"Look out now!"

Her arm was thrust out over the bridge, and Ruffo, staring up, saw a
big cigarette--a cigarette such as he had never seen--in her small
fingers. Quickly he made a receptacle of his joined hands, his eyes
sparkling and his lips parted with happy anticipation.

"One!"

The cigarette fell and was caught.

"Two!"

A second fell. But this time Ruffo was unprepared, and it dropped on
the rock by his bare feet.

"Stupido!" laughed the girl.

"Ma, Signorina--!"

"Three!"

It had become a game between them, and continued to be a game until
all the ten cigarettes had made their journey through the air.

Vere would not let Ruffo know when a cigarette was coming, but kept
him on the alert, pretending, holding it poised above him between his
finger and thumb until even his eyes blinked from gazing upward; then
dropping it when she thought he was unprepared, or throwing it like a