ou stay here? It is much pleasanter in the garden," she
remarked.

"I came here to seek for consolation. To-day began for me with a tragic
misadventure," John replied.

Annunziata's eyes grew big, compassionating him, and, at the same time,
bespeaking a lively curiosity.

"Poor Prospero," she gently murmured. "What was it?" on tip-toe she
demanded.

"Well," he said, "when I rose, to go for my morning swim, I made an
elaborate toilet, because I hoped to meet a certain person whom, for
reasons connected with my dignity, I wished to impress. But it was
love's labour lost. The certain person is an ornament of the uncertain
sex, and didn't turn up. So, to console myself, I came here."

Annunziata looked round the room again. "What is there here that can
console you?"

"These," said John. His hand swept the pictured walls.

"The paintings?" said she, following his gesture. "How can they console
you?"

"They're so well painted," said he, fondly studying the soft-coloured
canvases. "Besides, these ladies are dead. I like dead ladies."

Annunziata looked critically at the pictures, and then at him with
solemn meaning. "They are very pretty--but they are not dead," she
pronounced in her deepest voice.

"Not dead?" echoed John, astonished. "Aren't they?"

"No," said she, with a slow shake of the head.

"Dear me," said he. "And, when they're alone here and no one's looking,
do you think they come down from their frames and dance? It must be a
sight worth seeing."

"No," said Annunziata. "These are only their pictures. They cannot come
down from their frames. But the ladies themselves are not dead. Some of
them are still in Purgatory, perhaps. We should pray for them." She
made, in parenthesis as it were, a pious sign of the Cross. "Some are
perhaps already in Heaven. We should ask their prayers. And others are
perhaps in Hell," she pursued, inexorable theologian that she was. "But
none of them is dead. No one is dead. There's no such thing as being
dead."

"But then," puzzled

My Friend Prospero

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