far back in
the past, and as completely remote from the possibility of any
contemporary history in America as America is remote from the future
great cities of the Sahara plains? And when, in Venice, he dwelt with
delight upon the hues of Titian and Veronese, was he not sure (though
without thinking of it) that in their day the great forests of his own
New World untrodden by the white man's foot, had stretched unbroken to
the sea? Because no Puritan with grave visage had as yet set sail for
Massachusetts Bay, he had not realized that here on this southern shore
had been towns and people, governors, soldiers, persecutions, and
priests.

"I presume you intend to show me everything in its worst possible
aspect," he said, as he joined Garda in the sunny court below. She was
waiting for him beside the bananas, which were here not full grown--tall
shrubs that looked, with their long-winged leaves standing out stiffly
from their stalks, like green quill-pens that a giant might use for his
sonnet-writing.

"No; I have withdrawn my guardianship--don't you remember? You must now
guard yourself."

"From the great temptations opening before me."

"They may be such to you; they are not to me. I think I have never met
any great temptations; I wonder when they will begin?"

They had crossed the court, and passed through a cool, dark,
stone-floored hall on the other side; here they went out through a low
door, which Raquel opened for them. Winthrop declined the white umbrella
which this stately handmaid offered him, and as Garda would not let him
carry the one she had taken, he walked on beside her with his hands in
the pockets of his short morning-coat, looking about him with enjoyment,
as he usually did at East Angels. The facade of the house which looked
towards the lagoon was broken by the small balcony, roofed and closely
shaded by green blinds, where they had been sitting, and where the
hammock was swung. This little green cage, hung up on the side of the
house, had no support from below; there was neither pillar nor trellis;
not even a vine wandered up to its high balustrade. The most agile Romeo
could not have climbed to it. But a Romeo, in any case, could not have
approached near enough to attempt such a feat, since a wide space of
open ground, without tree or shrub upon it, extended from the
house-walls outward to a certain distance on all sides. Winthrop had
already noticed these features--the heavy barred shutters of