But the effect of the confidences was as small as that of the romantic scenery and the stupendous works of art. Chelifer was not encouraged by them either to confide in return or to follow the example of Elzevir and Lord Trunion. He listened attentively, gave vent, when she had finished, to a few well-chosen expressions of sympathy, such as one writes to acquaintances on the deaths of their aged grandmothers, and after a considerable silence, looking at his watch, said he thought it was time to be getting back: he had promised to meet his mother for tea, and after tea, he added, he was going to take her to look at _pensions_. Seeing that she was going to stay in Rome the whole winter, it was worth taking some trouble about finding a nice room. Wasn’t it? Mrs. Aldwinkle was forced to agree. They set off through the parched Campagna towards the city. Mrs. Aldwinkle preserved a melancholy silence all the way. On their way from the hotel to the tea-shop in the Piazza Venezia Mrs. Chelifer, Miss Elver and Mr. Cardan passed through the forum of Trajan. The two little churches lifted their twin domes of gold against the sky. From the floor of the forum, deep-sunk beneath the level of the road—a foot for every hundred years—rose the huge column, with tumbled pillars and blocks of masonry lying confused round its base. They paused to look round. “I’ve always been a Protestant,” said Mrs. Chelifer after a moment’s silence; “but all the same I’ve always felt, whenever I came here, that Rome was somehow a special place; that God had marked it out in some peculiar way from among other cities as a place where the greatest things should happen. It’s a significant place, a portentous place—though I couldn’t tell you exactly why. One just feels that it is portentous; that’s all. Look at this piazza, for example. Two florid little counter-Reformation churches, all trumpery pretentiousness and no piety; a mixed lot of ordinary houses all round, and in the hole in the middle a huge heathen memorial of slaughter. And yet for some reason it all seems to me to have a significance, a spiritual meaning; it’s important. And the same applies to everything in this extraordinary place. You can’t regard it with indifference as you can an ordinary town.” “And yet,” said Mr. Cardan, “a great many tourists and all the inhabitants contrive to do so with complete success.” “That’s only because they’ve never looked at the place,” said Mrs. Chelifer. “Once you’ve really looked....” She was interrupted by a loud whoop from Miss Elver, who had wandered away from her companions and was looking over the railing into the sunken forum. “What is it?” called Mr. Cardan. They hurried across the street towards her. “Look,” cried Miss Elver, pointing down, “look. All the cats!”