But I observed something of deeper, more mystical import; Reverdy was attached to Isabel with an intense and curious filial passion.  He would rush into the room and kiss Isabel, flinging his arms about her with ecstatic joy.  She evoked this demonstration in some secret, maternal way.  And now as I tried to remember I could not recall that Dorothy had ever caressed Reverdy—­not that she was cold toward him.  She was the soul of kindness.  But whenever had she held him to her breast with demonstrative heart-hunger and expression; whenever had she played with him, walked with him, entered into his life of game or studies?  She had never done so.  Perhaps Reverdy had never had a mother after all.  Now he had one in Isabel, who seemed to direct something of the energy that she had channeled into art and into travel to this boy of mine.  But she did not in any way withdraw her interest from me.

I was wondering after our day at the Villa d’Este if she would place herself again in a like intimacy with me, if we should go about together as before.  No, there was no change as to program; but her eyes were so clear, so innocently bright, her smile and laugh so gentle, yet free of direct invitation, above all her devotion to Uncle Tom was so noble, that I felt loath to make my approach more intimate.  What I craved and what I was glad to keep was our daily association.  And now while she always invited Uncle Tom to be with us and he more and more went his own way, Isabel turned to Reverdy and arranged for him to accompany us about Rome and into the country, once to Hadrian’s Villa, once to Ostia where we looked upon the sea.  It did not seem to me that Isabel sought to keep me at a distance and to bring in Reverdy as an influence to that end.  She took such great delight in having him with us.  It seemed only to happen that he went with us.  It was not always so.  And it was all quite natural.

We had thus become friends in the profoundest sense.  Once she referred to Pinturicchio saying:  “If you feel that you could have loved that man, don’t you see that the same feeling can exist between a man and a woman?  I am talking of that unity of two minds out of which the finest emotions come; and in the case of artists the noblest works.  Love is not just passional love, just this flame that burns so brightly and then dies.  It may be a flame that has no material sustenance, or so slight that we are not subtle enough to discern it; a flame that feeds on flame, unites with another flame and grows brighter for the union; and finds in the flame a substitute for oil.  Friendship is what I mean—­or love may be a better word.  Here in Rome among the old shrines and temples where the anemones and violets bloom so profusely, before the sculptured faces of Zeus and Aphrodite and Apollo and Bacchus, one dreams one’s self into intuitions of the old gods, and the lovely faiths of the ancient world.  And I go sometimes alone with a book to the Borghese