where the church stands. Each terrace
is planted with sycamores, and the face of the terrace wall supports
a bass-relief commemorating with the drama of its lifesize figures the
stations of the cross.

Monks and priests were coming and going, and dropped on the steps
leading from terrace to terrace were women and children on their knees
in prayer. It was all richly reminiscent of pilgrim scenes in other
Catholic lands; but here there was a touch of earnest in the Northern
face of the worshipers which the South had never imparted. Even in the
beautiful rococo interior of the church at the top of the hill there
was a sense of something deeper and truer than mere ecclesiasticism;
and March came out of it in a serious muse while the boy at his side
did nothing to interrupt. A vague regret filled his heart as he gazed
silently out over the prospect of river and city and vineyard, purpling
together below the top where he stood, and mixed with this regret was a
vague resentment of his wife's absence. She ought to have been there
to share his pang and his pleasure; they had so long enjoyed everything
together that without her he felt unable to get out of either emotion
all there was in it.

The forgotten boy stole silently down the terraces after the rest of
the party who had left him behind with March. At the last terrace they
stopped and waited; and after a delay that began to be long to Mrs.
Adding, she wondered aloud what could have become of them.

Kenby promptly offered to go back and see, and she consented in seeming
to refuse: "It isn't worth while. Rose has probably got Mr. March into
some deep discussion, and they've forgotten all about us. But if you
will go, Mr. Kenby, you might just remind Rose of my existence." She let
him lay her jacket on her shoulders before he left her, and then she sat
down on one of the steps, which General Triscoe kept striking with the
point of her umbrella as he stood before her.

"I really shall have to take it from you if you do that any more," she
said, laughing up in his face. "I'm serious."

He stopped. "I wish I could believe you were serious, for a moment."

"You may, if you think it will do you any good. But I don't see why."

The general smiled, but with a kind of tremulous eagerness which might
have been pathetic to any one who liked him. "Do you know this is almost
the first time I have spoken alone with you?"

"Really, I hadn't noticed," said Mrs. Adding.

General T