Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/453

 all these relics of dead-and-gone men—it's incredible how none of them, not all the millions of them, can tarnish the newness of my own life for me! I can go my own new path over those old paving-stones—me and the puppy—and you—and all of us!"

Marise laughed a little, still looking at him, listening to something he was not saying, which played about his bold, clear face like sunlight and shone on her as warmly.

Now a spark of wildness came into his eyes, half laughingly reckless, half desperately in earnest. "You saw what happened to the puppy when its master threw it a kind word? Well, I haven't the gift of wriggling all over so wonderfully as that, and I haven't any tail to wag, but when you look at me like that, Miss Allen, I …"

"We think the third line of pillar-stumps is the side wall of the Basilica Julia," said Eugenia, stepping towards them, the guide-book in her hand.

They were standing under the great gray dome of the Pantheon, innocent clear daylight flooding all the great gray building.

"Oh, isn't it beautiful, their idea of leaving the circle open to the sky?" Marise burst out. "Doesn't it make our dark, modern churches with their imitation Gothic stained-glass seem cheap and affected? Every church all over the world ought to be like this, and then we human beings might be fit to live with."

Livingstone put in a horrified protest, "What! Miss all that exquisite twilight that makes a church a church? I was Just thinking how fiercely, literally bright this noonday sun is. Daylight leaves no mystery, nothing to your imagination."

Marise turned confidently to Mr. Crittenden as an ally. She was sure, as sure of anything in the world, that he must be on her side. But he hedged and said neutrally, "Oh, great Scott! It would be a horrible act of tyranny to