"Yes, I shall go with you to Rome. Who is the man?"
"Mr. Seaborne—your most reverent admirer."
"Ah, I should like to know the fellow."
Miriam looked at him and smiled.
"You know Mr. Seaborne?" he inquired of her, abruptly.
"He was with us a fortnight in Athens."
As they were idling about, after their lunch, Mallard kept near to Miriam, but without speaking. He saw her stoop to pick up a piece of stone; presently another. She glanced at him.
"Bits of Paestum," he said, smiling; "perhaps of Poseidonia. Look at the field over there, where the oxen are; they have walled it in with fragments dug up out of the earth,—the remnants of a city."
She just bent her head, in sign of sympathy. A minute or two after, she held out to him the two stones she had taken up.
"How cold one is, and how warm the other!"