, Brenda, surely your mother is right in
thinking of _le monde_ as the proper setting for you. You know I'm
not fond of _le monde_, but it's because it hasn't enough such
ornaments as yourself. With the life that lies before you--"

"Who can possibly know what my life will be?" the girl asked quickly,
almost roughly.

"True, Brenda. I dare say I am talking like a fool." He left off,
wondering that for a moment he should actually have been speaking on the
side of convention.

They walked a few rods in silence. They had crossed the bridge, and were
headed for Porta Romana, the handmaiden trotting in their tracks, when
at a corner Gerald stopped, and, as if to change the subject, or to
regain favor by a felicitous suggestion, said:

"Do you remember my telling you of a painting I came upon in a little
old church on this street? _Scuola di Giotto_, they call it, but
the thing is undoubtedly Sienese. Have you the time? Shall we take a
moment to see it?"

"I should be glad. If you will walk home with me afterward, Gerald, I
might tell Gemma she can go."

There was an exchange of Italian between the young lady and the maid,
after which the latter turned, and with a busy, delighted effect about
the rear view of her walked back across the bridge to spend her gift of
an hour in what divertisements we shall never know.

The church was closed. Gerald pulled the bell-handle of the next door. A
priest opened to them, and, seeing at a glance what was wanted, guided
them through a white-washed corridor to a living-room where a crucifix
hung on the wall and the table had a red cloth; by this into a dim and
stony sacristy, whence they emerged into the back of a darkling little
church, with shadowy candlesticks and kneeling-benches, the whole full
of a cold, complex odor of old incense and old humanity and, one could
fancy, old prayers.

The priest brought a lighted taper and, crossing to one of the side
altars, held it near the painting, which was all that well-dressed
people ever came for outside of hours.

The reddish light trembled over the figure of a majestic virgin, in the
diadem and mantle of a princess, bearing the palm of martyrs in her
hand. It was a very simple and noble face, beautiful in a separate way,
which not every one would perceive, so little in common had it with the
present-day fair ladies whose photographs are sold.

Gerald had taken the light from the priest's hands and was lifting,
lowering, shading i