Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/83

 and seemed to be moving slowly, futilely, over the marbles, as upon some very distant stage, or the floor of some strange world, so large that it dwarfed all men who found themselves within it.

Looking through the entire length of the nave to the dome which hung spacious as an infinite thing, mystical with faint blue incense where the sunlight poured into it, the eye rested upon the baldichino, a mighty, far-off presence, and the spirit received the only baptism of emotion which this temple of Christendom can give it.

Immediately around them the light was bright, hard, almost shadowless, and the marbles of wall and arches were bright also, and many-colored, which displeased the girl, and seemed, as they have seemed to many others, definitely irreligious.

“They say those angels holding the fonts are seven feet high,” said Mrs. Garrison. “I think that must be a mistake.”

Curatulo, who walked by the other side of Anne, followed the direction of her eyes.

“You like it?” he asked, pointing onward to the space under the dome.

“It is the one thing here that pleases me.”

“T think I must measure those angels some day,” said her aunt.

“All that you say, all that you feel, all that you