mense new world, and it makes the old one, the poor little
narrow, familiar one I have always known, seem pitiful."

"But you did n't come to Rome to keep your eyes fastened on that narrow
little world. Forget it, turn your back on it, and enjoy all this."

"I want to enjoy it; but as I sat here just now, looking up at that
golden mist in the dome, I seemed to see in it the vague shapes of
certain people and things at home. To enjoy, as you say, as these things
demand of one to enjoy them, is to break with one's past. And breaking
is a pain!"

"Don't mind the pain, and it will cease to trouble you. Enjoy, enjoy; it
is your duty. Yours especially!"

"Why mine especially?"

"Because I am very sure that you have a mind capable of doing the
most liberal justice to everything interesting and beautiful. You are
extremely intelligent."

"You don't know," said Miss Garland, simply.

"In that matter one feels. I really think that I know better than you.
I don't want to seem patronizing, but I suspect that your mind is
susceptible of a great development. Give it the best company, trust it,
let it go!"

She looked away from him for some moments, down the gorgeous vista of
the great church. "But what you say," she said at last, "means change!"

"Change for the better!" cried Rowland.

"How can one tell? As one stands, one knows the worst. It seems to me
very frightful to develop," she added, with her complete smile.

"One is in for it in one way or another, and one might as well do it
with a good grace as with a bad! Since one can't escape life, it is
better to take it by the hand."

"Is this what you call life?" she asked.

"What do you mean by 'this'?"

"Saint Peter's--all this splendor, all Rome--pictures, ruins, statues,
beggars, monks."

"It is not all of it, but it is a large part of it. All these things
are impregnated with life; they are the fruits of an old and complex
civilization."

"An old and complex civilization: I am afraid I don't like that."

"Don't conclude on that point just yet. Wait till you have tested
it. While you wait, you will see an immense number of very beautiful
things--things that you are made to understand. They won't leave you as
they found you; then you can judge. Don't tell me I know nothing about
your understanding. I have a right to assume it."

Miss Garland gazed awhile aloft in the dome. "I am not sure I understand
that," she said.

"I hope, at least, that at a cursory