AMMIANI THROUGH THE MIDNIGHT Ammiani hurried Vittoria out of the street to make safety sure.

'Home,' she said, ashamed of her excitement, and not daring to speak more words, lest the heart in her throat should betray itself.

He saw what the fright had done for her.

Perhaps also he guessed that she was trying to conceal her fancied cowardice from him.

'I have kissed her hands,' he thought, and the memory of it was a song of tenderness in his blood by the way.
Vittoria's dwelling-place was near the Duomo, in a narrow thoroughfare leading from the Duomo to the Piazza of La Scala, where a confectioner of local fame conferred upon the happier members of the population most piquant bocconi and tartlets, and offered by placard to give an emotion to the nobility, the literati, and the epicures of Milan, and to all foreigners, if the aforesaid would adventure upon a trial of his art.