Chapter I

SIR NEVILL FANNING was doing at least three things at once, in the private dining-room of the Hotel Emanuele in the Via Veneto in the City of Rome. He was eating an excellent luncheon, he was observing his fellow-guests, and he was giving as much attention to Mrs. Bessington's conversation as that lady required.

It cannot be said that Mrs. Bessington was easy to talk to; in fact, that was an impossible feat. He had tried it in the first days of his acquaintance with her, and even now, when he forgot, tried it still. But he had found that she neither needed his remarks, nor even wished for them; all she required was silence, noddings of the head, and very occasional assents or monosyllabic questions. She did all the rest. It was a little stupefying at first to be pelted with such an interminable torrent of words; he had at first resisted a little, seriously believing that she might possibly wish to hear what he had to say; then he had grown a little impatient; and then the divine gift of humour had saved him; and henceforth — (except, as has been said, when he forgot) — he sat still, now marvelling at the spate of talk that flowed forth so sedately, now deliberately thinking about other things, now, occasionally, playing a sort of intellectual solitaire which consisted in counting her full-stops — (there had only been five during the whole of the curried-egg course, from the moment she took up her fork to the moment she laid it down again) — and once, with an exquisite joy, switching her on to the Marchioness Daly, his hostess, who sat on his left, and whose horse-power, so to speak, very nearly, but not quite, rivalled Mrs. Bessington's.

He believed that she was talking now about a cousin of hers who lived in Corfu; but he was not sure. If it was not she, it was Selva, the actress, who was in Rome just now. Certainly a female cousin had been mentioned a while ago, and so had Corfu; but an aunt had shot up from the horizon once or twice, and he was not certain therefore as to which occupied the place of honour at present. A Scotch maid of hers too — called MacPherson — (not the Scotch maid she had now, but another one) — had certainly been spoken of; but it surely could not be she who was now curtseying to the late King of Greece and tripping over her train as she did so.

" Most interesting," said Sir Nevill, bringing his eyes back from their excursion. " How very "

" Ah! but that's not the end," pursued Mrs. Bessington, undismayed. " It was a fortnight after that; no, it could-n't have been that fortnight, because I know she caught influenza from having to wait about for the carriage, and was laid up for three weeks; it must have been..."

She was off again; and once more the young man began to look gingerly about him.

He could not quite make out his hostess. He had a lamentable habit of pigeon-holing his new acquaintances; and each pigeon-hole had a little label over it, with a sort of inscription. Into these, then, he was accustomed to place people. At first he had been inclined, in view of their common possession of an almost infinite store of words and opinions on every subject, to place the Papal Marchioness and Mrs. Bessington together. They both talked unceasingly: they both wore a glassy expression of inattention when anyone compelled them to listen in return. The encounter between the two had been a glorious experience; he had been stung by the splendour of the prospect; and had wondered which would win. It was the ancient dilemma of striking impenetrable armour with a sword that could pierce everything. He had blinked a little as the two ladies discharged their conversational hoses across him; but he had enjoyed it. Mrs. Bessington had won; the impenetrability of her inattention had prevailed over the shrill and ceaseless arrows of the Marchioness' high voice; and she had been left discoursing on her favourite clergyman at the American Episcopal church, while the Marchioness sulked.

But he was beginning to discern a difference between them. Mrs. Bessington was always amiable; she never, gravely, attacked people's characters; she was harmless and bland, though quite shrewd in her opinions; while the Marchioness had an undercurrent of acidity, and seemed to take a kind of peevish delight in discerning, and thrusting a pin through, little cracks and holes in reputations. He saw that, plainly now. It was evident that they could not be put into the same pigeon-hole. Superficially they might have been twins; fundamentally, they were not even sisters.

He scarcely knew how he happened to be here to-day. He had come out all alone to Rome, three weeks ago, without realising the potency of his name in the Visitors' List. Then the cards had begun. He had rashly returned some of these calls; and had even accepted an invitation to tea at which two Cardinals were to be present; and there he had found himself a lion in a den of Daniels. The Cardinals had been magnificent, of course, grave princely men, extremely gracious to this young Catholic baronet, and seeming to understand that he, no more than themselves, really liked this screaming parrot-house.

One of them had even bidden him use his name with Monsignor Bisletti, if he should wish for a private audience with the Holy Father.

" But, of course, Sir Nevill/' he had added, with scarcely a trace of an Italian accent, " you will find no difficulty in any case."

