great things. Forgive me, I grieve that all this seems a
cruel waste to me--all these years of your life."

"Is your life not a waste?" I asked before I could check the words.

"No," Isabel replied calmly, in no way offended. "After all there is a
feeling in my heart for Uncle Tom such as you might have felt for
Pinturicchio. What does one derive from love? There are riches in
admiration, gratitude, sympathy, filial tenderness, in desire for
devotion; yes, even in pity; in the bestowal of comforting hands; in
solace given in hours of fatigue and illness; in care for declining
vitality. All these expressions I have. And now, my friend, I would be a
help to you. I would give you eyes to understand your past; and a vision
to choose a better future. If you have ever been Dionysius, which you
have not, you are yet an unawakened soul. I would have you become
Orpheus, attended by the Muses of all this loveliness with which we are
surrounded here. By contrast it makes me think of America, so vast but
so without a soul. By soul I do not mean that energy which enforces
righteousness, the dream of the fanatic, the ideal of the law
fabricator; but the soul of high freedoms, delights, nobilities. For
there is just as much difference between those things as there is
between Douglas and Pinturicchio. All of this goes without saying, of
course; but I am thinking of the application of these things to you. I
am your friend, you know."

Was there reality in Isabel's words? Was she not sublimating the
materials of our thwarted relationship? Turning to Douglas I tried to
tell her what character of thinker he was and how, in spite of any
deficiency that he had, he was a brave heart and a thinking mind and a
needed builder in America.

"It may be," said Isabel. We were sitting in the Gardens of Adonis once
occupied in part by the golden house of Nero, here where St. Sebastian
was bound to a tree and pierced with arrows. What material symbols for
our thoughts! Ruins of walls, columns and capitols lay about us; and on
the air was borne the music of bells and the low murmur of Rome. In this
pause of our conversation I heard a cry and looking up saw Reverdy
running toward us, throwing up his arms in delight and falling upon the
breast of Isabel. She embraced him with all tenderness; then arose and
began to run with him about the garden. In a little while we saw Uncle
Tom approaching slowly. He was much out of breath and looked definitely
ill