Some hours later, when the police communicated with the Superintendent,
and when he found that a woman had come to the door who said that she
knew the waif, and had been sent away, he called the orderly who had
been on duty several hard names in his heart for having followed the
rule of the hospital so scrupulously. He was an antediluvian, he was a
case of arrested mental development, he was an ichthyosaurus, he was a
new kind of idiot, he was a monumental fool, he was the mammoth ass
reported to have been seen by a mediæval traveller in the desert, that
was forty cubits high, and whose braying was like the blast of ten
thousand trumpets. The Superintendent wished he had time to select more
choice epithets for that excellent orderly, but the police seemed so
particularly curious about the new patient that he had no leisure for
thinking out what he wanted.

Nevertheless, the man had done his duty and nothing more nor less
according to the rules, and Regina was forced to go away discomfited.

She walked a hundred yards or more down the hill, towards San Clemente,
and then stood still to think. The sun had risen, and Marcello was safe,
though she could not see him. That was something. She stood there,
young, strong, beautiful, and absolutely penniless; and Rome was before
her.

For the first time since the previous evening she asked herself what was
to become of her, and how she was to find bread for that day and for the
next, and for all the days afterwards. She would have robbed a church to
feed Marcello, but she would sooner have lost her right hand than steal
so much as a crust for herself. As for begging, she was too proud, and
besides, no one would have given her anything, for she was the picture
of health, her rough clothes were whole and clean, she had tiny gold