But the rest of the company he did not like so much. It was not that it was different from any other similar company elsewhere; people screamed and gossiped and smelt of furs and eau-de-Cologne, there were meek and trim young men with shining hair, there were tiresome old men who bellowed, there were shy girls, fully as much in London as in Rome. Only he had not expected it in Rome, somehow. He had had a faint idea that things would be primitive and quiet here, that he could moon about and look at Basilicas now and then, that he could poke round in curiosity-shops — in a word, that he could be free here, as he could not in London. And he had found the same old parrot-house.

It was at this tea-party that the Marquis Daly had captured him, and introduced him to his wife; and it was here that she had asked him to choose any day in the following week to come to lunch, so soon as she had first caught him saying that he was going to Frascati, but hadn't settled which day.

" Then you shall lunch with us first, if you will, Sir Nevill; choose your own day. And we will all go out to Frascati together."

Well, here he was. He did not in the least wish to go out to Frascati with all these people; but there was no escape. Here he was; and Mrs. Bessington was telling him about her cousin in Corfu: he was sure now that it could not have been Miss MacPherson. Meanwhile he was observing the company.

It had better be said at once that there was a single star in all this gloom of well-disguised boredom; and the name of the star was Enid, who sat opposite him. The Bessingtons, mother and daughter, had been present when the Marchioness had cornered him four days ago; and the fact that Mrs. Bessington had added that Enid also wished to see Frascati again, had been the one consideration that had prevented him from being rather rude to the Marchioness, and saying, untruthfully, that, after all, it wasn't Frascati, but Tivoli, and that he had promised to go with someone else.

He had brought her an ice a few minutes before, and had sat by her, himself eating another; and she had been to him for five minutes like a breath of air in a stuffy room.

First she was extremely pretty, but this, honestly, was not the point. The point was that she had been cool and refreshing and quiet — entirely at her ease, though she could not be more than nineteen — and had said one or two odd little things that had been intimate without being familiar. He had forgotten what they were; they were of no importance; but he had perceived that she knew what he was feeling, and that she felt like it too. Then a Princess had wished him to be presented to her, and the thing had ended, until the invitation; and he had accepted that invitation, aware that he would have prevaricated himself out of it if he had not talked to Enid first.

She was nearly opposite him now. She seemed even prettier than he had thought her. She had heavy brown hair, an extremely clear, pale complexion, big grey eyes and quiet well-cut lips. She had a large black hat with primroses in it, and a black lace dress; as she was still in mourning for her father. He watched her hands once or twice; he had a theory about hands, and they satisfied him. They were sufficiently large, quite white and quite strong. Certainly it would be pleasant to go with her to Frascati.

His eyes wandered along the other faces. Next to Enid, on the Marchioness' left, was an Italian priest, the Lenten preacher at a church in the Corso. Nevill did not make much of him; he was a new type to the young man — of a very recollected and very well-bred air, as of a Guardsman who has become a seminarian. Incidentally, he was a Count in his own right; but Nevill, with truly British superiority, did not think much of Italian counts. The priest had been quite polished, quite detached and rather superior, in the few words he had with him before they sat down. On the other side of Enid sat Mr. Hecker, an extremely wealthy American and the husband of Mrs. Hecker. These were his two discernible points; for Mrs. Hecker, who sat on NevilTs side of the table, at the further end, was one blaze of intelligence, so bright as to obscure all in her immediate circle. She was really astonishing, thought the boy — as brilliant, and as hard too, as electric light. He had talked to her a few minutes before lunch and she had summed up her impressions of Rome simply admirably, touching exactly the right points — the small ancient dignity of the less known Basilicas, the flamboyant triumph of St. Peter's, and the " domino-houses," as she called them, of the modern municipality. (Certainly these large white flat- faced buildings set with rows of even windows were extraordinarily like dominoes set on end; only it had not struck him before.)

