Nina was so surprised that for a few minutes she was unable to answer.  Allegro had never said a word to her about the proposal which had been made by his family.  Up to that moment she had thought he did not himself know of it.

“Heart?” she said, bewildered.  “Did you put any heart into the offer that was made?  None has ever been shown to me.”

“Is there a chance of your considering my suit?” He asked it very seriously.

Nina shook her head, and Allegro sighed as though dejected; then, having paid her this compliment, he became cheerful again and his candor was as delicious as it was astonishing.

“Shall I tell you?  Yes, I will!  If you had said ‘yes,’ I should have found it very easy to love you.  As you won’t accept my name, however——­”

“You don’t love me, is that it?” Nina burst out laughing, and Allegro joined light-heartedly, as he nodded his agreement.  Their gayety attracted the attention of their neighbors, and for a while the conversation became general.  It was suggestive of the Tower of Babel.  Nina had turned to Porter with a remark in English, but Allegro added to it in Italian.  Tornik, whose Italian was only slightly more villainous than his English, chimed in across the corner of the table in French, but he soon forgot himself and broke into German.  Nina found herself mixing her sentences like Neapolitan ice cream into four languages, until finally she put her hands over her ears and exclaimed, “Attendez, aspetarre, warten sie nur, oh, do let us decide on one tongue at a time!” They all laughed, and then, as is usual among a group of various nationalities, the conversation went on in French.

Finally, Tornik and Allegro got into a discussion about the Austrian influence in Italy, and Nina was left tete-a-tete with Eliot Porter.

She had not met him before coming to Rome.  He was a Californian.  A Westerner, she put it, but he answered her, “Not at all!  I am from the Pacific coast!” He was an agreeable man, much liked in Rome, and he was writing a book on Roman society, a fact that greatly amused the Italians.  There was some mild and good-naturedly satirical speculation about what he was going to put in it, but beyond the fact that he acknowledged his subject, nothing was known of either his plot or his characters.

“Do tell me what you are going to put in your book.  Is it of to-day, or long ago?”

“The story is to be laid in Rome, the theme society, the time the present.”

“How fascinating!  Ah, please tell me from whom you have drawn your heroine,” Nina continued.  “Is she rich or poor?  Italian, I suppose, and of course young and beautiful!  Is the hero a noble duke or an American on the Prisoner of Zenda or Graustark model?”

“Supposing I should tell you that they were yourself, for the one, and our friend Jack over the way, for the other!”

The coupling of her name with Derby’s for the second time in less than half an hour struck Nina, and she became absent-minded; then she said vaguely, “But we are not Italians, either of us.”