“Oh, yes, I have time,” said he, “but you must not say booziness, Nina? it is bizness.”

“Beezness!—­beezness!” she said, smiling.  “It is enough of beezness.  You go for a walk with me—­yes?  How beautiful the weather!” she continued, in a suddenly altered tone, as she looked out at the sunlit foliage of the Green Park; and then she murmured, almost to herself, in those soft Italian vowel sounds: 

“Ah, Leo mio, che sarei felice d’essere in campagna!”

It was a kind of sigh; perhaps that was the reason she had inadvertently relapsed into her own tongue.  And as they went down the stairs, and he opened the door for her, the few words he addressed to her were also in Italian.

“The country!” he said.  “We will just step across the street, Nina, and you will find yourself in what is quite as pretty as the country at this time of year.  You may fancy yourself sitting in the Villa Reale, if you could only have a flash of blue sea underneath the branches of the trees.”

But when they had crossed over and got into the comparative quiet of the Park, she resolutely returned to her English again; and now she was telling him about the people in Naples whom he used to know, and of their various fortunes and circumstances.  Sometimes neither of them spoke; for all this around them was very still and pleasant—­the fresh foliage of the trees and the long lush grass of the enclosures as yet undimmed by the summer dust; the cool shadows thrown by the elms and limes just moving as the wind stirred the wide branches; altogether a world of soft, clear, sunny green, unbroken except by here and there a small copper beech with its bronze leaves become translucent in the hot light.  It is true that the browsing sheep were abnormally black; and the yellow-billed starlings had perhaps less sheen on their feathers than they would have had in the country; nevertheless, for a park in the midst of a great city this place was very quiet and beautiful and sylvan; and indeed, when these two sat down on a couple of chairs under a fragrant hawthorn, Nina’s lustrous dark eyes became wistful and absent, and she said,

“Yes, Leo, it is as you say in the house—­it all appears a dream.”

“What appears like a dream to you?” her companion asked.

“To be in London, sitting with you, Leo, and hearing you speak,” she answered, in a low voice.  “Often I think of it—­often I think of London—­wondering what it is like—­and I ask myself, ’Will Leo be the same after his great renown?  Are we friends as before?’ and now I am here, and London is not dark and terrible with smoke, but we sit in gardens—­oh, very beautiful!—­and Leo is talking just as in the old way—­perhaps it is a dream?” she continued, looking up with a smile.  “Perhaps I wake soon?”

“Oh, no, it isn’t a dream, Nina,” said he, “only it might pass for one, for you haven’t told me how you managed to get here.  It is all a mystery to me.  Where are you staying, for example?”