So we went slowly on, up the solemn hill, arm in arm like friends, sitting down now and then on old fallen columns to rest, and looking back at the silent, majestic ruins, which were brightened almost into a look of life under the vivid sun. My companion spoke little; the reaction after her fearful shock had set in; but every few moments her beautiful eyes would fill with tears as she looked in my face and pressed my arm. I left her at her apartment on the Via Felice; my own was a mile farther on, in the Piazza del Popolo, and I would not let her drive so far. "It grieves me not to go with you to your door," she said, as she bade me good-bye, "but I shall come and see you to-morrow and bring my husband." "No, you must not," I replied. "To-morrow you will be wise enough--or, if you are not wise enough, you will be kind enough to me because I ask it--to lie in bed all day, and I shall come very early in the morning to see how you are." She turned suddenly on the carriage-steps, and, leaning both her hands on my knees, exclaimed, in a voice full of emotion. "Will you let me kiss you? Not even my mother gave me what you have given. For you have given me back life, when it was too infinitely precious to lose. Surely you will not think me presuming?" and her cheek flushed a little. "Presuming! my dear child, I loved you the first moment I saw you lying there on the stones; and I am almost old enough to be your mother, too," I replied, and I kissed her sweet face warmly. This was the beginning of my acquaintance and friendship with Dora Maynard.