Rosa entered quietly, with an armful of wood and a pine cone, and kneeling before the fireplace, soon had a merry little blaze. Seeing that Ragna had not touched her breakfast, she poured out a cup of coffee, and taking it over to the girl, obliged her to drink it.
"Go back to bed, Signorina, you are still tired from the _veglione_."
Ragna shook her head, but Rosa took her by the arm, and led her gently over, putting her to bed as though she were a child. This done, she proceeded to straighten up the room, folding the clothes neatly and laying them in the cupboard.
"_Ecco!_" she said, "that is better! You shall not get up for luncheon, Signorina, I will bring you a tray here."
"You are a good soul, Rosa," said Ragna, touched by the maid's kindly attentions.
Rosa smiled cheerfully, and went out, closing the door gently behind her.
The fire had given Ragna an idea; she crept out of bed and took from her writing case Angelescu's sketch of Prince Mirko, and the portraits of him she had cut from illustrated journals. She looked at them in turn, the handsome, smiling, indifferent face looked out from the slips of paper, as it always had, but to her it was changed. She saw now, as she had not before, the selfish hardness of the sensual mouth, the nonchalant boldness of the almond-shaped eyes, the impress of self-indulgence over the whole face. This, then, was her dream-hero, this! Have all idols clay feet, she wondered? It was more than love she had lost, more than innocence,--it was the ideal of all her girlhood, all her maiden hopes and dreams. Tears filled her eyes; suddenly she lifted the pictures to her lips, and kissed them passionately, then dashing the tears away, she laid them, one by one on the fire, watched them flame up and shrivel to fluttering black rags,--and crept back to bed.
"It is over," she thought, "all over. I will put the past behind me, as though nothing had been; it is destroyed, as the flames destroyed the pictures. It is idiotic to pretend that one little hour of weakness can ruin one's whole life! I shall put it behind me, I shall forget it all, I shall wipe it from my memory. It shall not influence my life--except that I shall be wiser in the future."