On Sunday he made up his mind that he certainly would speak before the day was over. He went with Erica to see the old monastery of San Marco before morning service at the English church. But, though they were alone together, he could not bring himself to speak there. They wandered from cell to cell, looking at those wonderful frescoes of the Crucifixion in each of which Fra Angelico seemed to gain some fresh thought, some new view of his inexhaustible subject. And Brian, watching Erica, thought how that old master would have delighted in the pure face and perfect coloring, in the short auburn hair which was in itself a halo, but could not somehow just then draw her thoughts away from the frescoes. Together they stood in the little cells occupied once by Savonarola; looked at the strange, stern face which Bastianini chiseled so effectively; stood by the old wooden desk where Savonarola had written and read, saying very little to one another, but each conscious that the silence was one of perfect understanding and sympathy. Then came the service in a hideous church, which yet seemed beautiful to them, with indifferent singing, which was somehow sweeter to them than the singing of a trained choir elsewhere. But, on returning to the hotel, Brian found that his chances for that day were over for all the afternoon Erica had to receive a constant succession of visitors who, as she said, turned her father for the time being into the “British lion.” In the evening, too, when they walked in the Cascine, they were no longer alone. Raeburn went with then, and as they paced along the broad avenue with the Arno gleaming through the fresh green of the trees, talking of the discussions of the past week, he inadvertently touched the note of pain in an otherwise cloudless day. “The work is practically over now,” he said. “But I think I must take a day or two to see a little of Florence. I must be at Salsburg to meet Hasenbalg by Wednesday week. Can you be ready to leave here on Wednesday, Eric?” “Oh, yes, father,” she said without hesitation or comment but with something in her voice which told Brian that she, too, felt a pang of regret at the thought that their days in that city of golden dreams were so soon to be ended.