Next to him, beyond Mrs. Bessington, was a sleek-haired young man of about his own age, Mr. Clough, who presented precisely the right front to all calls upon him, and who appeared to have nothing whatever behind his front. Nevill had put him away, all right, after three minutes, in a pigeon-hole already full to bursting. Last but one opposite Mrs. Hecker was the Princess Mareschi, a small faded lady, rather like a pale Queen Victoria, quite plainly and even shabbily dressed, with an unmistakable dignity, who lived with her imbecile daughter in an enormous palace, the friend of Cardinals, blackest of the black, pious, zealous and resolute — a replica in an Italian disguise of unmarried Evangelical daughters and sisters of ancient English dukes, only she was a Catholic, and talked four languages with equal ease, and they but one. And last came the Marquis Daly himself, the host, whom Nevill had put straight into the pigeon-hole that contained persons " not of his sort " (as he would have said), a brisk, anxious man, intensely absorbed in social ambitions and never quite at his ease anywhere — a Papal chamberlain, a Papal marquis, without children or estates, pathetically eager to entertain personages so long as they had any kind of claim to distinction and were not militantly anti-Catholic.

Such was the company. Nevill ran round them mentally once more, wondering when this interminable festivity would be over.

" — How very nice of her! " he said suddenly, perceiving a pause in Mrs. Bessington's conversation, and remembering again the word Corfu.

Ill

What Enid saw, as she made opportunity now and again between the remarks of her Italian priest and the quiet repressed sentences of her American, was a very

bright fresh young man, black-haired and black-eyed, with an indefinable look of slight ill-health. She had liked him instantly, as soon as he had sat down beside her with his ice the other day, in the window-seat, and had remarked how very odd it was that some ices were so much hotter than others.

" If you will consider it carefully," she had said, " with illustrations, I think you will find that it is entirely a matter of texture. It's the hard ones that are cold."

He had paused to reflect, with excellent gravity.

" That's perfectly true," he had said. " It never occurred to me before — the ones that are like frozen sandstone, aren't they? Now, about colours. Why is Cardinal's scarlet so extraordinarily like flame? Yet it's not the colour of any flame I've ever seen."

(That was the kind of thing they said at first.)

He didn't seem at all bored to-day, either, in spite of his situation between the Marchioness and Enid's own mother. Enid had no illusions at all about her mother's conversation. For herself, she did not find it boring, because she had long ago established an understanding (as she would have called it) that she was to go her own way and not to be talked to like that; but she had watched others under it. This young man, however, seemed to preserve his elasticity well enough. Certainly his eyes roved a good deal, but always came back to attention in time. Twice their eyes had met; and she thought she had read a humorous good-temper into their glance, yet not enough to be offensive to her mother's daughter.

So much for his outward appearance. He seemed natural, breezy, and fresh, in spite of his rather delicate look: he was dressed properly in grey, with a little bunch of violets. She thought he looked simpatico.

What she knew about him was very nearly as important,

She had learned it from overhearing her mother talking to other people.

First, he was a baronet, the fourth of the line, without brothers or sisters, and unmarried. He was aged twenty-three; he was an hereditary Catholic, and had been educated at Stonyhurst. His father had died four years ago; and his father's sister-in-law, a widow, had kept house ever since at Hartley, and was still doing so. This lady had one boy, called Jim, aged seven. Hartley was a fine place in Sussex; and there went with it another big house in Elizabeth Street. That was about the sum of it. Obviously he was a tolerably wealthy man. There were innumerable other details too, which her mother had spread abroad; but these were unimportant. For instance, it was said that he was rather delicate and suffered from headaches; that though a Catholic, he was not at all bigoted; that his father had been no better than he should be, though he too had died in the Faith; that he was just five feet and eleven and a half inches tall in his stocking feet; that he had broken the Public-school record for the quarter-mile, and that he was one of the six or seven possessors of a tennis-court — (the real thing, not the Pretender) — in England; that he had not distinguished himself at present in any other way whatever, but that it was presumed he would stand for Parliament when he had had time to look about him a bit.

Well, these things were not essential. The point was himself, his personality and his general bearing. These, as has been said, Enid found sympathetic. She was quite glad he was going with them to Frascati this afternoon.

She, too, was finding Rome a little trying. It was her third visit; and the least satisfactory. She, too, liked the old better — so far as three years ago could be called " old." She liked the deep courts, with the ire railings before the crumbling church entrances, with tl square of blue sky; the old brickwork displaying all tl colours of the scale if you looked for them; the cobble stones, the broken angles of ancient buildings seen again the blue —: at least she liked these things so far as si liked anything in a city; and she hated the domim faced houses and the bulging carved white-stone pretei sions, and the bell-ringing trams and the Vittorio Emai uele monument. Yet it seemed to be her fate, she to! herself ruefully, to live in cities. Her mother and si left England always in October, and came, by stage out to Rome, where they remained till Easter; at lea they had done so for the last three years; then, by parall stages, with intervals at Cannes and Paris, they returm to England about the beginning of June. They were qui well to do; there was no anxiety about money; she lie an allowance of three hundred a year of her own; yet th( lived only in a small flat in London, which they let fu nished from October to June, and took a country cottaj as well. This last was what she most enjoyed, or thoug she did; and she would have named as her Paradise < earth, if she had been asked, to live always in the Englii country and to devote herself to Nature. But her moth always prevailed somehow, in a blank sort of way; ai Paris, Cannes, Rome, Cannes, Paris, was their round f< the winter.

