, till he could shape the fact into some safe and
acceptable form. She met him at the door with her guide-books, wraps and
umbrellas, and would hardly give him time to get on his hat and coat.

"Now, I want you to avoid the Stollers as far as you can see them. This
is to be a real wedding-journey day, with no extraneous acquaintance to
bother; the more strangers the better. Wurzburg is richer than anything
I imagined. I've looked it all up; I've got the plan of the city, so
that we can easily find the way. We'll walk first, and take carriages
whenever we get tired. We'll go to the cathedral at once; I want a good
gulp of rococo to begin with; there wasn't half enough of it at Ansbach.
Isn't it strange how we've come round to it?"

She referred to that passion for the Gothic which they had obediently
imbibed from Ruskin in the days of their early Italian travel and
courtship, when all the English-speaking world bowed down to him in
devout aversion from the renaissance, and pious abhorrence of the
rococo.

"What biddable little things we were!" she went on, while March was
struggling to keep Kenby in the background of his consciousness. "The
rococo must have always had a sneaking charm for us, when we were
pinning our faith to pointed arches; and yet I suppose we were perfectly
sincere. Oh, look at that divinely ridiculous Madonna!" They were now
making their way out of the crooked footway behind their hotel toward
the street leading to the cathedral, and she pointed to the Blessed
Virgin over the door of some religious house, her drapery billowing
about her feet; her body twisting to show the sculptor's mastery of
anatomy, and the halo held on her tossing head with the help of stout
gilt rays. In fact, the Virgin's whole figure was gilded, and so was
that of the child in her arms. "Isn't she delightful?"

"I see what you mean," said March, with a dubious glance at the statue,
"but I'm not sure, now, that I wouldn't like something quieter in my
Madonnas."

The thoroughfare which they emerged upon, with the cathedral ending
the prospective, was full of the holiday so near at hand. The narrow
sidewalks were thronged with people, both soldiers and civilians, and up
the middle of the street detachments of military came and went, halting
the little horse-cars and the huge beer-wagons which otherwise seemed
to have the sole right to the streets of Wurzburg; they came jingling
or thundering out of the aide streets and hurle