Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/367

 kneel before the image of Saint Peter. The fashion of their tatters fascinated her; she stood gazing at them in terrified pity and could be induced to look at almost nothing else. Rowland went back to Mary and sat down beside her.

"Well, what do you think of Europe?" he amicably asked.

"I think it 's dreadful!" she presently brought out.

"Dreadful?"

"I feel so strangely—I could almost cry."

"How is it then you feel?"

"So sorry for the poor little past that seems to have died here in my heart in an hour!"

"But surely you 're pleased—you 're interested."

"I 'm overwhelmed. Here in a single hour everything 's changed. It 's as if a wall somewhere about me had been knocked down at a stroke. Before me lies an immense new world, and it makes the old one, the little narrow familiar conceited one I 've always known, seem pitiful."

"But you did n't come to Rome to walk backward, to keep your eyes fastened on what you left. Forget it, turn away from it, give yourself up to this."

"I should like nothing better. But as I sat here just now, looking up at that golden mist in the dome, I seemed to see in it the vague shapes of certain people and things at home. To enjoy so much beauty and wonder is to break with the past—I mean with one's poor old own. And breaking 's a pain."

"Don't mind the pain, and it will cease to trouble you. Enjoy, enjoy; it 's your duty. Yours especially."

"Why mine especially?" the girl asked. 333