At Milan, they stopped long enough to snatch a glimpse of the cathedral, and to take a hasty walk through the pictured glories of the Brera.  A vague suspicion began to cross Herminia’s mind, as she gazed at the girlish Madonna of the Sposalizio, that perhaps she wasn’t quite as well adapted to love Italy as Switzerland.  Nature she understood; was art yet a closed book to her?  If so, she would be sorry; for Alan, in whom the artistic sense was largely developed, loved his Italy dearly; and it would be a real cause of regret to her if she fell short in any way of Alan’s expectations.  Moreover, at table d’hote that evening, a slight episode occurred which roused to the full once more poor Herminia’s tender conscience.  Talk had somehow turned on Shelley’s Italian wanderings; and a benevolent-looking clergyman opposite, with that vacantly well-meaning smile, peculiar to a certain type of country rector, was apologizing in what he took to be a broad and generous spirit of divine, toleration for the great moral teacher’s supposed lapses from the normal rule of tight living.  Much, the benevolent-looking gentleman opined, with beaming spectacles, must be forgiven to men of genius.  Their temptations no doubt are far keener than with most of us.  An eager imagination—­a vivid sense of beauty—­quick readiness to be moved by the sight of physical or moral loveliness—­these were palliations, the old clergyman held, of much that seemed wrong and contradictory to our eyes in the lives of so many great men and women.

At sound of such immoral and unworthy teaching, Herminia’s ardent soul rose up in revolt within her.  “Oh, no,” she cried eagerly, leaning across the table as she spoke.  “I can’t allow that plea.  It’s degrading to Shelley, and to all true appreciation of the duties of genius.  Not less but more than most of us is the genius bound to act up with all his might to the highest moral law, to be the prophet and interpreter of the highest moral excellence.  To whom much is given, of him much shall be required.  Just because the man or woman of genius stands raised on a pedestal so far above the mass have we the right to expect that he or she should point us the way, should go before us as pioneer, should be more careful of the truth, more disdainful of the wrong, down to the smallest particular, than the ordinary person.  There are poor souls born into this world so petty and narrow and wanting in originality that one can only expect them to tread the beaten track, be it ever so cruel and wicked and mistaken.  But from a Shelley or a George Eliot, we expect greater things, and we have a right to expect them.  That’s why I can never quite forgive George Eliot—­who knew the truth, and found freedom for herself, and practised it in her life—­for upholding in her books the conventional lies, the conventional prejudices; and that’s why I can never admire Shelley enough, who, in an age of slavery, refused to abjure or to deny his freedom, but acted unto death to the full height of his principles.”