glance it pleases you," said
Rowland. "You need n't be afraid to tell the truth. What strikes some
people is that it is so remarkably small."

"Oh, it's large enough; it's very wonderful. There are things in Rome,
then," she added in a moment, turning and looking at him, "that are
very, very beautiful?"

"Lots of them."

"Some of the most beautiful things in the world?"

"Unquestionably."

"What are they? which things have most beauty?"

"That is according to taste. I should say the statues."

"How long will it take to see them all? to know, at least, something
about them?"

"You can see them all, as far as mere seeing goes, in a fortnight. But
to know them is a thing for one's leisure. The more time you spend among
them, the more you care for them." After a moment's hesitation he went
on: "Why should you grudge time? It 's all in your way, since you are to
be an artist's wife."

"I have thought of that," she said. "It may be that I shall always live
here, among the most beautiful things in the world!"

"Very possibly! I should like to see you ten years hence."

"I dare say I shall seem greatly altered. But I am sure of one thing."

"Of what?"

"That for the most part I shall be quite the same. I ask nothing better
than to believe the fine things you say about my understanding, but even
if they are true, it won't matter. I shall be what I was made, what I am
now--a young woman from the country! The fruit of a civilization not old
and complex, but new and simple."

"I am delighted to hear it: that 's an excellent foundation."

"Perhaps, if you show me anything more, you will not always think so
kindly of it. Therefore I warn you."

"I am not frightened. I should like vastly to say something to you: Be
what you are, be what you choose; but do, sometimes, as I tell you."

If Rowland was not frightened, neither, perhaps, was Miss Garland; but
she seemed at least slightly disturbed. She proposed that they should
join their companions.

Mrs. Hudson spoke under her breath; she could not be accused of the want
of reverence sometimes attributed to Protestants in the great Catholic
temples. "Mary, dear," she whispered, "suppose we had to kiss that
dreadful brass toe. If I could only have kept our door-knocker, at
Northampton, as bright as that! I think it's so heathenish; but Roderick
says he thinks it 's sublime."

Roderick had evidently grown a trifle perverse. "It 's sublimer than
anything that your r