r. It really was inspiring--the blue harbour and the
ring of sparkling white mountains, but I'm not prepared to agree with
the superlative. I put the view of Naples from St. Elmo ahead. When the
Goddess came to see the Capella Palatina with its gem-like Arabo-Norman
mosaics, she was moved almost to tears. "It is matchless; the most
beautiful thing on earth!" she said. But afterwards I drove her (Aunt
Mary you may take for granted) out four steep miles to Monreale, and it
was well that she had saved a few adjectives. Not that she is a girl who
scatters much small coin of this kind, but she has usually the right
word when a thing does not go beyond words. When it does she says
nothing, except with her eloquent eyes. But in the ancient cloisters of
that old monastery I watched her face, and it was a study. I believe,
though each carved capital on each column is different from the others,
she could enumerate in order the quaint and intricate biblical designs.
In one secluded and dusky corner there was the faint tinkle of a
fountain--a wonderful fountain, very old, and copied from a still older
Moorish memory, by some Arab who served his Norman conquerors. My
beautiful girl was a picture as she stood gazing at it, leaning against
a pillar, her white dress half in sunshine, half in shadow, her brown
hair burnished to living gold.

For the modern part of Palermo she didn't much care; the crowded Corso
Vittorio Emanuele; the Quattro Canti, which is the Piccadilly Circus of
the Sicilian capital, or even the cathedral. But she loved the Villa
Giulia, which she was greatly surprised to find a garden, not knowing
that all gardens are "villas" in Sicily; she and Aunt Mary went in
alone, while I waited outside the gates in the car; but her beauty and
pretty frock excited so much attention that she was quite embarrassed,
and I reaped advantage from her discomfiture, being invited to act as
guard in the Botanical Gardens. I begged for her Kodak there, to take a
photo (ostensibly) of the big building devoted to lectures, but quietly
waited until she had inadvertently "crossed my path." Then I snapped
her.

We stayed in Palermo for three days, and even so had the barest glimpse
of the place. If I have luck, and win Her forgiveness first, and then at
last Herself, maybe we shall come again to Sicily together, lingering at
all the places we are slighting now. But dare I dream of it?

On the fourth day we set out for a visit to one of the