One morning they spent among the ruins of the Palatine, that sunny desolation of crumbling, over-tangled fragments, half excavated and half identified, known as the Palace of the Caesars. Nothing in Rome is more interesting, and no locality has such a confusion of picturesque charms. It is a vast, rambling garden, where you stumble at every step on the disinterred bones of the past; where damp, frescoed corridors, relics, possibly, of Nero’s Golden House, serve as gigantic bowers, and where, in the springtime, you may sit on a Latin inscription, in the shade of a flowering almond-tree, and admire the composition of the Campagna. The day left a deep impression on Rowland’s mind, partly owing to its intrinsic sweetness, and partly because his companion, on this occasion, let her Murray lie unopened for an hour, and asked several questions irrelevant to the Consuls and the Caesars. She had begun by saying that it was coming over her, after all, that Rome was a ponderously sad place. The sirocco was gently blowing, the air was heavy, she was tired, she looked a little pale. “Everything,” she said, “seems to say that all things are vanity. If one is doing something, I suppose one feels a certain strength within one to contradict it. But if one is idle, surely it is depressing to live, year after year, among the ashes of things that once were mighty. If I were to remain here I should either become permanently ‘low,’ as they say, or I would take refuge in some dogged daily work.” “What work?” “I would open a school for those beautiful little beggars; though I am sadly afraid I should never bring myself to scold them.” “I am idle,” said Rowland, “and yet I have kept up a certain spirit.” “I don’t call you idle,” she answered with emphasis. “It is very good of you. Do you remember our talking about that in Northampton?” “During that picnic? Perfectly. Has your coming abroad succeeded, for yourself, as well as you hoped?” “I think I may say that it has turned out as well as I expected.” “Are you happy?” “Don’t I look so?” “So it seems to me. But”--and she hesitated a moment--“I imagine you look happy whether you are so or not.” “I ‘m like that ancient comic mask that we saw just now in yonder excavated fresco: I am made to grin.” “Shall you come back here next winter?” “Very probably.” “Are you settled here forever?” “‘Forever’ is a long time. I live only from year to year.” “Shall you never marry?” Rowland gave a laugh. “‘Forever’--‘never!’ You handle large ideas. I have not taken a vow of celibacy.” “Would n’t you like to marry?” “I should like it immensely.” To this she made no rejoinder: but presently she asked, “Why don’t you write a book?” Rowland laughed, this time more freely. “A book! What book should I write?” “A history; something about art or antiquities.” “I have neither the learning nor the talent.”