‘It’s well to know it. I shall frame my future suggestions accordingly.’
Marcia settled her hat and stretched out her hand. He returned the reins with a show of doubt.
‘Can I trust you to restrain your impulses?’ he inquired, with his eyes on the declivity before them.
She gathered up the reins, but made no movement to go on. Instead she half-turned in the saddle and looked behind.
They were on the shoulder of a mountain. Below them smaller foothills receded, tier below tier, until they sank imperceptibly into the level plain of the Campagna. Ahead of them the bare Sabines stretched in broken ridges, backed in the distance by two snow-peaks of the Apennines. Everywhere was the warmth of colouring, the brilliant hues of an Italian spring.
‘Italy is beautiful, isn’t it?’ Marcia asked simply.
‘Yes,’ he agreed; ‘Italy is cursed with beauty.’
She turned her eyes inquiringly from the landscape to him.
‘A nation of artists’ models!’ he exclaimed half contemptuously. ‘Because of their fatal good looks, the Italians can’t be allowed to be prosperous like any other people.’
‘Perhaps,’ she suggested, ‘their beauty is a compensation. They are poor, I know; but don’t you think they know how to be happy in spite of it?’