"Oh, I am not needed where there are already two who do the thing so much better than I could. I have not even seen the people. My day is very full, you know. Piano and singing-lessons, and I am painting again this winter, with Galletti, and I am going to a course of _conferenze_ on Italian literature. That involves a lot of reading. There are, besides, the other, the usual things, the--" Her voice stuck; then, as she went on, deepened with the depth of a suppressed impatience. "I wish one might be allowed not to do what is meant for pleasure unless one takes pleasure in it. But going to teas and parties is apparently as much a duty as school or church. Mother and Leslie at least seem to think it so for me." "I see their point, Brenda dear, don't you?" He was not looking at her as with a gentle brotherliness he spoke this. "You don't go to many parties yourself, Gerald." "I am afraid nothing I do is fit to be an example to anybody. But it doesn't matter about me. About you it does. I can't say to you all I think. It would sound fulsome, and from such an old chum might make you laugh. But, being as you are, Brenda, surely your mother is right in thinking of _le monde_ as the proper setting for you. You know I'm not fond of _le monde_, but it's because it hasn't enough such ornaments as yourself. With the life that lies before you--" "Who can possibly know what my life will be?" the girl asked quickly, almost roughly. "True, Brenda. I dare say I am talking like a fool." He left off, wondering that for a moment he should actually have been speaking on the side of convention. They walked a few rods in silence. They had crossed the bridge, and were headed for Porta Romana, the handmaiden trotting in their tracks, when at a corner Gerald stopped, and, as if to change the subject, or to regain favor by a felicitous suggestion, said: "Do you remember my telling you of a painting I came upon in a little old church on this street? _Scuola di Giotto_, they call it, but the thing is undoubtedly Sienese. Have you the time? Shall we take a moment to see it?" "I should be glad. If you will walk home with me afterward, Gerald, I might tell Gemma she can go." There was an exchange of Italian between the young lady and the maid, after which the latter turned, and with a busy, delighted effect about the rear view of her walked back across the bridge to spend her gift of an hour in what divertisements we shall never know. The church was closed. Gerald pulled the bell-handle of the next door. A priest opened to them, and, seeing at a glance what was wanted, guided them through a white-washed corridor to a living-room where a crucifix hung on the wall and the table had a red cloth; by this into a dim and stony sacristy, whence they emerged into the back of a darkling little church, with shadowy candlesticks and kneeling-benches, the whole full of a cold, complex odor of old incense and old humanity and, one could fancy, old prayers.