" Yes," she said gravely, in answer to Mr. Heckei last remark, " I think Italy is just too fascinating, as y< say." (She had decided ten minutes ago that she must pb up to the American. He would merely think her unintell gent if she didn't agree on such points.) " The... tl atmosphere is extraordinary. Mrs. Hecker was sayir something about it — about all the strata of Paganism and Primitive Christianity and the Papacy and cinematographs, all laid one on the top of the other."

" It's all wonderful to us," said Mr. Hecker with submissive admiration; "but of course for you Europeans it's part of the air you breathe all the time."

She assented in precisely the right terms; and caught Sir Nevill's eye again; and a delightful little thrill went through her. Obviously he had overheard; and, no less obviously, had understood her position.

Enid was a lonely soul; and she could not understand why. She had every possible charm, and no drawbacks so far as she knew. But it appeared to her that people were disappointing. They took to her violently; they called her by her Christian name remarkably soon; and she also, she thought, took to them. And then something happened — once especially when an engagement had been broken off — they misunderstood, or they found grave offence where she had intended none; they sheered off. She was not yet cynical; but she wondered sometimes whether she were not in danger of becoming so: people were oddly disappointing and fickle. She was beginning to take refuge in a kind of mystical solitude. Such was the account of herself and the world that she would have given, in all honesty, if there had been anyone she could confide in; but at present there was nobody.

" I must remember that if I ever go to Corfu," she heard the young man opposite say. " It's extremely "

" No, no, Sir Nevill — not Corfu. She had that experience at Greenwich. I always say "

Across the flow that once more poured forth, she heard hasty apologies beginning unheard, and, for the life of her, could not help glancing up. He was plainly a little agitated; once more his eyes flickered up and met her own, and there was an amused kind of consternation in them. She permitted herself a delicate little smile. She knew so perfectly what was happening; she had so often witnessed it before under stress of her mother's conversation.

He was beside her, with an admirable easy art, so soon as he had deposited her mother in the adjoining sitting-room. (The Marquis was most particular to follow the Italian custom of sending everyone out in pairs, as they had come in.) And she felt a gentle pleasure in his kind, frank eyes that looked so simply into her own. Round them rose again the noise of the parrot-house.

" My word! it's warm! " he said.

They were standing in the window, half hidden by the heavy damask curtains deemed proper to Roman hotels.

" The motors are ten minutes late already," she said. " Or perhaps it's us! We were to start at two."

" You know Frascati, don't you? "

" Oh, yes! "

" I wish you'd show me round," he said, " when we get there. I... I... somehow luncheon-parties, however pleasant "

He stopped, in slight confusion. It was plain that he suddenly remembered that Mrs. Bessington was her mother. She smiled, with delicious frankness.

" Yes, my mother does talk, doesn't she? "

A very faint look of surprise came into his face.

"But she's simply a dear, isn't she?" she went on without perceptible pause.

She was quite aware of her desire to please this young man. Perhaps she had been a shade too precipitate in seeming to criticise her mother to him: so she was relieved to see his face change again.

" I could hardly say that, could I? " he said. " She... she seems to have travelled a lot. Corfu, you know, and places like that."

Again she smiled. Really they were getting on very well. Enid thought herself rather subtle; and it was a pleasure to perceive how quickly his personality answered hers. The relief from the conventions she had found it necessary to assume with Mr. Hecker was considerable.

"Well, it's Frascati now, anyhow, isn't it? Mother always forgets whether she means Albano or not."

" It's Tivoli with me," said the boy. " I know there's a waterfall there, and... and a villa; but I forget whether it's the D'Este one or Hadrian's. It's very confusing, don't you think?"

She set him right, deliberately and clearly. He was to keep firmly in his mind that Frascati had had an English cardinal as its bishop — two in fact — the Stewart and the other. Their arms were all over the place. And there was Cicero's school, too, that he mustn't forget. That was up in the woods.

