"So that is your reason for remaining," said Miss Spring, reflectively. "What other reason on earth _could_ there be?" "The equable climate." "I hate equable climates. No, we're not here for climates. Nor for Benozzo; nor for Nicolo the Pisan, and that everlasting old sarcophagus that they are always talking about; nor for the Leaning Tower, either. I perfectly hate the Leaning Tower!" Miss Spring now undertook a joke herself. "It is for the moderns, then. You are evidently a Shelley worshipper." "Do I look like one?" demanded Violet Roscoe, extending her arms a little, with the palms of the hands displayed, as if to call attention to her entire person. "I cannot say that you do," replied Miss Spring, after surveying her. "I should think New York would please you as a place of residence," she went on, after a moment. "If you do not like Italy, why do you not go home?" "Why don't you?" retorted Violet, taking a marron and crunching it. "Well answered. But Newburyport is not to me what I should think New York might be to you; Newburyport has much to learn. However, we all have our reasons, I suppose." "Mine are not mysterious," said Violet, continuing to crunch. "I have a better time abroad than I do at home; that's all." Miss Spring gazed at the fire. "I may as well acknowledge that it was those very things that brought me here in the beginning, the things you don't care for; Nicolo and the revival of sculpture; the early masters. But I have not found them satisfying. I have tried to care for that sarcophagus; but the truth is that I remain perfectly cold before it. And the Campo Santo frescos seem to me out of drawing. As to the Shelley memories, do you know what I thought of the other day? Suppose that Shelley and Byron were residing here at this moment-- Shelley with that queerness about his first wife hanging over him, and Byron living as we know he lived in the Toscanelli palace--do you think that these ladies in the pension who now sketch the Toscanelli and sketch Shelley's windows, who go to Lerici and rave over Casa Magni, who make pilgrimages to the very spot on the beach where Byron and Trelawny built the funeral pyre--do you think that a single one of them would call, if it were to-day, upon Mary Shelley? Or like to have Shelley and Byron dropping in here for afternoon tea, with the chance of meeting the curates?" "If they met them, they couldn't out-talk them," answered Violet, laughing. "Curates always want to explain something they said the day before. As to the calling and the tea, what would _you_ do?" "I should be consistent," responded Miss Spring, with dignity. "I should call. And I should be happy to see them here in return." "Well, you'd be safe," said Violet. "Shelley, Byron, Trelawny, all together, would never dare to flirt with Roberta Spring!" She could say this without malice, for her visitor was undeniably a handsome woman.