On the Lungarno in Florence, in the cool of the evening, we walked together, the Senator, momma, Dicky, and I. Dicky radiated depression, if such a thing is atmospherically possible; we all moved in it. Mr. Dod had been banished from the Portheris party, and he groaned over the reflection that it was his own fault. At Pompeii I had exerted myself in his interest to such an extent that Mr. Mafferton detached himself from Mrs. Portheris and attached himself to momma for the drive home. Little did I realise that one could be too agreeable in a good cause. Dicky insinuated himself with difficulty into Mr. Mafferton's vacant place opposite Mrs. Portheris, and even before the carriages started I saw that he was going to have a bad time. His own version of the experience was painful in the extreme, and he represented the climax as having occurred just as they arrived at the hotel. The unfortunate youth must have been goaded to his fate, for his general attitude toward matters of orthodoxy was most discreet. "There is something _Biblical_," said Mrs. Portheris (so Dicky related), "that those Pompeiian remains remind me of, and I cannot think what it is." "Lot's wife, mamma?" said Isabel. "_Quite_ right, my child--what a memory you have! That wretched woman who stopped to look back at the city where careless friends and relatives were enjoying themselves, indifferent to their coming fate, in direct disobedience to the command. Of course, she turned to salt, and these people to ashes, but she must have looked very much like them when the process was completed." That was Dicky's opportunity for restraint and submission, but he seemed to have been physically unable to take it. He rushed, instead, blindly to perdition. "I don't believe that yarn," he said. There was a moment's awful silence, during which Dicky said he counted his heart-beats and felt as if he had announced himself an atheist or a Jew, and then his sentence fell. "In that case, Mr. Dod, I must infer that you are opposed to the doctrine of the complete inspiration of Holy Writ. If you do not believe in that, I shudder to think of what you may not believe in. I will say no more now, but after dinner I will be obliged to speak to you for a few minutes, privately. Thank you, I can get out without assistance."