"We have talked so much of my old friend Roselli that I thought you
might like to see his portrait."
"His portrait? Have you really got his portrait?"
"Here it is," and he put into her hands the English photograph which
used to hang by his bed.
She took it eagerly and looked at it steadfastly, while her lips
trembled and her eyes grew moist. There was silence for a moment, and
then she said, in a voice that struggled to control itself: "So this was
the father of little Roma?"
"Yes."
"Is it very like him?"
"Very."
"What a beautiful face! What a reverend head! Did he look like that on
the day ... the day he was at Kensal Green?"
"Exactly."
The excitement she laboured under could no longer be controlled, and she
lifted the picture to her lips and kissed it. Then catching her breath,
and looking up at him with swimming eyes, she laughed through her tears
and said: "That is because he was your friend, and because ... because he loved my
little namesake."
David Rossi did not reply, and the silence was too audible, so she said
with another nervous laugh: "Not that I think she deserved such a father. He must have been the best
father a girl ever had, but she...."
"She was a child," said David Rossi.
"Still, if she had been worthy of a father like that...."
"She was only seven, remember."
"Even so, but if she had not been a little selfish ... wasn't she a
little selfish?"
"You mustn't abuse my friend Roma."
Her eyes beamed, her cheeks burned, her nerves tingled. It would be a
sweet delight to egg him on, but she dare not go any farther.
"I beg your pardon," she said in a soft voice. "Of course you know best.
And perhaps years afterward when she came to think of what her father
had been to her ... that is to say if she lived..."
Their eyes met again, and now hers fell in confusion.
"I want to give you that portrait," he said.
"Me?"
"You would like to have it?"
"More than anything in the world. But you value it yourself?"
"Beyond anything I possess."
"Then how can I take it from you?"
"There is only one person in the world I would give it to. She has it,
and I am contented."