Mae's good times were greatly dimmed after this by the thought that she
was watched. The bouquets which came daily from Bero troubled her also
not a little. They were invariably formed of the same flowers, and might
easily attract Edith's attention and possible suspicion. So she
stayed home from the Corso one day not long after, when she was in
a particularly Corso-Carnival mood. She wandered helplessly about,
restless and full of desire to be down at the balcony with the rest. And
such a strange thing is the human heart, that it was Norman Mann's face
she saw before her constantly, and she found Miss Rae's little twinkling
sort of eyes far more haunting than those of her veiled friend.

The rich life in Mae's blood was surging in her veins and must be let
off in some way. If she had had her music and a piano she might have
thrown her soul into some great flood-waves of harmony. The Farnesina
frescoes of Cupid and Psyche over across the Tiber would have helped
her, but here she was alone, and so she did what so many "fervent souls"
do--scribbled her heart out in a colorful, barbarous rhyme. Mae had
ordinarily too good sense for this, too deep a reverence for that world
of poetry, at the threshold of which one should bow the knee, and loose
the shoe from his foot, and tread softly. She didn't care for this
to-day. She plunged boldly in, wrote her verse, copied it, sent it to
a Roman English paper, and heard from it again two days later, in the
following way.

The entire party were breakfasting together, when Albert suddenly looked
up from his paper and laughed. "Look here," he cried. "Here is another
of those dreadful imitators of the Pre-Raphaelite school. Hear this from
a so-called poem in the morning's journal: