand beside you for good or for ill, in your hour of danger and your hour of joy?"
Her voice was not quite steady—she hardly knew why.
"A dream! We all have our dreams," he said.
"A dream indeed! Men came—he was not among them. They pampered every wish, indulged every folly, loaded me with luxuries, but my dream was dispelled. I respected few of them, and reverenced none. They were my pastime, my playthings. And they have revenged themselves by saying in secret … what you said in public this morning."
He was looking at her constantly with his wistful eyes, the eyes of a child, and through all the joy of her success she was conscious of a spasm of pain at the expression of his sad face and the sound of his tremulous voice.
"We men are much to blame," he said. "In the battle of man with man we deal out blows and think we are fighting fair, but we forget that behind our foe there is often a woman—a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend—and, God forgive us, we have struck her, too."
The half-smile that had gleamed on Roma's face was wiped out of it by these words, and an emotion she did not understand began to surge in her throat.
"You speak of poor women who struggle and starve," she said. "Would it surprise you to hear that I know what it is to do that? Yes, and to be friendless and alone—quite, quite alone in a cruel and wicked city."
She had lost herself for a moment, and the dry glitter in her eyes had given way to a moistness and a solemn expression. But at the next instant she had regained her self-control, and went on speaking to avoid a painful silence.
"I have never spoken of this to any other man," she said. "I don't know why I should mention it to you—to you of all men."
She had risen to her feet, and he stepped up to her, and looking straight into her eyes he said:
"Have you ever seen me before?"
"Never," she answered.
"Sit down," he said. "I have something to say to you."
She sat down, and a peculiar expression, almost a crafty one, came into her face.
"You have told me a little of your life," he said. "Let me tell you something of mine."
She smiled again. These big children called men were almost to be pitied. She had expected a fight, but the man had thrown up the sponge from the outset, and now he was going to give himself into her hands. Only for that pathetic look in his eyes and that searching tone in his voice she could have found it in her heart to laugh.
She let her cape drop back from her shoulders, revealing her round bust and swanlike arms, and crossing one leg over the other she displayed the edge of a lace skirt and the point of a red slipper. Then she coughed a little behind a perfumed lace handkerchief and prepared to listen.
"You are the daughter of an ancient family," he said, "older than the house it lived in, and prouder than a line of kings. And whatever sorrows you may have seen, you knew what it was to have a mother who nursed you and a father who loved you, and a home that was your own. Can you realise what it is to have known neither father nor mother, to be homeless, nameless, and alone?"
She looked up—a deep furrow had crossed his brow, which she had not seen there before.
"Happy the child," he said, "though shame stands beside his cradle, who has one heart beating for him in a cruel world. That was not my case. I never knew my mother."
The mocking fire had died out of Roma's face, and she uncrossed her knees.
"My mother was the victim of a heartless man and a cruel law. She tied to her baby's wrist a paper on which she had written its father's name, placed it in the rota at the Foundling of Santo Spirito, and flung herself into the Tiber."
Roma drew the cape over her shoulders.
"She lies in an unnamed pauper's grave in the Campo Verano."
"Your mother?"
"Yes. My earliest memory is of being put out to nurse at a farmstead in the Campagna. It was the time of revolution; the treasury of the Pope was not yet replaced by the treasury of the King, the nuns at Santo Spirito had no money with which to pay their pensions; and I was like a child forsaken by its own, a fledgling in a foreign nest."
"Oh!"
"Those were the days when scoundrels established abroad traded in the white slavery of poor Italian boys. They scoured the country, gathered them up, put them in railway trucks like cattle, and despatched them to foreign countries. My foster-parents parted with me for money, and I was sent to London."
Roma's bosom was heaving, and tears were gathering in her eyes.
"My next memory is of living in a large half-empty house in Soho—fifty foreign boys crowded together. The big ones were sent out into the streets with