Page:Burnett - Two Little Pilgrims' Progress A Story of the City Beautiful.djvu/127

Rh stately peristyle; they had read in the newspapers all about its height and the height of the statues adorning it; they knew how many columns formed the peristyle; but it was not height or breadth, or depth or width they remembered. The picture which remained with them and haunted them like a fair dream was that of a white and splendid archway, crowned with one of the great stories of the world in marble, the story of the triumph of the man, in whom the god was so strong that his dreams, the working of his mind, his strength, his courage, his suffering wrested from the silence of the Unknown a new and splendid world. It was this great white arch they always thought of, with this marble story crowning it, the blue, blue water spread before, the stately columns at its side, and the City Beautiful within the courts it guarded. And it was to this they were going when they found their way to the boat which would take them to it.

It was such a heavenly day of June. The water was so amethystine, the sky such a vault of rapture! What did it matter to them that they were jostled and crowded and counted for nothing among those about them! What did it matter that there were often near them common faces, speaking of nothing but common, stupid pleasure, or common sharpness and