“Do the Stanze interest you?” was Mallard’s next question.

“Very little, I am sorry to say.  They soon weary me.”

“And the Loggia?”

“I never paid much attention to it.”

“That surprises me.  Those little pictures are my favourites of all Raphael’s work.  For those and the Psyche, I would give everything else.”

Miriam looked at him inquiringly.

“Are you again thinking of the subjects?” he asked.

“Yes.  I can’t help it.  I have avoided them, because I knew how impossible it was for me to judge them only as art.”

“Then you have the same difficulty with nearly all Italian pictures?”

She hesitated; but, without turning her eyes to him, said at length: 

“I can’t easily explain to you the distinction there is for me between the Old Testament and the New.  I was taught almost exclusively out of the Old—­at least, it seems so to me.  I have had to study the New for myself, and it helps rather than hinders my enjoyment of pictures taken from it.  The religion of my childhood was one of bitterness and violence and arbitrary judgment and hatred.”

“Ah, but there is quite another side to the Old Testament—­those parts of it, at all events, that are illustrated up in the Loggia.  Will you come up there with me?”

She rose without speaking.  They left the chapel, and ascended the stairs.

“You are not under the impression,” he said, with a smile, as they walked side by side, “that the Old Testament is responsible for those horrors we have just been speaking of?”

“They are in that spirit.  My reading of the New omits everything of the kind.”

“So does mine.  But we have no justification.”

“We can select what is useful to us, and reject what does harm.”

“Yes; but then—­”

He did not finish the sentence, and they went into the pictured Loggia.  Here, choosing out his favourites, Mallard endeavoured to explain all his joy in them.  He showed her how it was Hebrew history made into a series of exquisite and touching legends; he dwelt on the sweet, idyllic treatment, the lovely landscape, the tender idealism throughout, the perfect adaptedness of gem-like colouring.

Miriam endeavoured to see with his eyes, but did not pretend to be wholly successful.  The very names were discordant to her ear.

“I will buy some photographs of them to take away,” she said.

“Don’t do that; they are useless.  Colour and design are here inseparable.”

They stayed not more than half an hour; then left the Vatican together, and walked to the front of St. Peter’s in silence.  Mallard looked at his watch.

“You are going back to the hotel?”

“I suppose so.”

“Shall I call one of those carriages?—­I am going to have a walk on to the Janiculum.”

She glanced at the sky.

“There will be a fine view to-day.”