“NOW WE ARE IN VENICE.”
And this was what they did. As they passed from picture to picture, each took turns at building up explanations. Some of them might have been at once surprising and instructive to the artist concerned, but some were very vivid, and all were full of young directness and clear sight, and the fresh imagining and coloring of the unworn mind. They were so interested that it became like a sort of exciting game. They forgot all about the people around them; they did not know that their two small, unchaperoned figures attracted more glances than one. They were so accustomed to being alone, that they never exactly counted themselves in with other people. And now, it was as if they were at a banquet, feasting upon strange viands, and the new flavors were like wine to them. They went from side to side of the rooms, drawn sometimes by a glow of color, sometimes by a hinted story.
“We don’t know anything about pictures, I suppose,” said Meg, “but we can see everything is in them. There are the poor, working in the fields and the mills, being glad or sorry; and there are the rich ones, dancing at balls and standing in splendid places.”
“And there are the good ones and the bad ones. You can see it in their faces,” Rob went on, for her.
“Yes,” said Meg; “richness and poorness and goodness and badness and happiness and gladness. The Genius who made this palace was a very proud one, and he said he would put all the world in it, even if his workers could only make pictures and statues.”
“Was he the strongest of all?” asked Robin, taking up the story again with interest.
“I don’t know,” Meg answered; “sometimes I think he was. He was strong—he was very strong.”
They had been too deeply plunged into their mood to notice a man who stood near them, looking at a large picture. In fact, the man himself had not at first noticed them, but when Meg began to speak her voice attracted him. He turned his head, and looked at her odd little reflecting face, and, after having looked at it, he stood listening to her. An expression of recognition came into his strong, clean-shaven face.
“You two again!” he said, when she had finished. “And you have got here.” It was their man again.
“Yes,” answered Meg, her gray eyes revealing, as she lifted them to his face, that she came back to earth with some difficulty.