and live,--for I
never knew before what living is,--if I should just try to keep this
sunshine and these great spaces of color, what would you think of me?"

Eyes, ears, and the tragic corners of the mouth revealed the thought of
this descendant of the burden bearers for all the earth's thousands of
years.

"Little beast, little beast," said Daphne, burying her face in the
brownish fuzz of his neck, and drying her eyes there, "you are the one
thing in this land of beauty that links me with home. You are the
Pilgrim Fathers and the Catechism in one! You are the Puritan
Conscience made visible! I will do it; I promise."

San Pietro Martire looked round with mild inquiry on his face as to the
meaning and the purpose of caresses in a hard world like this.

CHAPTER XI

Bertuccio sprawled on his stomach on the grassy floor of the presence
chamber in a palace of the Caesars', kicking with one idle foot a bit
of stone that had once formed the classic nose of a god. San Pietro
Martire was quietly grazing in the long spaces of the Philosophers'
Hall, nibbling deftly green blades of grass that grew at the bases of
the broken pillars. Near by lay the old amphitheatre, with its roof of
blue sky, and its rows of grassy seats, circling a level stage and pit,
and rising, one above another, in irregular outlines of green. Here,
in the spot on which the central royal seat had once been erected, sat
Daphne on her Scotch plaid steamer blanket: her head was leaning back
against the turf, her lips were slightly parted, her eyes half closed.
She thought that she was meditating on the life that had gone on in
this Imperial villa two thousand years ago: its banquets, its
philosophers' disputes, its tragedies and comedies played here with
tears and laughter. In reality she was half asleep.

They were only a half mile from home, measuring by a straight line
through the intervening hill; in time they were two hours away. San
Pietro had climbed gallantly, with little silvery bells tinkling at his
ears, to the summit of the mountain, and had descended, with conviction
and with accuracy, planting firm little hard hoofs in the slippery path
where the dark soil bore a coating of green grass and moss. For all
their hard morning's work they were still on the confines of the Villa
Gianelli, whose kingdom was partly a kingdom of air and of mountain.

Drowsing there in the old theatre in the sun, Daphne presently saw,
stepping daintily