“So cultivated?” asked Nina.

He took no notice of the quip.  “If to cultivate is to think of and to nurture, to strive always for greater perfection, then, yes, let us say cultivated.”

There was a challenge; there was also a look of pity that annoyed her.  It was this that she resented.  She felt that she was being enmeshed in an invisible web, and she sought for a means of escape.  Seeing none she might be sure of, she dropped the figurative speech and took refuge in platitudes.

“In America we admire a man for what he does—­over here you do nothing.  Each day for you is the same.  You spend your time as a woman might, unless you go into the army, the church, or diplomacy.  For instance, you, yourself, what is your ambition?  Is there anything you are trying to do?”

Indolently he shrugged his shoulders, and with a half-lazy arrogance he answered, “Why should I try to create a personal and trivial future, when I can, without striving, merely survive from a far more glorious past?  Listen, Mademoiselle, do you think as much can be accomplished by one short generation as by many?  For instance, could a garden such as this be produced in the lifetime of one man?” He waved his arm in a circular motion.  “It is not alone its plan and its fountains, and its green shrubbery that make it what it is, but the history of human lives that is planted in its every turn and corner.  The gardens of America are but newly born from the minds of your landscape architects; in most of them the trees are but newly planted.  This garden was already stately with ilex and cypress when the first white men of North America were sowing a little corn.  How can you feel romance in a garden where there is no tradition save of the hours a few laborers have spent in digging?”

Suddenly a look of real ardor came into his face, an animation into his expression that gave a new charm to his words.  “On this terrace where we now stand, leaning upon the marble of this very railing, countless men who were heroes, poets, philosophers, and fair women who were their sweethearts, have looked, as we do, over the hills laden with blossoming trees.  Up that path yonder to the monastery have gone pilgrims, sinners, martyrs, and many lovers to have their vows blessed, or to find a haven for broken hearts.  In the allee of cypress trees have walked many of the great lovers of Italy’s romance.  From this terrace end Beatrice herself is said to have thrown a rose of that very bush’s parent stem to her immortal lover.  Every corner of the garden holds its story of meetings that made of it a paradise, of partings that made of it an inferno.  What is paradise, but love?  Inferno, but the sorrow of love?  Down before us, and even up here on this terrace, scenes have been enacted in feud and in peace, horrible scenes of bloodshed and cruelty, and again scenes of splendor—­gatherings of church, ceremonials of state, but chiefly scenes of love—­some beautiful and happy, others no less beautiful because they were tragic.  Shall I tell you some of the stories?”