Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/486

 picture, her silence, after an interval, made him turn and see that if her eyes were fixed, her thoughts were wandering and an image more vivid than any Raphael or Titian had superposed itself upon the canvas. She asked fewer questions than before and seemed to have lost heart for consulting guide-books and encyclopædias. From time to time, however, she uttered a deep full murmur of gratification. Florence in midsummer was perfectly void of travellers, and the dense little city gave forth its historic soul with that larger passion with which the nightingale sings when listeners have ceased to be visible. The churches were deliciously cool, but the grey streets stifling and the great dovetailed polygons of pavement hot to the lingering tread. Rowland, who suffered from deadness of air, would have found all this uncomfortable in solitude; but Florence had never charmed him so completely as during these midsummer strolls with his preoccupied companion. One evening they had arranged to go on the morrow to the Academy. Mary kept her appointment, but as soon as she appeared he saw that, though she was doing her best to look at her ease, she had had some evil hour. When he hinted that he feared she was ill and that if she preferred to give up their adventure he would submit with what grace he might, she replied, after hesitation, that she would adhere to their plan. "I 'm certainly not 'well,'" she presently added, "but it's a moral malady, and in such cases I regard your company as a tonic."

"But if I 'm to administer you remedies," he said, "you must tell me how your indisposition came on." 452