Miss Garland gazed awhile aloft in the dome.  “I am not sure I understand that,” she said.

“I hope, at least, that at a cursory glance it pleases you,” said Rowland.  “You need n’t be afraid to tell the truth.  What strikes some people is that it is so remarkably small.”

“Oh, it’s large enough; it’s very wonderful.  There are things in Rome, then,” she added in a moment, turning and looking at him, “that are very, very beautiful?”

“Lots of them.”

“Some of the most beautiful things in the world?”

“Unquestionably.”

“What are they? which things have most beauty?”

“That is according to taste.  I should say the statues.”

“How long will it take to see them all? to know, at least, something about them?”

“You can see them all, as far as mere seeing goes, in a fortnight.  But to know them is a thing for one’s leisure.  The more time you spend among them, the more you care for them.”  After a moment’s hesitation he went on:  “Why should you grudge time?  It ’s all in your way, since you are to be an artist’s wife.”

“I have thought of that,” she said.  “It may be that I shall always live here, among the most beautiful things in the world!”

“Very possibly!  I should like to see you ten years hence.”

“I dare say I shall seem greatly altered.  But I am sure of one thing.”

“Of what?”

“That for the most part I shall be quite the same.  I ask nothing better than to believe the fine things you say about my understanding, but even if they are true, it won’t matter.  I shall be what I was made, what I am now—­a young woman from the country!  The fruit of a civilization not old and complex, but new and simple.”

“I am delighted to hear it:  that ’s an excellent foundation.”

“Perhaps, if you show me anything more, you will not always think so kindly of it.  Therefore I warn you.”

“I am not frightened.  I should like vastly to say something to you:  Be what you are, be what you choose; but do, sometimes, as I tell you.”

If Rowland was not frightened, neither, perhaps, was Miss Garland; but she seemed at least slightly disturbed.  She proposed that they should join their companions.

Mrs. Hudson spoke under her breath; she could not be accused of the want of reverence sometimes attributed to Protestants in the great Catholic temples.  “Mary, dear,” she whispered, “suppose we had to kiss that dreadful brass toe.  If I could only have kept our door-knocker, at Northampton, as bright as that!  I think it’s so heathenish; but Roderick says he thinks it ’s sublime.”

Roderick had evidently grown a trifle perverse.  “It ’s sublimer than anything that your religion asks you to do!” he exclaimed.

“Surely our religion sometimes gives us very difficult duties,” said Miss Garland.

“The duty of sitting in a whitewashed meeting-house and listening to a nasal Puritan!  I admit that ’s difficult.  But it ’s not sublime.  I am speaking of ceremonies, of forms.  It is in my line, you know, to make much of forms.  I think this is a very beautiful one.  Could n’t you do it?” he demanded, looking at his cousin.