She took off her straw hat, and fanned herself gently with it, letting the sunshine fall full upon her thick black hair.  She had never owned a hat in her life till she had been installed in the little house in Trastevere, and she hated the inconvenient things.  What was her hair for, if it could not protect her head?  But a straw hat made a very good fan.  The air was hot and still, and there were none of those thousand little sounds which she would have heard in the chestnut woods above Frascati.

A little cry broke the silence, and she turned her head in the direction whence it came.  Then she dropped her hat, sprang to her feet, and ran forwards, forgetting that she had no shoes on.  She saw a figure clinging to the rocks, where they suddenly narrowed, and she heard the cry again, desperate with fear and weak with effort.  A young girl had evidently been trying to climb down, when she had lost her footing, and had only been saved from a bad fall because her grey woollen frock had caught her upon a projecting point of granite, giving her time to snatch at the strong twigs of some alp-roses, and to find a very slight projection on which she could rest the toe of one shoe.  She was hanging there with her face to the rock, eight or ten feet from the ground, which was strewn with big stones, and she was in such a position that she seemed unable to turn her head in order to look down.

In ten seconds Regina was standing directly below the terrified girl, raising herself on tiptoe, and trying to reach her feet with her hands, to guide them to a hold; but she could not.

“Don’t be frightened,” Regina said in Italian, which was the only language she knew.

“I cannot hold on!” answered the girl, trying to look down, but feeling that her foot would slip if she turned her head far enough.

“Yes, you can,” Regina replied, too much roused to be surprised that the answer had come in her own language.  “Your dress will hold you, even if you let go with your hands.  It is new and it is strong, and it is fairly caught on the rock.  I can see that.”

“But I can’t hang here until you go and get help,” cried the girl, not much reassured.

“I am going to climb to the top by an easier way and pull you up again,” Regina answered.  “Then we can get down together.”

While Regina was speaking she had already begun the ascent, which was easy enough for her, at the point she had chosen, though many an Alpine climber might have envied the quickness and sureness of her hold with feet and hands.  She realised that she had forgotten her shoes now, and was glad that she had taken them off.

“One minute more!” she cried in an encouraging tone, when she had almost reached the top.

“Quick!” came the imploring answer.