“I have not heard,” said Nora, “but I have suspected—”
“What?”
“No; it is for you to say.”
“Why, that Mrs. Keith might have been Mrs. Lawrence.”
“Ah, I was right,—I was right,” murmured Nora, with a little air of triumph. “She may be still. I wish she would!” Nora was removing her bonnet before the mirror over the chimney-piece; as she spoke, she caught Hubert’s eye in the glass. He dropped it and took up his hat. “Won’t you wait?” she asked.
He said he thought he had better go, but he lingered without sitting down. Nora walked about the room, she hardly knew why, smoothing the table-covers and rearranging the chairs.
“Did you cry about your departure, the other night, as you promised?” Hubert asked.
“I confess that I was so tired with our adventures that I went straight to sleep.”
“Keep your tears for a better cause. One of the greatest pleasures in life is in store for you. There are a hundred things I should like to say to you about Rome. How I only wish I were going to show it you! Let me beg you to go some day to a little place in the Via Felice, on the Pincian,—a house with a terrace adjoining the fourth floor. There is a plasterer’s shop in the basement. You can reach the terrace by the common staircase. I occupied the rooms adjoining it, and it was my peculiar property. I remember I used often to share it with a poor little American sculptress who lived below. She made my bust; the Apollo Belvedere was nothing to it. I wonder what has become of her! Take a look at the view,—the view I woke up to every morning, read by, studied by, lived by. I used to alternate my periods of sight-seeing with fits of passionate study. In another winter I think I might have learned something. Your real lover of Rome oscillates with a kind of delicious pain between the city in itself and the city in literature. They keep forever referring you to each other and bandying you to and fro. If we had eyes for metaphysical things, Nora, you might see a hundred odd bits of old ambitions and day-dreams strewing that little terrace. Ah, as I sat there, how the Campagna used to take up the tale and respond to my printed page! If I know anything of the lesson of history (a man of my profession is supposed to), I learned it in that enchanted air! I should like to know who is sitting in the same school now. Perhaps you will write me a word.”
“I will piously gather up the crumbs of your feasts and make a meal of them,” said Nora. “I will let you know how they taste.”