it was cool and high-perched; and then, too, it was such a capital
place for sketching. Besides, he was anxious to complete his
studies of the early Umbrian painters. But they must have just one
week at Florence together before they went up among the hills.
Florence was the place for a beginner to find out what Italian art
was aiming at. You got it there in its full logical development--every
phase, step by step, in organic unity; while elsewhere you saw
but stages and jumps and results, interrupted here and there by
disturbing lacunae. So at Florence they stopped for a week en
route, and Herminia first learnt what Florentine art proposed to
itself.

Ah, that week in Florence! What a dream of delight! 'Twas pure
gold to Herminia. How could it well be otherwise? It seemed to
her afterwards like the last flicker of joy in a doomed life,
before its light went out and left her forever in utter darkness.
To be sure, a week is a terribly cramped and hurried time in which
to view Florence, the beloved city, whose ineffable glories need at
least one whole winter adequately to grasp them. But failing a
winter, a week with the gods made Herminia happy. She carried away
but a confused phantasmagoria, it is true, of the soaring tower of
the Palazzo Vecchio, pointing straight with its slender shaft to
heaven; of the swelling dome and huge ribs of the cathedral, seen
vast from the terrace in front of San Miniato; of the endless
Madonnas and the deathless saints niched in golden tabernacles at
the Uffizi and the Pitti; of the tender grace of Fra Angelico at
San Marco; of the infinite wealth and astounding variety of
Donatello's marble in the spacious courts of the cool Bargello.
But her window at the hotel looked straight as it could look down
the humming Calzaioli to the pierced and encrusted front of
Giotto's campanile, with the cupola of San Lorenzo in the middle
distance, and the facade of Fiesole standing out deep-blue against
the dull red glare of evening in the background. If that were not
enough to sate and enchant Herminia, she would indeed have been
difficult. And with Alan by her side, every joy was doubled.

She had never before known what it was to have her lover
continuously with her. And his aid in those long corridors, where
bambinos smiled down at her with childish lips, helped her
wondrously to understand in so short a time what they sought to
convey to her. Alan was steeped in Italy; he knew and ent