" Well, you'll give me all the information when we get there, won't you? I... I can't think " He stopped, as if a little confused.

" I think I know what you were going to say," said Enid.

" You couldn't, possibly! "

" Well, wasn't it that it's the things that matter, and not the information about them? "

His face showed a pleased bewilderment.

" That's simply extraordinary! " he said. " That's precisely what I was going to say. How could you tell?"

She looked him fairly in the face for a perceptible pause.

" Oh! it's obvious that that's what you feel about things/' she said.

Then the Marquis proclaimed from the door that the motors were round, and Enid dutifully attached herself to her mother again.

It was the one period of the year at which the Campagna looks hopeful. In summer it is an oven of desolate beauty, thirsty and hot; in winter it is a corpse of magnificent dignity; in autumn it is as tragic as the deathbed of a king. But in early spring it is possible to believe that even the Campagna can hope again, and at least try on garments of rejoicing, as if her brooding memory for once was dormant, and her expectancy awake.

Everywhere to-day, as they roared and swished over the long roads, there was a thrill in the air. It was impossible to make out details, so fast the motors went; but under the grey flats burned a faint glimmer of young green: the low hills on the horizon wore a haze of living blue.

It had a curious effect upon the young man, as he sat on the back sea't, once more the receptacle into which Mrs. Bessington poured the stream of her talk. There had been simply no evading her, if he was to keep anywhere near her daughter; and while he stood irresolute on the pavement, she had simply announced that he was to come in their car. So here he sat, screwed slightly sideways, watching Rome recede into the distance past Mrs. Bessington's bonneted head, and scarcely permitting herself a single glance at her daughter at her side. Beside the chauffeur, he knew, sat Mr. Hecker, attentive and trim.

Motoring immediately after lunch, especially if one sits on a back seat and is unable to smoke — (and it was out of the question here) — produces in certain constitutions a strange receptive kind of coma. After ten minutes from the city gate, Nevill felt entirely stupid. He was whirling backwards; he could not stretch his legs; the pace was so swift that he had to hold his hat in his hand; and Mrs. Bessington was talking about clergymen. Fortunately he had enough humour to keep him polite. He nodded and assented; and said " Just so " and she said " What? " and he said " I only said ' Just so,' " and meanwhile he was taking in impressions. He saw, and remembered, the long curves of the Campagna, resembling the long waves of mid-ocean; the strange ruined yellow stucco houses, the sudden signs of little wayside inns, the monstrous masses of old Roman brickwork. But a headache was beginning again, and he longed for repose. Certainly it would be pleasant to stroll through budding woods presently, as Mrs. Bessington had promised him.... He glanced at Enid. She was motionless and apparently thoughtful: she had not spoken at all since they had left the city.

" And there's Frascati at last," observed Mrs. Bessing-ton, without the faintest pause from her appreciative discussion of the parish-clergyman who had been her pastor at the time she had been confirmed by the Bishop of Worcester. " It always looks so royal, I think; and, you know, Sir Nevill, that Stewart Cardinal was bishop here once — the Duke of York wasn't he — the grandson, I think, of the First Pretender; but I'm not sure of the relationship; but at any rate George the Fourth, or perhaps it was the Third, always recognised him and paid him a pension regularly, which I think was very nice of him; and so he put up his arms here in the

Cathedral, which we must mind to go and see, because so often people forget to do that, as it's not my idea of a Cathedral at all; so small you know, and not at all the sort of architecture you'd think a Cathedral ought to be of, besides having no choir or anything to sing, except just a few men and boys with voices like tin-kettles; because I remember being out here for Sunday once, and how much disappointed I was, and to see them misbehaving too, when the canons weren't looking at them; and the canons too took snuff, you know, which I really don't think looks very nice, in spite of what people say; but of course I forgot you were a Roman Catholic, or I wouldn't have said such things, because you know I always think we ought to make the best of one another, as I often tell Enid, don't I, my dear, when she seems to find fault, sometimes — I don't mean seriously, of course, because I'm sure she wouldn't do such a thing — (Oh! I wish he wouldn't go so fast over a bump in the road) — but we're really there at last; because don't you think it's really wonderful how we cover the ground nowadays, from the days in which we used to drive out here with a pair of horses and took two hours over it too; but there's the Marquis holding up his hand for our man to stop, so I suppose we'd better get out here, if you wouldn't mind telling him, Sir Nevill." She ceased.

