clear water of the
old Roman baths, which King Louis tried to spoil but couldn't, swam back
and forth in a golden net of sunshine. We two children of the twentieth
century amused ourselves in attempting to reconstruct the baths as they
must have looked in the first century; and the glimmering columns under
the green water, now lost to the eye, now seen again, white and elusive
as mermaids playing hide and seek, helped our imagination.

Far easier was it to go back to Rome in the Temple of Diana, so
beautiful in ruin and so little changed except by time, as to bring to
the heart a pang of mingled joy and pain, of sadness which women love
and men resent--unless they are poets. Doves were cooing softly there,
the only oracles of the temple in these days; and what they said to each
other and to us seemed more mysterious than the sayings of common doves,
because their ancestors had no doubt handed down much wisdom to them,
from generation to generation, ever since Diana was taken seriously as a
goddess, or perhaps even since the dim days when Celtic gods were
reigning powers.

From the gardens we went slowly to that other temple which unthinking
people and guide-books have named the Maison Carree, the most lovely
temple out of Greece, and the one which has suffered most from sheer,
uncompromising stupidity in modern days. Now it rests from persecution,
though it shows its scars; and I wondered dully, as I stood gazing at
the Corinthian columns--strong, yet graceful--how so dull a copy as the
Madeleine could possibly have been evolved from such perfection.

Inside in the museum was the dearest old gentleman in a tall hat, who
explained to us with ingenuous pride and dignity the splendid collection
of coins which he himself had given to the town. It was easy to see that
they were the immediate jewels of his soul; there was not one piece
which he did not know and love as if it had been his child, though there
were so many thousands that he alone could keep strict count of them. He
insisted gravely upon the superlative value of the least significant in
appearance, but he could joke a little about other things than coins.
There was an old mosaic which we admired, with a faded God of Love
riding a winged steed.

"_L'Amour s'en va_," he chuckled, pointing to the half-obliterated
figure. "_N'est pas?_" and he turned to me for confirmation. "I don't
know yet," I answered.

"Mademoiselle is very fortunate--but very young," said