ew that in Rome she
herself had never wholly been at home. Her income had sufficed for
a very modest establishment in the desirable Esquiline quarter; and
her good, if provincial, ancestry had placed her in an agreeable
circle of friends. She and her son had no entree among the greater
Roman nobles, but they had a claim on the acquaintance of several
families connected with the government and through them she had all
the introductions she needed. There was, however, much about city
life which offended her tastes. Its restlessness annoyed her, its
indifference chilled her. Architecture and sculpture failed to make
up to her for the presence of mountain and valley. Ornate temples,
crowded with fashionable votaries, more often estranged than
comforted her. Agrippa's new Pantheon was now the talk of the day,
but to her the building seemed cold and formal. And two years ago,
when all Rome flocked to the dedication of the new temple of Apollo
on the Palatine, her own excitement had given way to tender memories
of the dedication of Minerva's temple in her old home. Inside the
spacious Roman portico, with its columns of African marble and its
wonderful images of beasts and mortals and gods, and in front of the
gleaming temple, with its doors of carven ivory and the sun's chariot
poised above its gable peak, she had been conscious chiefly of a
longing to see once more the homely market-place of Assisi, to climb
the high steps to the exquisite temple-porch which faced southward
toward the sunbathed valley, and then to seek the cool dimness within,
where the Guardian of Woman's Work stood ready to hear her prayers.

To-day as she walked feverishly up and down, fretted by the walls
of her Roman house, her homesickness grew into a violent desire for
the old life. Perugia was rebuilt, and rehabilitated, in spite of
the conquering name of Augustus superimposed upon its most ancient
Etruscan portal. Assisi was plying a busy and happy life on the
opposite hillside. The intervening valley, once cowering under the
flail of war, was given over now to plenty and to peace. Its beauty,
as she had seen it last, recurred to her vividly. She had left home
in the early morning. The sky still held the flush of dawn, and the
white mists were just rising from the valley and floating away over
the tops of the awakening hills. She had held her child close to her
side as the carriage passed out under the gate of the town and began
the descent into the