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 been true, he had sealed his faith with his life; she felt that she could trust him.  His honesty appealed to her own.

It was such curious phases as this of the girl’s unfolding character, that made her a never-failing source of interest to Marcia Vandervelde.  Under her superimposed, surface indifference, Marcia reflected, Anne had a deep strain of pure unworldliness, vast possibilities.  Give Anne an ideal, once arouse her enthusiasm, and she was capable of tossing aside the world for it.  Marcia was vastly interested, too, in the serene detachment of the girl’s attitude toward all those with whom she came in contact.  One might evoke interest, sympathy, compassion, even a quiet friendliness, but her heart remained quiet, aloof, secure from invasion.  Handsome young men who fell in love with her—­and there were several such—­seemed unable to stir any emotion in her, except perhaps, an impatient resentment.  Marcia, of course, knew nothing of Glenn Mitchell.  But Anne Champneys remembered him poignantly.  She had learned her lesson.

They had been some six or eight months in Florence when Mr. Berkeley Hayden put in his appearance, somewhat to Mrs. Vandervelde’s surprise.  She had not expected this!  She studied her old friend speculatively.  H’m!  She remembered the pale face of the young Italian poet whose sad sonnets all Italy was reading with delight.  Then she looked at the red-headed source of those sonnets,—­and she had no doubt as to the cause of Mr. Hayden’s appearance in Florence at this time,—­and wondered a bit.  The situation gave a fillip to her imagination; it was piquant.  One wondered how it would end.