Page:The Professor's House - Willa Cather.pdf/109

 shut; on the bleak ascent to the Pantheon there was not a spot of colour, nothing but wet, shiny, quicksilvery grey, accented by black crevices, and weather-worn bosses white as wood-ash. All at once, from somewhere behind the Pantheon itself, a man and woman, pushing a hand-cart, came into the empty street. The cart was full of pink dahlias, all exactly the same colour. The young man was fair and slight, with a pale face; the woman carried a baby. Both they and the wheels of their barrow were splashed with mud. They must have come from a good way in the country, and were a weary, anxious looking pair. They stopped at a corner before the Pantheon and fearfully scanned the bleak, silvery, deserted streets. The man went into a bakery, and his wife began to spread out the flowers, which were done up in large bouquets with fresh green chestnut leaves. Young St. Peter approached and asked the price.

“Deux francs cinquante, Monsieur,” she said with a kind of desperate courage.

He took a bunch and handed her a five-franc note. She had no change. Her husband, watching from the bakery, came running across with a loaf of bread under his arm.

“Deux francs cinquante,” she called to him as he came up. He put his hand into his pocket and fumbled.

“Deux francs cinquante,” she repeated with pain-