"You have come here to-day on purpose to tell me this?" said Selma.

"I thought you would be interested to hear that my cousins had recognized me at last. I remember, you thought it strange that they should take so little notice of me." Flossy's festive manner had disappeared before the tart reception of her confidences, and her keen wits, baffled in their search for flattery, recalled the suspicions which were only slumbering. She realized that Selma was seriously offended with her, and though she did not choose to acknowledge to herself that she knew the cause, she had already guessed it. An encounter at repartee had no terrors for her, if necessary, and the occasion seemed to her opportune for probing the accumulating mysteries of Selma's hostile demeanor. Yet, without waiting for a response to her last remark, she changed the subject and said, volubly, "I hear your husband has refused to build the new Parsons house because Mrs. Parsons insisted on drawing the plans."

Selma's pale, tense face flushed. She thought for a moment that she was being taunted.

"That was Mr. Littleton's decision, not mine."

"I admire his independence. He was quite right. What do Mrs. Parsons or

Unleavened Bread. By Robert Grant. Copyright, 1900, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Price, $1.50.

her daughter know about architecture? Every body is laughing at them. You know I consider your husband a friend of mine, Selma."

"And we are friends, too, I believe?" Selma exclaimed, after a moment of stern silence.

"Naturally," responded Flossy, with a slightly sardonic air, prompted by the acerbity with which the question was put.

"Then, if we were friends-are friends-why have you ceased to associate with us, simply because you live in another street and a finer house?" Flossy gave a gasp.

"Oh," she said to herself, "it's true. She is jealous. Why didn't I appre

ciate it before?"

"Am I not associating with you now by calling on you, Selma?" she said aloud. "I don't understand what you mean."

"You are calling on me, and you asked us to dinner to meet-to meet just the people we knew already, and didn't care to meet; but you have never asked me to meet your new friends, and you left us out when you gave your dancing party."

"You do not dance."

"How do you know?"

"I have never associated you with dancing. I assumed that you did not dance."

"What grounds had you for such an assumption?"

"Really, Selma, your catechism is most extraordinary. Excuse my smiling. And I don't know how to answer your questions-your fierce questionsany better. I didn't ask you to my party because I supposed you and your husband were not interested in that sort of thing, and would not know any of the people. You have often told me that you thought they were frivolous." "I consider them so still."

"Then why do you complain?" "Because because you have not acted like a friend. Your idea of a friendship has been to pour into my ears, day after day, how you had been asked to dinner by this person and taken up by that person, until I was weary of the very sound of your voice, but it seems not to have occurred to you, as a friend of mine, and a friend and admirer of my husband, to introduce us to people whom you were eager to know, and who might have helped him in his profession. And now, after turning the cold shoulder on us, and omitting us from your party, because you assumed I didn't dance, you have come here this morning, in the name of friendship, to tell me that your cousins, at last, have invited you to dinner. And yet you think it strange that I'm not interested. That's the only reason you came to let me know that you are a somebody now; and you expected me, as a friend and a nobody, to tell you how glad I am."

Flossy's eyes opened wide. Free as she was accustomed to be in her own utterances, this flow of bitter speech delivered with seer-like intensity, was a new experience to her. She did not know whether to be angry or amused by the indictment, which caused her to wince, notwithstanding that she deemed it slander. Moreover the insinuation that she had been a bore was

humiliating.

"I shall not weary you soon again with my confidences," she answered.

"So it appears that you were envious of me all the time-that while you were preaching to me that fashionable society was hollow and un-American, you were secretly unhappy because you couldn't do what I was doing-because you weren't invited, too. Oh, I see it all now; it's clear as daylight. I've suspected the truth for some time, but I've refused to credit it. Now everything is explained. I took you at your word; I believed in you and your husband and looked up to you as literary people-people who were interested in fine and ennobling things. I admired you for the very reason that I thought you didn't care, and that you didn't need to care, about society and fashionable position. I kept saying to you that I envied you your tastes, and let you say that I considered myself your real inferior in my determination to attract attention and oblige society to notice us. I was guileless, and simpleton enough to tell you of my progress— things I would have blushed to tell another woman like myself-because I considered you the embodiment of high aims and spiritual ideas, as far superior to mine as the poetic star is superior to the garish electric light. I thought it might amuse you to listen to my vanities. Instead, it seems you were masquerading and were eating your heart out with envy of me-poor You were ambitious to be like

me. me."

