"Oh, shall we fail to reach the Golden Milestone at sunset?" the girl asked, as anxiously as if it were the most important thing in the world to win their Marathon run.
But Rafael suddenly lifted a hand from the wheel. "Ecco!" he said, pointing to the distant South.
Edith followed the direction of his finger. Far away she saw the great dome of a cathedral rising toward the clouds.
"Rome! St. Peter's!" she shouted.
The boy nodded. The splendor of the ancient city flashed into his mind. He saw as in a dream the magnificent temples and palaces, the triumphal processions, the chariot-races, the games and combats of the early Romans, about which his mother had told him so many stories.
"It is a wonderful city," he said. "What tales those old walls could tell!"
As they crossed the River Tiber he heard Edith murmur behind him, "Oh, Tiber, Father Tiber, to whom the Romans pray!" and then it seemed but a moment before they were rolling through a massive stone gateway, and the chauffeur had taken the wheel.
As Rafael lifted his eyes to look about him once more, they looked straight into the eyes of a man who was riding in the opposite direction, and he smiled. He did not know that he had smiled, nor that this man was the king of Italy. His thoughts were back again with the conquerors of the early days, and the splendors of the ancient city.
But the king had noticed the boy, and turned to look after him. "That was the spirit of the old Romans looking from his eyes," he said to his attendant.
The last rays of the setting sun fell upon the scarred columns of the ruined Forum, as the car rounded the base of the Capitoline Hill and stopped at the spot where the Golden Milestone once marked the beginning of the Roman roads.