“There you are,” cried John.  “And gluttony is not the undeadliest of the Seven Deadly Sins.  So, then, unless you would have me guilty of the deadly sin of gluttony, you must agree that I have not dined.  For I am going to dine this evening.  I am going to dine at the Hotel Victoria at Roccadoro.  I am going to dine with a lady.  I am going to dine in all the pomp and circumstance of my dress-suit, with a white tie and pumps.  And you yourself have said it, a Christian man may not, without guilt of gluttony, dine twice on the same day.  Therefore it is the height of uncharitableness, it’s a deliberate imputation of sin, to contend that I have dined already.”

Annunziata followed his reasoning thoughtfully, and then gravely set him right.

“No,” she said, with a drop of the eyelids and a quick little shake of the head, “you do not understand.  I will explain.”  Her eyes were wide open again, and bright with zeal for his instruction.  “You have dined already.  That is a certain truth, because this meal is dinner, and you have eaten it.  But to-night you are going to a dinner of ceremony—­and that is different.  A dinner of ceremony does not count.  It is the same as a supper.  My uncle himself once went to a dinner of ceremony at Bergamo.  No, it will not be gluttony for you to go to a dinner of ceremony.”

“You speak like a little pope,” said John, with enthusiasm.  “In matters of Faith and Morals I believe you are infallible.  If you could guess the load you have lifted from my conscience!” And he pushed a hearty ouf.

“I am glad,” said Annunziata.  And then she attempted to hark back.  Curiosity again lighting her eyes, “This form that you have seen in the garden—­” she began.

“Don’t try to change the subject,” John interrupted.  “Let us cultivate sequence in our ideas.  What I am labouring with hammer and tongs to drag from you is the exact date at which, somewhere between the years of our salvation 1387 and 1455, you sat for your portrait to the beatified painter Giovanni of Fiesole.  Now, be a duck, and make a clean breast of it.”

Annunziata’s eyes clouded.  A kind of scorn, a kind of pity, and a kind of patient longanimity looked from them.

“That is folly,” she said, on the deepest of her deep notes, with a succession of slow, reflective, side-wise nods.

“Folly—?” repeated John, surprised, but bland.  “Oh?  Really?”

“Sit for my portrait between the years 1387 and 1455,—­how could I?” scoffed Annunziata.

“Why?  What was to prevent you?” innocently questioned he.

“Ma come! I was not yet alive,” said she.

John looked at her with startled eyes, and spoke with animation.