Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/431

 of an hour with the dressmaker! That was her life! She walked in through the gray old portico, and, still fretting, her mouth still in the cold, ugly line, she stepped through the huge bronze doorway and stood under the vault … "ah!"

She always forgot how it affected her or she would come in every day as other people said their prayers. It was as though it had been made for her and had waited till she came, sore-hearted, to look at it and find a passing peace.

She lifted her face to the huge open circle at the center of the dome high over her head. Quiet strength came into her heart from those great gray stones. Century after century they had enclosed that lovely circle of open sky and sunlit cloud and swallow-flights. Every other ancient roof in Rome had gone down to heaps of rubbish, save only this, steadfast, enduring, letting in the innocent clear light of every day down to the heart of the old temple.

Daylight—that was what made the Pantheon a place apart for her—honest daylight. How cheap beside it was the theatrical yellow of the windows back of the altar in St. Peter's!

She looked about her for a place to sit, and, seeing no chair, took a prie-dieu and sank to her knees on it as though she were praying. She was praying in her way. She continued to look up at the heaped golden clouds, at the infinite depth of the blue, blue sky, at the ineffable clarity of the light, pouring in through the great round opening. It seemed to smile at her, an honest, loving, reassuring smile that flooded her vexed, somber heart as it flooded the somber, ancient building. What strength, what strength in those gray stones, to hold together where everything else had been broken and dispersed! How beautiful primitive things were! How consoling and healing—the hardness and strength of stones, the clarity of light, the transparency of the sky! If you could only somehow make your life up of such things—strength, sunshine, simplicity—and music!

She continued to gaze up, her hands clasped. Yes, she was praying, she was praying for a little share of all that.

What was that absurd Mr. Livingstone saying? Marise