"I wouldn't be like you for anything in the world."

"You couldn't if you tried. That's one of the things which this extraordinary interview has made plain beyond the shadow of a doubt. You are aching to be a social success. You are not fit to be. I have found that out for certain to-day."

"It is false," exclaimed Selma, with tragic intonation. "You do not understand. I have no wish to be a social success. I should abhor to spend my

She rose, and stood confronting her visitor as though to banish her from the house.

"I'm going,' said Flossy. "It's none of my concern, of course, and I'm aware that I appear very rude. I'm anxious though, not to lose faith in your husband, and now that I've begun to understand you my wits are being flooded with light. I was saying that you were not fit to be a social success, and I'm going to tell you why. No one else is likely to, and I'm just mischievous and frank enough. You're one of those American women-I've always been curious to meet one in all her glory-who believe that they are born in the complete panoply of flawless womanhood; that they are by birthright consummate housewives, leaders of the world's thought and ethics, and peerless society queens. All this by instinct, by heritage and without education. That's what you believe, isn't it? And now you are offended because you haven't been invited to become a leader of New York society. You don't understand, and I don't suppose you ever will understand, that a true lady-a

genuine society queen-represents modesty and sweetness and self-control, and gentle thoughts and feelings; that she is evolved by gradual processes from generation to generation, not ready made. Oh, you needn't look at me like that. I'm quite aware that if I were the genuine article I shouldn't be talking to you in this fashion. But there's hope for me because I'm conscious of my shortcomings and am trying to correct them; whereas you are satisfied, and fail to see the difference between yourself and the well-bred women whom you envy and sneer at. You're pretty and smart and superficial, and-er-common, and you don't know it. I'm rather dreadful, but I'm learning. I don't believe you will ever learn. There! Now I'm going!"

"Go!" cried Selma, with a wave of her arm. "Yes, I am one of those women. I am proud to be, and you have insulted by your aspersions, not only me, but the spirit of independent and

aspiring American womanhood. You don't understand us; you have nothing in common with us. You think to keep us down by your barriers of caste borrowed from effete European courts, but we-I-the American people, defy you. The time will come when we shall rise in our might and teach you your place. Go! Envy you? I would not become one of your frivolous and purposeless set if you were all on your bended knees before me."

"Oh, yes you would," exclaimed Flossy, glancing back over her shoulder. "And it's because you've not been given the chance that we have quarrelled now."

In the brickwork there was a rent of no great magnitude, concealed by the branches, yet allowing a narrow glimpse into the interior of the ruin. I could look, without being detected, at the curious sight within.

I called the place a ruin. But though its walls had lost many yards, here and there, of brick or travertine, it still kept its lofty roof; there was a staircase inside all but perfect, nearly opposite us, and a stout column in the centre supported the square edifice. More than half of it was sunk in the ground beneath the accumulated débris of centuries. But as I viewed it, with the moonlight making checkers on the floor, and the grayish-white walls exhibiting tier upon tier of loculi or pigeon-holes, many of which held dusty patena somewhat resembling fruitplates, I could have fancied myself in a museum. Such, in truth, it was; but a museum of the dead, where literal ashes, taken from the funeral pyre, had been stowed away in classic urns, with epitaphs, often consisting of the name only, and now for the most part effaced, to indicate the noble Roman family, whose slaves or freedmen these tenants of the shelves had been. It was an immense columbarium or dovecote, one of several which stood in close neighborhood among the vines and fig-trees skirting the road to the Porta San Sebastiano.

All that I took in at a glance, the moon serving yet to enlighten this underground hall of burial. But into one corner I could peer more distinctly, for a rude lamp was burning there, of the kind which abounds at Pompeii, and in the circle of its illumination stood a

*Arden Massitur. By William Barry. Copyright, 1900, by The Century Co.

couple of men, cloaked and hatted, so bent upon their own doings that they never once looked up from the loculus or sideboard, on which one was laying out papers, and the other counting them carefully. My guide's hold became a grip. He, too, could see and be astonished.

