But nevertheless she could not
control one little sigh of regret. She would so much have liked to see
the Santa Maria. If she _had_ seen her, she thought she would have
asked her to give her a Christmas gift,--something she could always
keep, something that no one could take from her and that would never
spoil nor break. One had need of just such an indestructible
possession if one lived in the "Italian Quarter." Things got sadly
broken there. And--and--there were so few, so very few gifts. But it
was warm and dim and sweet in here,--a right good place in which to
rest when one was tired. She bent her head and leaned it against the
wooden back of the seat, and her eyes wandered first to one interesting
object and then to another,--to the tall windows, each of which was a
most beautiful picture, and all made of wonderfully colored glass; to
the frescoed walls garlanded with green and at last to the organ-loft
itself, in which was the solitary figure of the musician, seated before
that strange, many-keyed instrument of his, practising his Christmas
music.
He had lit the gas-jets at either side of the key-board, and they threw
quite a light upon him as he played, and upon the huge organ-pipes
above his head. Nina thought she had never seen anything as beautiful
as were their illuminated surfaces. She did not know what they were,
but that did not matter.
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