The benevolent-looking clergyman gazed aghast at Herminia.  Then he turned slowly to Alan.  “Your wife,” he said in a mild and terrified voice, “is a very advanced lady.”

Herminia longed to blurt out the whole simple truth.  “I am not his wife.  I am not, and could never be wife or slave to any man.  This is a very dear friend, and he and I are travelling as friends together.”  But a warning glance from Alan made her hold her peace with difficulty and acquiesce as best she might in the virtual deception.  Still, the incident went to her heart, and made her more anxious than ever to declare her convictions and her practical obedience to them openly before the world.  She remembered, oh, so well one of her father’s sermons that had vividly impressed her in the dear old days at Dunwich Cathedral.  It was preached upon the text, “Come ye out and be ye separate.”

From Milan they went on direct to Florence.  Alan had decided to take rooms for the summer at Perugia, and there to see Herminia safely through her maternal troubles.  He loved Perugia, he said; it was cool and high-perched; and then, too, it was such a capital place for sketching.  Besides, he was anxious to complete his studies of the early Umbrian painters.  But they must have just one week at Florence together before they went up among the hills.  Florence was the place for a beginner to find out what Italian art was aiming at.  You got it there in its full logical development—­ every phase, step by step, in organic unity; while elsewhere you saw but stages and jumps and results, interrupted here and there by disturbing lacunae.  So at Florence they stopped for a week en route, and Herminia first learnt what Florentine art proposed to itself.

Ah, that week in Florence!  What a dream of delight!  ’Twas pure gold to Herminia.  How could it well be otherwise?  It seemed to her afterwards like the last flicker of joy in a doomed life, before its light went out and left her forever in utter darkness.  To be sure, a week is a terribly cramped and hurried time in which to view Florence, the beloved city, whose ineffable glories need at least one whole winter adequately to grasp them.  But failing a winter, a week with the gods made Herminia happy.  She carried away but a confused phantasmagoria, it is true, of the soaring tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, pointing straight with its slender shaft to heaven; of the swelling dome and huge ribs of the cathedral, seen vast from the terrace in front of San Miniato; of the endless Madonnas and the deathless saints niched in golden tabernacles at the Uffizi and the Pitti; of the tender grace of Fra Angelico at San Marco; of the infinite wealth and astounding variety of Donatello’s marble in the spacious courts of the cool Bargello.  But her window at the hotel looked straight as it could look down the humming Calzaioli to the pierced and encrusted front of Giotto’s campanile, with the cupola of San Lorenzo in the middle distance, and the facade of Fiesole standing out deep-blue against the dull red glare of evening in the background.  If that were not enough to sate and enchant Herminia, she would indeed have been difficult.  And with Alan by her side, every joy was doubled.