" This is absolutely perfect," said Nevill. " Regard me those curved steps! and the little balcony at the top, and those — those... delicious trees."

He spoke rather breathlessly; it had been a long pull.

" I knew you'd like it," she said. " We'll sit down at the top and look at the view."

They really had managed admirably.

The bustle in Frascati had been deafening. First there had assembled round them, at the top of the sort of embanked boulevard where they had left their cars, five or six cabs, all of whose drivers, in rapid Italian, with strange cries interpreted by Enid as English exclamations, had recommended each his own cab, pointing with whirling whip to the erect pheasant's feathers that crowned each horse's head as a guarantee of good faith. Next there had been the guides, one of whom, persuaded that the party was German, had addressed them eloquently and uninterruptedly in that loud and effective tongue; and all these had agreed together with one voice that to visit Frascati without a guide was the merest foolishness. Thirdly there had been the flying squadron of small boys who, imitating the drivers, had chanted in chorus such words as " Yessa... ollrighta; goodamorning, sir! " And in the midst the leaders held forth: the Marchioness was the loudest, in a shrill tone insisting that things must be visited in the proper order, and that there was no time for the Capuchin church if Cicero's school was to be seen; and Mrs. Bessington serenely contributed an unceasing flow of experiences there on previous visits, singing a kind of alto (so to speak) to her hostess's soprano, while the Marquis looked nervously from one to the other and attempted to reduce them to a system. This had been the chance of these two. Mr. Clough was already beginning to stroll beside Mrs. Hecker under the clipped trees, his hands clasped behind him about his ebony stick; Mr. Hecker was inspecting the front of a small shop outside of which hung a tattered chasuble. And Enid turned to Nevill.

" Let's walk on," she said; " they can catch us up."

He nodded; and she went forward into the circle and spoke to her mother. Then she came out again.

" I told her, but I don't suppose she heard.... Have you ever heard such a noise in all your life? "

A guide ran after them, displaying a badge, as they moved upwards towards the Cathedral square.

" Me very good guide," he said. " Me spik Inglis, not like those others fellas."

" A-vanii," said Nevill firmly.

" I tell you " began the guide.

Enid suddenly laughed, rather sharply.

" Avanti means 'Come in,'" she said. She turned to the guide and spoke sharply and emphatically. He fell back, suddenly dismayed.

" I thought it was a sort of general dismissal," said Nevill. " How well you do it! What did you say to him?"

" I told him I knew Frascati several years before his grandfather was born," said the girl gravely. " It's the only way. You must exaggerate as much as they do, or they won't take you seriously. I also told him he was badly educated."

" What's the word? "

" Maleducato," said the girl. " Let's see the Cathedral as we come down again. We're all to meet where we left the cars, at half-past five. There'll be lots of time."

The walk up was quite perfectly Italian.

The sort of road — up which, the girl said, carriages really did come — leading upwards from the town from behind the Cathedral, ran between high walls of stained stone and stucco, straight into the heart of the woods. There were queer little houses, with minute terraces in front of them, on the left, for the first couple of hundred yards — built into the wall; the right was unbroken. As they rose higher, the road became even wilder; and all the time Nevill had a deliciously tantalising sense that the view over the Campagna, at present shut out, must be growing more superb with every step. Then they had come to a high archway, with cypresses beyond it and the beginning of a drive and a kind of lodge, all of grey stone, eloquently ancient.'

" That's a villa in there," said the girl. " I forget the name. It's a show-place. Let's leave that too till afterwards."

So they had risen higher and higher; and the woods loomed dark above them. It was so steep that they did not talk much: each said, once or twice, that the carriages would soon catch them up, and Nevill at least, as he turned to see, was conscious of an agreeable disappointment that nothing was in sight, except a somnolent old man, who had eyed them maliciously five minutes ago, as they came up past the steps on which he was lying in the sun.

Then the sweet aromas of the woods began to breathe down on them, sharp and wholesome as the smell of the sea, and the sound of running water reached them. Then they had entered the woods and turned up to the left; and still ascending had seen presently the long stepped slope, with the ancient curved steps at the end, and the terrace of the Capuccini, all under the arch of high trees.

It was an astoundingly beautiful view, when they had crossed the terrace before the shabby old church and cloister, climbed a convenient heap of stones, and sat down sideways on the stone wall that looked towards Rome.