The cloaked person smoothing out, with visible reluctance, his small thin papers on the funeral slab, I had never beheld. The other, as I expected, was Tiberio. They spoke hardly at all; the operation went forward as by clockwork, save only that the wheels of the clock seemed rusty, and gave an occasional creak or jerk, while the papers mounted into heaps. I had plenty of leisure to scan the countenances, and form my judgment of the character of Sforza's vis-à-vis. There was little fear that we outside should be detected. Certain friendly owls occupied the topmost ledges of the columbarium, and now, troubled by the moon or the lamp, feeble as they were becoming, they flew wildly about, making a welcome diversion. Carluccio, emboldened, put a hand before his mouth and whispered in my ear, "Santa Fiora!"

I made the motion with my lips which would have articulated "Brigand?" The answer was plain in his

eyes.

Santa Fiora did not correspond to his sanctified name. If a flower at all, he was a flower of evil, wickedness stamping itself legibly on every one of his petals, as the hyacinth bore a lament for beauty on its tender leaves. Thin, wiry and willowy, the apparition would have served well instead of the painted snake which Romans set up to warn intruders away from tombs and sacred enclosures. His long, lean jaws had a venomous snap in them; his distorted

nose and a squinting eye gave one the impression of some unsightly fowl that had met with an accident; his forehead, of which he had a good deal, went up to a narrow crown, resembling a sugarloaf; and on neck and shoulders fell ringletted black hair, which finished off the illusion of a human serpent. Over against him Tiberio was fascinating, in spite of his fixed pallor. This malignant weed struck one as unclean-a toadstool, or other slimy fungus, that dare not be touched, impregnable in its pollution. The thing did not speak much, but occasionally it winced or frowned, as smitten with sudden anguish. Still it laid out of long fingers the pile of notes; evidently money was changing hands. And still Tiberio counted, cool and imperturbable.

A scene like that which we were contemplating, if it excites the nerves, has also in it a power to stir the imagination; the spectator may be conscious of a vision within, while losing not a movement of the actors before his eyes. To me, standing silent there, came the vivid reflection of a world all dust and shadow-pulvis et umbra sumus-fallen so low from its golden glories. Rome Imperial, that built magnificently, even for its dead slaves; built on the royal Appian Way, nor spared its marble entablatures, its delicate paintings, remnants of which I could trace under the setting moon, its yearly returning festivals and libations, with flowers laid on tombs, and all the graceful homage which was paid to phantoms, feared, yet still beloved-was it come to this?

Here, in the place of the Manes, inviolate and holy, did wretches steeped in murder balance their accounts, exchanging blood-money, and only the owl shrieked, no shape arose from the under-world to scourge them hence with scorpions, or terrify them with apparitions into madness. An impotent dead, forgotten universe, over the deVIII. 401

LIVING AGE.

caying heaps of which this putrescence crawled and multiplied!

My vision did not hinder me from remarking that the action of the scene had paused abruptly. Santa Fiora counted no more notes on the slab; Tiberio pointed down as if requiring a larger tribute. Their voices rose; they were in hot dispute over the business. But they spat out at one another a jargon, brief and horrible, which to me was an unknown tongue. The human serpent hissed; the tiger answered with formidable movements, and a low and thunderous roar. From thieves' slang they broke into sentences of demand and refusal.

"Why no more to you?" whistled Santa Fiora, in a cracked tenor. "I pay down forty thousand lire out of the sixty we got, and your palm itches. Ma barone"-which is, being interpreted, "Look here, my lord!"-"you will leave the boys without a baiocco. It cannot be, I tell you." His hand clutched the remaining notes.

"Five thousand more, Santa Fiora," said Tiberio, not heeding the argument, "then I will take myself off. The boys are doing well. They know it is for the cause they are laying up this money. What do I spend on my own amusement? Why, not enough to buy sweet parsley."

"Managgia!" whined the human serpent, "Devil be good to me! A wise man does not flay his own skin. Leave the bees a little honey. What would you have got by the fat old borgese, had our piciotti, our bravoni, not thrown a rope round his horns?"

"Eh, blood of San Pantaleone!" answered Tiberio, with his gay and facetious accent, "and when would the piciotti have caught him, if some one else had not watched where he was feeding? Quick, the five thousand! Remember, it is the cause."

"Oh, the cause, the cause, Liverno mio! What care I for la politica? I