"I hope not," said Claudia, answering Mrs. Lenox's remark--"at least, I hope the old Venetians were not so; I like to think that they felt, down to their very finger-tips, all the richness and beauty about them." "You may be sure the feeling was unconscious compared with ours," replied Mrs. Lenox. "They did not consult authorities about the pictures; they were the pictures. They did not study history; they made it. They did not read romances; they lived them." "I wish I could have lived then," murmured Miss Marcy, her eyes resting thoughtfully on the red tower of San Giorgio, rising from the blue. No veil obscured the beautiful tints of her face; Claudia's complexion could brave the brightest light, the wind, and the sun. The dark-blue plume of the round hat she wore curled down over the rippled sunny braids of her hair. Mr. Lenox was looking at her. But Mr. Lenox was often looking at her. "That would not be at all nice for us," said Mrs. Lenox, in her pleasant voice, answering the young lady's wish. "If you, Miss Marcy, can step back into the fifteenth century without trouble, we cannot; Stephen and I are very completely of this poor nineteenth." "I don't know," said Claudia, slowly; she looked at "Stephen" with meditative eyes. "He could have been one of the soldiers. You remember that Venetian portrait in the Uffizi at Florence--General Gattamelata? Mr. Lenox does not look like it; but in armor he would look quite as well." "I don't remember it," said Mrs. Lenox, turning to see why Theocritus was beating upon her knees with his right fist. "You must remember--it is so superb!" said Claudia. "I want to sit on the other side," announced Theocritus. "When we come back, dear. See, the church is quite near; we shall soon be there now," answered his aunt. "You remember it, don't you?" said Claudia to Lenox. "Perfectly." "No--_now_," piped Theocritus. "The wind is blowing down my back." "If he is cold, Stephen--" said Mrs. Lenox. "I will change places with him," replied her husband. "Do not move, Miss Marcy." "No; Aunt Lizzie must go too!" said the boy. He had wrinkled up his little face until he looked like an aged dwarf in a temper; he stretched back his lips over his little square white teeth, and glared at his uncle and Miss Marcy. "Let me change--do," said Claudia, rising as she spoke. And Mrs. Lenox accepted the offer. "When you have finished my portrait, suppose you paint yourself as a fifteenth-century Venetian general," continued Miss Marcy, taking up again the thread of conversation which had been broken by Theocritus's obstinacy. "The portrait of a man painted by himself is always interesting; you can see then what he thinks he is." "And is not?" said Lenox. "Possibly. Still, what he might be. It is his ideal view of himself, and I believe in ideals. It is only our real, purified--what we shall all attain, I hope, in another world."