Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/52



N no city of Europe is there a public park comparable to that which Rome gave her citizens when she opened the gates of the. Here, among the wide avenues, the fountains, the ilex, the cypress, and the stone pine, is a place of romance, a spot which seems to have been created that man and woman might walk therein, and, walking, love.

Anne went often to the gardens, and claiming her American privilege of independence, she went alone, contrary to the Roman custom. Walking there in the sunshine she was possessed by the spirit of the place, and thought of love, though she smiled at herself for so thinking. Her heart was free: there was no man whose coming or going had the power to quicken her pulses; but she was in a world whose preoccupation with the relationship of men and women to one another was stirring her imagination. She saw men who conceived of woman as a being who existed only to be loved, and it was inevitable that she should resent such a conception.