s for modern architects
in those time-softened brick facades, with the moulded arches of
terra-cotta framing the green open-work of the shutters!

I began to feel a sense of exaltation, as if I had listened to an anthem
played by a master hand on a cathedral organ. I couldn't have told any
one, but I happened to glance at Mr. Barrymore, and he at me, just as he
had driven into the _piazza_ where Dante's house looks down over the
tombs of the Scaligers. Then he smiled, and said, "Yes, I know. I always
feel like that, too, when I come here--but even more in Venice."

"How _am_ I feeling?" I asked, smiling with him.

"Oh, a little bit as if your soul had got out of your body and taken a
bath in a mountain spring, after you'd been staggering up some of the
steep paths of life in the dust and sun. Isn't that it?"

"Yes. Thank you," I answered. And we seemed to understand each other so
well that I was almost frightened.

"I want all these streets for mine," said Beechy, in a chattering mood.
"Oh, and especially the market-place, with that strange old fountain,
and the booths under the red umbrellas like scarlet mushrooms. Mamma,
have you got money enough to buy them for me, and have them packed up in
a big box with dried moss, like the toy villages, and expressed to
Denver?"

"Speaking of dried moss, all these lovely old churches and palaces and
monuments look as if history had covered them with a kind of delicate
lichen," I said, more to Mr. Barrymore than to Beechy. "And it enhances
their beauty, as the lace of a bride's veil enhances the beauty of her
face."

"Or a nun's veil," cut in Beechy. I wonder why she says things like that
so often lately? Well, perhaps it's best that I should be reminded of my
vocation, but it gives me a cold, desolate feeling for a minute, and
seems to throw a constraint upon us all.

We had made the Chauffeulier stop three or four times in every street to
look at some beautiful bit; a gate of flexible iron-work that even
Ruskin must have admired, the doorway of a church, the wonderful windows
of a faded palace; but suddenly I felt ready to go to the hotel, where
we were to stop for the night, that we might do our sight-seeing slowly.

It was a delightful hotel, itself once a palace, and to be there was to
be "in the picture," in such a place as Verona. The Prince had arrived
before us, as his motor is retrieving its reputation, and we all lunched
together, making plans for the afternoo