Oh, why did they ever leave that enchanted Florence!

Meanwhile Alan had got together the luggage, and engaged a ramshackle Perugian cab; for the public vehicles of Perugia are perhaps, as a class, the most precarious and incoherent known to science.  However, the luggage was bundled on to the top by Our Lady’s grace, without dissolution of continuity; the lean-limbed horses were induced by explosive volleys of sound Tuscan oaths to make a feeble and spasmodic effort; and bit by bit the sad little cavalcade began slowly to ascend the interminable hill that rises by long loops to the platform of the Prefettura.

That drive was the gloomiest Herminia had ever yet taken.  Was it the natural fastidiousness of her condition, she wondered, or was it really the dirt and foul smells of the place that made her sicken at first sight of the wind-swept purlieus?  Perhaps a little of both; for in dusty weather Perugia is the most endless town to get out of in Italy; and its capacity for the production of unpleasant odors is unequalled no doubt from the Alps to Calabria.  As they reached the bare white platform at the entry to the upper town, where Pope Paul’s grim fortress once frowned to overawe the audacious souls of the liberty-loving Umbrians, she turned mute eyes to Alan for sympathy.  And then for the first time the terrible truth broke over her that Alan wasn’t in the least disappointed or disgusted; he knew it all before; he was accustomed to it and liked it!  As for Alan, he misinterpreted her glance, indeed, and answered with that sort of proprietary pride we all of us assume towards a place we love, and are showing off to a newcomer:  “Yes, I thought you’d like this view, dearest; isn’t it wonderful, wonderful?  That’s Assisi over yonder, that strange white town that clings by its eyelashes to the sloping hill-side:  and those are the snowclad heights of the Gran Sasso beyond; and that’s Montefalco to the extreme right, where the sunset gleam just catches the hill-top.”

His words struck dumb horror into Herminia’s soul.  Poor child, how she shrank at it!  It was clear, then, instead of being shocked and disgusted, Alan positively admired this human Sahara.  With an effort she gulped down her tears and her sighs, and pretended to look with interest in the directions he pointed.  She could see nothing in it all but dry hill-sides, crowned with still drier towns; unimagined stretches of sultry suburb; devouring wastes of rubbish and foul immemorial kitchen-middens.  And the very fact that for Alan’s sake she couldn’t bear to say so—­seeing how pleased and proud he was of Perugia, as if it had been built from his own design—­made the bitterness of her disappointment more difficult to endure.  She would have given anything at that moment for an ounce of human sympathy.

She had to learn in time to do without it.