Where also was Mallard.  He had visited the chapel, and the Stanze, and the Loggia, and the picture-gallery, not looking at things, but seeming to look for some one; then he came out, and walked round St. Peter’s to the Museum.  In the Sala Rotonda he encountered his friends.

They talked about the busts.  Cecily was studying them with the catalogue, and wished Mallard to share her pleasure.

“The empresses interest me most,” she said.  “Come and do homage to them.”

They look with immortal eyes, those three women who once saw the world at their feet:  Plotina, the wife of Trajan; Faustina, the wife of Antoninus Pius; Julia, the wife of Septimius Severus.  Noble heads, each so unlike the other.  Plotina, with her strong, not beautiful, features, the high cheek-bones, the male chin; on her forehead a subdued anxiety.  Faustina, the type of aristocratic self-consciousness, gloriously arrogant, splendidly beautiful, with her superb coronet of woven hair.  Julia Domna, a fine, patrician face, with a touch of idleness and good-natured scorn about her lips, taking her dignity as a matter of course.

“These women awe me,” Cecily murmured, as Mallard stood beside her.  “They are not of our world.  They make me feel as if I belonged to an inferior race.”

“Glorious barbarians,” returned Mallard.

“We of to-day have no right to say so.”

Then the Antinous, the finest of all his heads.  It must be caught in profile, and one stands marvelling at the perfection of soulless beauty.  And the Jupiter of Otricoli, most majestic of marble faces; in that one deep line across the brow lies not only profound thought, but something of the care of rule, or something of pity for mankind; as though he had just uttered his words in Homer:  “For verily there is no creature more afflicted than man, of all that breathe and move upon the earth.”  But that other, the Serapis, is above care of every kind; on his countenance is a divine placidity, a supernal blandness; he gazes for ever in sublime and passionless reverie.

Thence they passed to the Hall of the Muses, and spoke of Thalia, whose sweet and noble face, with its deep, far-looking eyes, bears such a weary sadness, Comedy?  Yes; comedy itself, when comedy is rightly understood.

And whilst they stood here, there came by a young priest, holding open a missal or breviary or some such book, and muttering from it, as if learning by heart.  Cecily followed him with her gaze.

“What a place for study of that kind!” she exclaimed, looking at Mallard.

He also had felt the incongruity, and laughed.

Two or three chambers of the Vatican sufficed for one day.  Cecily would not trust herself to remain after her interest had begun to weary; it was much that she had won two hours of intellectual calm.  Her companions had no wish to stay longer.  Just as they came again into the Sala Rotonda, they found themselves face to face with Miriam.