“You wouldn’t care to come so far?”

“Yes, I should enjoy the walk.”

“To walk?  It would tire you too much.”

“Oh no!” replied Miriam, looking away and smiling.  “You mustn’t think I am what I was that winter at Naples.  I can walk a good many miles, and only feel better for it.”

Her tone amused him, for it became something like that of a child in self-defence when accused of some childlike incapacity.

“Then let us go, by all means.”

They turned into the Borgo San Spirito, and then went by the quiet Longara.  Mallard soon found that it was necessary to moderate his swinging stride.  He was not in the habit of walking with ladies, and he felt ashamed of himself when a glance told him that his companion was put to overmuch exertion.  The glance led him to observe Miriam’s gait; its grace and refinement gave him a sudden sensation of keen pleasure.  He thought, without wishing to do so, of Cecily; her matchless, maidenly charm in movement was something of quite another kind.  Mrs. Baske trod the common earth, yet with, it seemed to him, a dignity that distinguished her from ordinary women.

There had been silence for a long time.  They were alike in the custom of forgetting what had last been said, or how long since.

“Do you care for sculpture?” Mallard asked, led to the inquiry by his thoughts of form and motion.

“Yes; but not so much as for painting.”

He noticed a reluctance in her voice, and for a moment was quite unconscious of the reason for it.  But reflection quickly explained her slight embarrassment.

“Edward makes it one of his chief studies,” she added at once, looking straight before her.  “He has told me what to read about it.”

Mallard let the subject fall.  But presently they passed a yoke of oxen drawing a cart, and, as he paused to look at them, he said: 

“Don’t you like to watch those animals?  I can never be near them without stopping.  Look at their grand heads, their horns, their majestic movement!  They always remind me of the antique—­of splendid power fixed in marble, These are the kind of oxen that Homer saw, and Virgil.”

Miriam gazed, but said nothing.

“Does your silence mean that you can’t sympathize with me?”

“No.  It means that you have given me a new way of looking at a thing; and I have to think.”

She paused; then, with a curious inflection of her voice, as though she were not quite certain of the tone she wished to strike, whether playful or sarcastic: 

“You wouldn’t prefer me to make an exclamation?”

He laughed.

“Decidedly not.  If you were accustomed to do so, I should not be expressing my serious thoughts.”

The pleasant mood continued with him, and, a smile still on his face, he asked presently: 

“Do you remember telling me that you thought I was wasting my life on futilities?”