ur. You
are not hound to accept my judgment."

"Of course not," she replied simply.

"It occurred to me that I had been rather dictatorial."

"So you have, Mr. Mallard," she returned, looking at a picture. "I am
sorry. It's the failing of men who have often to be combative, and who
live much in solitude. I will try to use a less offensive tone."

"I didn't mean that your tone was in the least offensive."

"A more polite tone, then--as you taught me yesterday."

"I had rather you spoke just as is natural to you."

Mallard laughed.

"Politeness is not natural to me, I admit. I am horribly uncomfortable
whenever I have to pick my words out of regard to polite people. That
is why I shun what is called society. What little I have seen of it has
been more than enough for me."

"I have seen still less of it; but I understand your dislike."

"Before you left home, didn't you associate a great deal with people?"

"People of a certain kind," she replied coldly. "It was not society as
you mean it."

"You will be glad to mix more freely with the world, when you are back
in England?"

"I can't tell. By whom is that Madonna?"

Thus they went slowly on, until they came to the little hall where the
fountain plays, and whence is the outlook over the Tiber. It was
delightful to sit here in the shadows, made cooler and fresher by that
plashing water, and to see the glorious sunlight gleam upon the river's
tawny flow.

"Each time that I have been in Rome," said Mallard, "I have felt, after
the first few days, a peculiar mental calm. The other cities of Italy
haven't the same effect on me. Perhaps every one experiences it, more
or less. There comes back to me at moments the kind of happiness which
I knew as a boy--a freedom from the sense of duties and
responsibilities, of work to be done, and of disagreeable things to be
faced; the kind of contentment I used to have when I was reading lives
of artists, or looking at prints of famous pictures, or myself trying
to draw. It is possible that this mood is not such a strange one with
many people as with me, when it comes, I feel grateful to the powers
that rule life Since boyhood, I have never known it in the north. Out
of Rome, perhaps only in fine weather on the Mediterranean. But in Rome
is its perfection."

"I thought you preferred the north," said Miriam.

"Because I so often choose to work there? I can do better work when I
take subjects in wild scenery and stern clim