"I should like to know what it is, so that I might try to come under it, too, if it's beneficent," that ever-lively curiosity of mine prompted me to say.
"I am inclined to think it is not beneficent," he answered, smiling mysteriously. "Anyhow, I'm not going to tell you what it is."
"You never do tell me anything about yourself," I exclaimed crossly, "whereas I've given you my whole history, almost from the day I cut my first tooth, up to that when I—adopted my first brother."
"Or had him thrust upon you," he amended. "You see, you've nothing to reproach yourself with in your past, so you can talk of it without bitterness. I can't—yet. Only to think of some things makes me feel venomous, and though I really believe I'm improving in the sunbath of your example, which I have every day, the cure isn't complete yet. Until I am able to talk of a certain person without wanting to sprinkle my conversation with curses, I mean to be silent. But I owe it to you that I don't want to curse her any more. A short time ago it gave me actual pleasure."
So it is to a woman he owes his misfortunes! As Alice said in Wonderland, it grows "mysteriouser and mysteriouser." Also it grows more romantic, when one puts two and two together; and I have always been great at that. The "sentimental association" of the battlement garden plus the inspiration to evil language, equal (in my fancy) one fair, faithless lady, once loved, now hated. I hate her, too, whatever she did, and I should like to box her ears. I hope she's quite old, and married, and that she makes up her complexion, and everything else which causes men to tire of their first loves sooner or later. Not that it is anything to me, personally; but one owes a little loyalty to one's friends.
The porch and cloisters of St. Trophime's were too perfectly beautiful to be marred by a mood; but my brother Jack's mysteriously wicked sweetheart would keep coming in between me and the wonderful carvings in the most disturbing way. Some women never know when they are wanted! But I did my best to make Mr. Dane forget her by taking an intelligent interest in everything, especially the things he cared for most, though once, in an absent-minded instant, I did unfortunately say: "I don't admire that type of girl," when we were talking about a sculptured saint; and although he looked surprised I thought it too complicated to try and explain.
The afternoon light was burnishing the ancient stone carvings to copper when we left the cloisters of St. Trophime, took one last look at the porch, and turned toward the amphitheatre. We were right to have waited, for the vast circle was golden in the sunset, like a heavy bracelet, dropped by Atlas one day, when he stretched a weary arm; and the beautiful fragments of coloured marbles, which the Greeks loved and Christians destroyed, were the jewels of that great bracelet. The place was so pathetically beautiful in the dying day that a soft sadness pressed upon me like a hand on my forehead, and echoes of the long-dead past, when Greek Arles was a harbour of commerce by sea and river, or when it was Roman Arelate, rich and cruel, rang in my ears as we wandered through the cells of prisoners, the dens of lions, and the rooms of gladiators, where the young "men about town" used to pat their favourites on oiled backs, or make their bets on ivory tablets.
"If we were here by moonlight, we should see ghosts," I said. "Come, let us go before it grows any darker or sadder. The shadows seem to move. I think there's a lion crouching in that black corner."
"He won't hurt you, sister Una," said my brother Jack. "There's one thing you must see here before I take you home—back to the hotel, I mean; and that is the Saracen Tower, as they call it."
So we went into the Saracen Tower, and high up on the wall I saw the presentment of a hand.