"Yes, as usual," she answered. Miss Marcy liked Blake; his slow remarks often amused her. And she liked to be amused--perhaps because she was not one of those young ladies who find everything amusing. She was sitting at the base of the last of the great pillars of the nave, where she could see the north transept with the star-lights of the chapel at the end, the old pulpit of colored marbles with its fretted top and angel, and the deep, gold-lined dimness of the choir-dome, into which the first horizontal ray of sunset light was now stealing--a light which would soon turn into miraculous splendor its whole expanse. "It always seems to me like a cave set with gold and gems," said Blake, taking a seat beside her. "And, in reality, that is what it is, you know--a wonderful robbers' cavern. As somebody has said, it is the church of pirates--of the greatest sea-robbers the world has ever known; and they have adorned it with the magnificent mass of treasure they stole from the whole Eastern hemisphere." "I wish they had stolen a little for me--one of those Oriental chains, for instance. But what pleases me best here is the light. It isn't the bright, vast clearness of St. Peter's that makes one's small sins of no sort of consequence; it isn't the sombreness of the Duomo at Florence, where one soon feels such a dreadful repentance that the new virtue becomes acute depression. It is a darkness, I admit, but of such a warm, rich hue that one feels sumptuous just by sitting in it. I do believe that if some of our thin, anxious-faced American women could only be induced to come and sit here quietly several hours a day they would soon grow serene and physically opulent, like--" "Like yourself?" "Like the women of Veronese. (Of course I shall have to admit that I do not need this process. Unfortunately, I love it.) But those Veronese pictures, Mr. Blake--after all, what do they tell us? Blue sky and balconies, feasts and brocades, pages and dogs, colors and splendor, and those great fair women, with no expression in their faces--what does it all mean?" "Simply beauty." "Beauty without mind, then." "A picture does not need mind. But, to be worth anything, beauty it must have." "I don't know; a picture is a sort of companion. One of those pictures would not be that; you might as well have a beautiful idiot." "Ah, but a _picture_ is silent," replied Blake. Claudia laughed. "You are incorrigible." Then, going back to her first subject, "I wish Mrs. Lenox would come here more," she said. "You think she needs this enriching process you have suggested?" "In one way--yes. All this beauty here in Venice is so much to her husband; while she--is forever with that child!" "But she does not keep him from the beauty." "No; but she might make it so much more to him if she would." "Why don't you suggest it to her?" "There is no use. She does not understand me, I think. We speak a different language." "That may be. But I fancy she understands you."