The road, after crossing through the town, which was quite destitute of sidewalks, ran along the shore of the lake, rising little by little from its level, and following the contours of the Sacred Mount, whose trees and chapels dominated the peninsula, past the iron gates or walls of villas, with ornamental palms and orange trees at their entrances. In front of one of these villas, a quite modest and shabby one, which they could see at the end of a short avenue through the open portals, Edith caught the smell of roses.
“Wait,” she said to her lover. “They are so sweet, and they must be the last.”
“Let’s go in,” he said. “I’ll beg some for you.”
They went in together, and discovered in the inner garden a strange assemblage of statues—small truncated columns, little stuccoed towers with their coating half peeled off, unfinished porches, all the devastation of a miniature art city, but regular and organised as with a decorative motive. In the midst of this symmetrical group of stones, all symbolising with factitious grace the injuries of time, a little marble Cupid stood on his pedestal, with roses all around him, bending his bow with a smile upon his lips.
The young woman saw only Love among the roses.
“He is charming, and the day caresses him.”
“Isn’t it bizarre?” observed Maurice. “We must be in the grounds of some collector of monuments. They’ve no objection to such things in Italy.”
An elderly man with a white blouse put on over his clothes, and a sculptor’s chisel in his hand, came forward to meet them, and greeted them quite solemnly, with a mixture of obsequiousness and nobility. He entered into conversation with Maurice in Italian, while Edith, with his permission, gathered some flowers. She rejoined the two men presently with a sheaf of them in her hands.
“Here is my bouquet. I’ll give you each a rose,” she said.
The despoiled proprietor stumbled through some half intelligible form of thanks and greeting. Maurice introduced him: