When they came round to the ray again, he gave the blind beggar all the small change he had about him; the old man thought it was a paper golconda. "You owe me another circuit," he said; "you did not speak through fully half of the last one." So they went around a second time. "Tell me when you first began to think about me," he said, as they passed the choir. "Was it when you read that letter?" "It was an absurd letter." "On the contrary, it was a very good one, and you know it. You have kept it?" "No; I burned it long ago." "Not so very long! However, never fear; I will write you plenty more, and even better ones. I will go away on purpose." They crossed the east end, under the great dome, and came around on the other side. "You said some bitter things to me in that old amphitheatre, Margaret; I shall always hate the place. But after all--for a person who was quite indifferent--were you not just a little _too_ angry?" "It is easy to say that now," she answered. They went down the north aisle. "Why did you stop and leave the room so abruptly when you were singing that song I asked for--you know, the 'Semper Fidelis?'" "My voice failed." "No; it was your courage. You knew then that you were no longer 'fidelis' to that former love of yours, and you were frightened by the discovery." They reached the dark south end. "And now, as to that former love," he said, pausing. "I will never ask you again; but here and now, Margaret, tell me what it was." "It was not 'a fascination'--like yours," she answered. "Do not be impertinent, especially in a church. Mrs. Lovell was not my only fascination, I beg to assure you; remember, I am thirty-six years old. But now--what was it?" "A mistake." "Good; but I want more." "It was a will-o'-the-wisp that I thought was real." "Better; but not enough." "You ask too much, I think." "I shall always ask it; I am horribly selfish; I warn you beforehand that I expect everything, in the most relentless way." "Well, then, it was a fancy, Trafford, that I mistook for--" And the Duomo alone knows how the sentence was ended. As they passed, for the third time, on their way towards the door, the mural tablet to Giotto, Morgan paused. "I have a sort of feeling that I owe it to the old fellow," he said. "I have always been his faithful disciple, and now he has rewarded me with a benediction. On the next high-festival his tablet shall be wreathed with the reddest of roses and a thick bank of heliotrope, as an acknowledgment of my gratitude." It was; and no one ever knew why. If it had been in "the season," the inquiring tourists would have been rendered distracted by the impossibility of finding out; but to the native Florentines attending mass at the cathedral, to whom the Latin inscription, "I am he through whom the lost Art of Painting was revived," remains a blank, it was only a tribute to some "departed friend."