"Roma?"
"Yes--a regiment of troops returned from a glorious campaign, and the
doctor took us to see the illuminations and rejoicings. We came to a
great piazza almost as large as the piazza of St. Peter's, with
fountains and a tall column in the middle of it."
"I know--Trafalgar Square!"
"Dense crowds covered the square, but we found a place on the steps of a
church."
"I remember--St. Martin's Church. You see, I know London."
"The soldiers came in by the big railway station close by...."
"Charing Cross, isn't it."
"And they marched to the tune of the 'British Grenadiers' and the
thunder of fifty thousand throats. And as their general rode past, a
beacon of electric lights in the centre of the square blazed out like an
aureole about the statue of a great Englishman who had died long ago for
the cause which had then conquered."
"Gordon!" she cried--she was losing herself every moment.
"'Look, darling!' said the doctor to little Roma. And Roma said, 'Papa,
is it God?' I was a tall boy then, and stood beside him. 'She'll never
forget that, David,' he said."
"And she didn't ... she couldn't ... I mean.... Have you ever told me what
became of her?"
She would reveal herself in a moment--only a moment--after all, it was
delicious to play with this sweet duplicity.
"Have you?" she said in a tremulous voice.
His head was down. "Dead!" he answered, and the tool dropped out of her
hand on to the floor.
"I was five years in America after the police expelled me from London,
and when I returned to England I went back to the little shop in Soho."
She was staring at him and holding her breath. He was looking out of the
window.
"The same people were there, and their own daughter was a grown-up girl,
but Roma was gone."
She could hear the breath in her nostrils.
"They told me she had been missing for a week, and then ... her body had
been found in the river."
She felt like one struck dumb.
"The man took me to the grave. It was the grave of her mother in Kensal
Green, and under her mother's name I read her own inscription--'Sacred
also to the memory of Roma Roselli, found drowned in the Thames, aged
twelve years.'"
The warm blood which had tingled through her veins was suddenly frozen
with horror.