he etchings of Piranesi.

CHAPTER LIV

Isabel now took Reverdy into her heart with an ardor that could not be
mistaken. She often went to bring him from school to the pension. She
took him in walks about the broken columns of the Forum. They clambered
together over the galleries of the Coliseum and to the heights of the
Palatine, exploring the ruins of the palaces of the Cesar's. They had
walked out to the Appian Way, and gone to listen to the merles and the
golden wrens among the cypresses of the Protestant cemetery.

Reverdy had begun to call Isabel "Mamma Isabel" and Isabel addressed him
as "son." Uncle Tom fell into the same way. The kinship between us was
strengthened by these endearments.

But I observed something of deeper, more mystical import; Reverdy was
attached to Isabel with an intense and curious filial passion. He would
rush into the room and kiss Isabel, flinging his arms about her with
ecstatic joy. She evoked this demonstration in some secret, maternal
way. And now as I tried to remember I could not recall that Dorothy had
ever caressed Reverdy--not that she was cold toward him. She was the
soul of kindness. But whenever had she held him to her breast with
demonstrative heart-hunger and expression; whenever had she played with
him, walked with him, entered into his life of game or studies? She had
never done so. Perhaps Reverdy had never had a mother after all. Now he
had one in Isabel, who seemed to direct something of the energy that she
had channeled into art and into travel to this boy of mine. But she did
not in any way withdraw her interest from me.

I was wondering after our day at the Villa d'Este if she would place
herself again in a like intimacy with me, if we should go about together
as before. No, there was no change as to program; but her eyes were so
clear, so innocently bright, her smile and laugh so gentle, yet free of
direct invitation, above all her devotion to Uncle Tom was so noble,
that I felt loath to make my approach more intimate. What I craved and
what I was glad to keep was our daily association. And now while she
always invited Uncle Tom to be with us and he more and more went his own
way, Isabel turned to Reverdy and arranged for him to accompany us about
Rome and into the country, once to Hadrian's Villa, once to Ostia where
we looked upon the sea. It did not seem to me that Isabel sought to keep
me at a distance and to bring in Reverdy as an influence to that