Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/82

 collection of art treasures garnered from all centuries and all nations, the desolate poetry of her ruins, and the majesty of her history, became something in the girl’s consciousness which no after years could efface. What she did not realize was the extent to which these things were becoming identified with the man who was making them live for her.

The first expedition with Gino Curatulo was followed by a second and a third, with Mrs. Garrison always in attendance.

“Is it to be always like this?” he asked.

“What would you wish it to be?” answered Anne, in the small voice she used when guilty of pretense.

“You know very well what I wish,” he answered; and she was silent, for it was futile to pretend that she did not.

They were just entering St. Peter’s, where they had been somewhat unwillingly conducted by Margaret, who wished to hear a mass in one of the chapels.

“They say a regiment of soldiers was camped here once without any one knowing it,” she said. “I should hardly think it was as large as that.”

“It seems large to me,’ Anne said wearily, gazing down the vast nave that stretched before them. Groups of people were dotted here and there,