Michael laughed and took hold of her hand.
“What would you say if I told you that I was thinking very seriously of being a priest?”
“Oh, my dear Michael, and you look so particularly nice in tweeds!”
Michael laughed and went upstairs to pack. He would leave London to-morrow morning.
CHAPTER X
THE OLD WORLD
The train crashed southward from Paris through the night; and when dawn was quivering upon the meadows near Chambéry Michael was sure with an almost violent elation that he had left behind him the worst hardships of thought. Waterfalls swayed from the mountains, and the gray torrents they fed plunged along beside the train. Down through Italy they traveled all day, past the cypresses, and the olive-trees wise and graceful in the sunlight. It was already dusk when they reached the Campagna, and through the ghostly light the ghostly flowers and grasses shimmered for a while and faded out. It was hot traveling after sunset; but when the lights of Rome broke in a sudden blaze and the train reached the station it was cool upon the platform. Michael let a porter carry his luggage to a hotel close at hand. Then he walked quickly down the Esquiline Hill. He wandered on past the restaurants and the barber shops, caring for nothing but the sensation of walking down a wide street in Rome.
“There has been nothing like this,” he said, “since I walked down the High. There will be nothing like this ever again.”
Suddenly in a deserted square he was looking over a parapet at groups of ruined columns, and immediately afterward he was gazing up at one mighty column jet black against the starshine. He saw that it was figured with innumerable horses and warriors.
“We must seek for truth in the past,” he said.