Again the foreground was incredibly shabby. Immediately beneath them was the wire roof of a very dirty fowl-enclosure, closed on the right by the precipitous wall of the friary. Hens were picking with a spasmodic kind of eagerness, broken by melancholy listlessness, at stripped cabbage-stalks, twenty feet below where the two were sitting; and a dishevelled cock stepped, lordly, on their outskirts.

But it simply did not matter, as such things do not matter in Italy.

For, below the fowl-enclosure, the ground fell away in a considerable cliff of grass and rock, almost straight down, first to a fringe of woods, then to the tumbled roofs of Frascati, all mellow and ancient; and, finally, far below Frascati, to the wide hazy stretch of the Campagna, patched and lined, and washed in, so to say, by great streaks and slopes of colour, blue, greenish, grey, brown, infinitely significant, and melancholy or suggestive. There it lay, that tattered carpet of old Roman civilization, crossed by iron roads softened into curves, dotted with sparse shadows, right away to where, a faint wall of pale grey and blue, showed the mighty city herself, closing the horizon, as if Rome were still that place in which all roads, and indeed all wildernesses too must find their end. The warm sunlight lay over all, and a tender blue sky finished the picture.

"Well? " said the girl gently, after a minute or two of silence.

" It's simply gorgeous," said the boy. " But, you know "

He stopped.

"Yes?"

" It's not the last word — or, perhaps I'd say, it isn't the first word. There's Rome, still, you know."

She nodded two or three times.

" I understand perfectly," she said.

Nevill had a thrill of pleasure.

" I believe you do," he said. " But, Lord! What a prig I must seem! May I smoke? It may relieve matters, because I wish to make some observations! "

A delicious laughter shone all through her face, though her lips scarcely moved. It was as if a flame danced suddenly within her soul. (Really, she was exceedingly pretty, thought Nevill.)

" Please smoke. And please make all the observations you wish. I rather think I shall agree, you know."

He lighted his cigarette, first holding his case towards her with a question in his eyebrows, but in silence. She shook her head.

Then he began.

" It's all too tamed," he said. " There's that Campagna, you know. It looks wild, but it isn't. It's all been trampled down and bedded out, once. You can't forget that. Look at those woods, for instance. They're holding it down all the time. And look at those shadows, which I suppose are houses. They don't even trouble to rebuild them; they're so certain the Campagna can't rise against them. It's beaten; it's dead. And then here are we; and here are those old friars, like lords of the manor, looking down on it all. They've even stuck their old fowl-house down bang in front. Why, in England we should have the drawing-room here, to get the view — to be allowed to admire it. Here they don't care a brass farthing. They know it's theirs.... Poor old Campagna!... And then, you know, there's Rome, planted bang down in the middle — quite happy and content. She knows the Campagna's beaten and done for. She's not afraid of her. Poor old Campagna! "

He paused, astonished at his eloquence. He had no idea he could talk like this. He looked at her; she nodded gravely, twice.

" That's it. Go on, please," she said softly.

He cleared his throat dramatically — and threw a leg over the wall.

" Well, ladies and gentlemen; the next point to notice is that here in these woods " — he waved his hand at them — " the situation's quite different. The mountains aren't beaten yet. They're above the friars and the fowl-house and even old Rome. I know they've stuck their villas here; and Cicero's school, or whatever it is — or is that Tivoli?"

" No: you're quite right. Go on. Tivoli's the waterfall and the Villa D'Este."

" Yes — well — well, those villas and things are only here like a sort of garrison. The woods own them, not they the woods. Look at those slopes up there, and those trees. They're on top, as Mrs. Hecker would say. They're the real thing; they're alive. Look at all those flowers like stars, and the daisies. You don't get flowers like that in the Campagna; or if you do, they don't belong; they aren't characteristic. Isn't that so? "

" Perfectly."

" Well, up here they're all right," went on Nevill, feeling he'd about come to an end of his observations. " Am I talking rot, Miss Bessington? "

For a moment she did not move. He saw her clean profile, very straight-lined and sharp from nose to chin, still looking out over the haze of the Campagna. Then she turned slowly and looked directly at him, with an intent and yet detached sort of interest. He was taken aback a little by her directness.

" I think you've summed it up perfectly," she said. " But there's one thing you haven't said."

" Dear me! I thought I'd been exhaustive."

Her mouth trembled with laughter, and then grew grave again.

