at
part of the church you want to see. To take you to it will be a real
pleasure."

Now, this was abominably impertinent, and she ought to have been
furious. But it is sometimes as difficult to lose one's temper as it
is difficult at other times to keep it. Lucy could not get cross. Mr.
Emerson was an old man, and surely a girl might humour him. On the other
hand, his son was a young man, and she felt that a girl ought to be
offended with him, or at all events be offended before him. It was at
him that she gazed before replying.

"I am not touchy, I hope. It is the Giottos that I want to see, if you
will kindly tell me which they are."

The son nodded. With a look of sombre satisfaction, he led the way to
the Peruzzi Chapel. There was a hint of the teacher about him. She felt
like a child in school who had answered a question rightly.

The chapel was already filled with an earnest congregation, and out of
them rose the voice of a lecturer, directing them how to worship Giotto,
not by tactful valuations, but by the standards of the spirit.

"Remember," he was saying, "the facts about this church of Santa Croce;
how it was built by faith in the full fervour of medievalism, before
any taint of the Renaissance had appeared. Observe how Giotto in these
frescoes--now, unhappily, ruined by restoration--is untroubled by the
snares of anatomy and perspective. Could anything be more majestic, more
pathetic, beautiful, true? How little, we feel, avails knowledge and
technical cleverness against a man who truly feels!"

"No!" exclaimed Mr. Emerson, in much too loud a voice for church.
"Remember nothing of the sort! Built by faith indeed! That simply means
the workmen weren't paid properly. And as for the frescoes, I see no
truth in them. Look at that fat man in blue! He must weigh as much as I
do, and he is shooting into the sky like an air balloon."

He was referring to the fresco of the "Ascension of St. John." Inside,
the lecturer's voice faltered, as well it might. The audience shifted
uneasily, and so did Lucy. She was sure that she ought not to be with
these men; but they had cast a spell over her. They were so serious and
so strange that she could not remember how to behave.

"Now, did this happen, or didn't it? Yes or no?"

George replied:

"It happened like this, if it happened at all. I would rather go up to
heaven by myself than be pushed by cherubs; and if I got there I should
like my friends to lean out of