THEY stood at the summit of that double flight of marble steps which run up the right-hand side of the Milan Cathedral’s roof and down the left. There are one hundred steps on either side, and having just mounted the right-hand hundred Rosina looked down the left-hand hundred with an affright born of appreciative understanding.

“Oh, Jack,” she cried, “I never shall get down from here alive! What did you ever bring me up for?”

“I brought you up to talk,” said her cousin. “Come over here, and sit down on the ridge-pole beside me.”

The ridge-pole of the Milan Cathedral is of white marble, like all the rest of the edifice; it is wide and flat, and just the height for a comfortable seat.

The cousins placed themselves side by side thereon, and Jack lit a cigarette while he deliberated on just how he should proceed with the case in hand.

“Well,” he said at last, folding his arms, clearing his throat, crossing his legs, and in other ways testifying to the solemnity of what was forthcoming, “I want you to pay a lot of attention to what I’m going to say, Rosina, for I’m going to talk to you very seriously, and you must weigh my words well, for once let us get out to sea next week and it will be too late to ever take any back tacks as to this matter.”

She turned her sad eyes towards him; she was looking pale and tired, but not cross or impatient.

“Go on,” she said quietly.

“It’s just this: it’s four days now since we left Munich, and I can see that your spirits aren’t picking up any; instead, you seem more utterly done up every day. So I’ve made up my mind to give you one more chance. It’s this way: you know we’re all awfully fond of you and proud of you and all that, but you know too that no one can ever make you out or manage you—unless it’s me,” he added parenthetically; “and you always do what you please, and you always will do what you please, and the family share in the game generally consists in having to get you out of the messes that your own folly gets you into. You didn’t need to marry, you know, but you just would do it in spite of anything that any one could say, and all we could do was to be sorry for it, and sorry for you when you were unhappy, as we all knew that you would be beforehand. And that was the one mess that no one could get you out of. Well, then he died, and you had another show.” Jack paused and jarred his cigarette ash off with his finger-tip. “You know and I know just who there was waiting there at home, but you elected to turn them all down and come over here to travel around alone. And that was all right as long as you stayed alone, but terribly risky when,—well, when that letter was written in Zurich—”

“Ah,” she cried sharply, “then it was from Zurich!”

“Yes, it was from Zurich,” he replied indifferently; “and it was perfectly natural under the circumstances that the letter should have been written. The letter was straightforward enough, only, of course, it necessitated Uncle John’s sending me over to—”

“But I hadn’t known him but three days then,” she interrupted.

“That wasn’t making any difference to him, evidently. And so I came over and looked up everything; and I even did more, I came there to Munich and went off with him on that trip so as to learn just everything that it was possible to learn, and it all comes to just what I’ve told you before: if you want to marry him, you can; if you don’t want to marry him, you needn’t; but for Heaven’s sake why do you persist in refusing him if it uses you up so awfully?”

Her mouth quivered and her eyes filled slowly.

“Have you been flirting?” he asked, with a very real kindness veiled in his voice, “or do you really love him?”

She lifted her wet eyes to his.

“I don’t know,” she said, with simple sincerity; and after a minute she added, “But I can’t make up my mind to marry just for the sake of finding out.”

Jack whistled softly.

“So that’s it!” he said at last.

They remained sitting quietly side by side for two or three minutes, and then he spoke again; his voice was gentle, but firm and resolved, and there was a sort of finality about his words which clinched into her heart like an ice-grip.

“Then the best thing to do is just what we’re doing; I know that you wanted to stay and see more of him, but, feeling as you do, that wouldn’t have been right to him or to yourself either. It seems tough on you, but you’ll get over it in a few months, and if it comes to a funeral for Von Ibn—why, it isn’t our funeral, anyway!”

He stood up as he spoke, and smiled and held out his hand to her. She rose, feeling as if some fearful ultimatum had been proclaimed above her head.

“It’s sort of hard, you know,” Jack said, as he assisted her carefully down the steep steps; “it’s awful hard to travel with you and have you never smile and never say anything, and not be able to explain that you feel bad because you won’t marry a man who wants you and whom you want.”

“I married just such a man once upon a time,” she replied sadly.

“Yes,” said Jack; “but I didn’t like that man, and I do like Von Ibn.”

She drew a quick breath.

From the cathedral they returned directly to the hotel.