Yet it was charming to see her again as she had been in the happiest moments of the past, and to feel that, Hicks being out of her world, her trust of everybody in it was perfect once more. She treated that interval of coldness and diffidence as all women know how to treat a thing which they wish not to have been; and Staniford, a man on whom no pleasing art of her sex was ever lost, admired and gratefully accepted the effect of this. He fell luxuriously into the old habits again. They had still almost the time of a steamer's voyage to Europe before them; it was as if they were newly setting sail from America. The first night after they left Messina Staniford found her in her place in the waist of the ship, and sat down beside her there, and talked; the next night she did not come; the third she came, and he asked her to walk with him. The elastic touch of her hand on his arm, the rhythmic movement of her steps beside him, were things that seemed always to have been. She told him of what she had seen and done in Messina. This glimpse of Italy had vividly animated her; she had apparently found a world within herself as well as without. With a suddenly depressing sense of loss, Staniford had a prevision of splendor in her, when she should have wholly blossomed out in that fervid air of art and beauty; he would fain have kept her still a wilding rosebud of the New England wayside. He hated the officers who should wonder at her when she first came into the Square of St. Mark with her aunt and uncle. Her talk about Messina went on; he was thinking of her, and not of her talk; but he saw that she was not going to refer to their encounter. “You make me jealous of the objects of interest in Messina,” he said. “You seem to remember seeing everything but me, there.” She stopped abruptly. “Yes,” she said, after a deep breath, “I saw you there;” and she did not offer to go on again. “Where were you going, that morning?” “Oh, to the cathedral. Captain Jenness left me there, and I looked all through it till he came back from the consulate.” “Left you there alone!” cried Staniford. “Yes; I told him I should not feel lonely, and I should not stir out of it till he came back. I took one of those little pine chairs and sat down, when I got tired, and looked at the people coming to worship, and the strangers with their guide-books.” “Did any of them look at you?” “They stared a good deal. It seems to be the custom in Europe; but I told Captain Jenness I should probably have to go about by myself in Venice, as my aunt's an invalid, and I had better get used to it.” She paused, and seemed to be referring the point to Staniford. “Yes,--oh, yes,” he said. “Captain Jenness said it was their way, over here,” she resumed; “but he guessed I had as much right in a church as anybody.”