" You haven't said on which side you yourself are. I think I know; but... but I'd like to hear you say it."

" Why, on the side of the woods of course." (He sighed audibly.) " How I do hate luncheon-parties," he added, " even when... when I'm sitting by Mrs. Bessington."

" Thank you very much," she said, completely grave.

VIII

" You don't look very well," she said an hour later as they began to find their way downwards again by another path. " You look tired out."

There had been no sign of the rest of the party, though the two had waited within view of a patch of the road which, so far as Enid knew, was the only one into the woods up which a carriage could come; and it was quite certain that the Marchioness would not walk.

They had talked at ease — with those meditative silences that are the highest compliment that each could pay to the other — about Rome, and Life, and Nature, and the Meaning of Things, and indirectly, of course, of themselves all through. Nevill had been pretty frank, and Enid no less — or scarcely less. He had said suddenly, after one of his pauses, that he was a Catholic, and could never possibly be anything else; and had proceeded to say that he was afraid he wasn't a very good one. But he had been brought up to it; and had a chapel and a priest at home, and " all that." And the girl had nodded in her sympathetic way, and said that she supposed that she was Church of England; and had then begun to say that she couldn't ever be a Catholic for several reasons; but had omitted to state what these were; and he had not pressed her.

It was all very satisfactory then; it was evident to both of them that there was something much deeper in life than conventional religion; that " dogmas " did not really solve difficulties, but rather increased them; and that the real secret lay somewhere else.

Neither of them had said anything as to the passage of time; indeed, it was probable that neither understood how very quickly time passes under the charm of such conversations as these. The girl's eyes wandered three or four times rather intently down upon the section of stony road that was in sight a hundred feet below. And at last Nevill stood up.

" We must be going," he had said; and had then wasted five minutes more in crowing like a cock, to the furious agitation of the genuine creature below, in the enclosure. When the cock, after half a dozen vindictive answers, had begun to peck his wives, the two moved off.

Nevill did not seem to like being told he looked unwell.

" I'm not very well," he said shortly. " And I hate and loathe it."

She looked concerned.

"I'm sorry," she said, " I didn't know. What's the matter? "

" Nothing but headaches," he said. " But why should

I have them? I simply can't see sometimes, when they're bad. It seems to me unfair."

" You mean "

" I mean I can't fit that kind of thing into my philosophy. I try to bear them decently, of course; but I don't submit in the slightest. I resent that kind of thing furiously, exactly as I resent cruelty to animals."

She said nothing for a minute.

They were approaching a fork in the path. Overhead the trees, still leafless, yet covered, when looked at en masse, with a faint purplish haze that revealed the strong life welling up their fibre, nearly met in an archway. On either side, up on this, down on the other, stretched the tumbled slopes of the mountain, alight with bluebells, and the star-flowers he had spoken of a while ago. The whole place was full of scent and vigour and youth — redolent and suggestive. To their right, and still far beneath, lay the roofs of the little town, extraordinarily golden in the light as the sun sank downwards.

As they came slowly towards the fork in the path, a piece of crumbling wall that stood at the juncture of the ways began to disclose itself as the back of one of those shrines that stand here and there in the Frascati woods. They turned the angle of it; and stopped.

It was a particularly realistic Pieta.

Behind the wire netting that was stretched across its face there was the group of the Mother and Son, painted in crude colours, lately renovated. The Mother, in an indigo cloak, sitting with upraised face, supported the ghastly Body across her knees. The hands and feet ran with crimson; the mouth appeared to grin in a horrible contortion; the limbs were grotesquely elongated and emaciated. Stuck into the meshes of the wiring in front was a small bunch of wilted dandelions. The whole picture was painted in fresco on plaster that had peeled in places; and was half sheltered by a broken pent-roof of stone.

The two looked at it in silence. They moved on, still in silence. Then the boy broke out.

" There! " he said. " That was exactly what I meant! I think such things are perfectly horrible! What possible good can that do to anyone? It's completely out of harmony too. The very colours are wrong. And, besides, why put it in the woods where things are fresh and clean? And that's exactly why I don't like talking about my headaches. Of course the thing's a fact! But isn't it better? "

He stopped suddenly; and again, for a few yards, the girl did not speak.

" I won't ask about your headaches again," she said, with a tremor in her voice that might be humour or a deeper emotion. " I agree with every word you say, you know."

" And you agree about that... that thing up there? "

" Of course I do."