wept into a gust of fame; all Italy read his verse and
sympathized with him. The object of a popular poet's romantic and
unfortunate love is always the object of curiosity and interest, as
Anne Champneys discovered to her surprise and annoyance.

"He was such a little idiot!" she told Marcia Vandervelde,
disgustedly. "Always sighing and rolling his eyes, and looking at
one like a sick calf,--more than once I was tempted to catch him by
the shoulders and shake him!"

"He's a poet, my child," said Mrs. Vandervelde, mischievously, "and
you're the lady in the case. It's been the making of him, and it
hasn't done you any harm: you'll be a legend in your own lifetime."

Marcia was quite right. The poet's love clung to Anne like an
intangible perfume, and a halo of romance encircled her red head.
The Florentines discovered that she was beautiful; the English and
Americans, cooler in judgment, found her charming. And a noted
German artist came along and declared that he had found in her his
ideal Undine.

Mrs. Peter remained unchanged and unimpressed. She shrugged
indifferent shoulders; she wasn't particularly interested in herself
as the object of poetic adoration.

She was, however, immensely interested in the beauty and romance of
Florence. The street crowds, so vivacious, so good-humored, the
vivid Florentine faces, enchanted her. More astonishing than storied
buildings, or even imperishable art, were the figures that moved
across the red-and-gold background of the city's history,--figures
like Dante, Lorenzo the Magnificent, and that great prior of San
Marco whose "soul went out in fire." Curiously enough, it was
Savonarola who made the most profound impression upon her. It seemed
to her that the immortal monk still dominated Florence, and when
she saw his old worn crucifix in his cell at San Marco, something
awoke in her spirit,--a sense of religious values. Religion, then,
was not a mere fixed convention, subscribed to as a sort of proof of
conservatism and respectability; religion was really a fixed
reality, an eternal power. She read everything that she could lay
her hands on covering the history of Fra Girolamo. Then she bought a
picture of his red Indian-like visage, and hung it up in her room.
The titanic reformer remained, a shadowy but very deep power, in the
background of her consciousness, and it was this long-dead preacher
who taught her to pray. He won her profoundest reverence and faith,
because he had