As she entered the courtyard of the Baths of Diocletian, where modern Rome has placed a museum for whatever the Tiber has restored, or whatever has been excavated in recent years, Maria Guasco closed her white lace parasol and looked around. The place seemed like the white and silent cloister of a Christian monastery. Four roomy covered portici surrounded a garden planted simply with rose-bushes, box hedges, and some small trees. In the middle rose a stone sundial, and on the right a well with an ancient pully from whose rope was hanging an old-fashioned bucket. The portici were quite white, and along their walls were hanging fragments of marble and pieces of Roman bas-reliefs. There was an occasional bust on its pedestal, and some wooden benches. But at the beginning of the summer, at ten in the morning, the place was without visitors. Donna Maria stopped undecidedly.
She was dressed in a white soft stuff which waved noiselessly about her, a large white and very fine veil surrounded her hat, her abundant hair, and oval face. Youth, primal and fresh, proceeded from all the whiteness in which she walked, like one of those dense, soft, white clouds which give a sense of spiritual voluptuousness to the eyes. Her beauty was illuminated by it, and beneath the transparency of her complexion her blood coursed more lively, rendering more rosy her delicate and expressive countenance. Only her eyes contained a tinge of disturbance in their colour, undecided between grey and blue. Something proud and sad concealed them, sometimes even extinguishing their glance. Donna Maria’s mouth, too, had not a shadow of a smile. While she stood there she was so wrapped in her thoughts and sensations, as almost to forget the reason for which she had come at that unusual hour to the Baths of Diocletian.
“Good-morning, Donna Maria,” said a gentleman, coming towards her, taking off his hat with an extremely correct bow.
“Good-morning, Provana,” she said, frowning slightly and biting her lip; “since when have you been a frequenter of museums and a lover of the ancient statues of Faustina and Britannicus?”
“Oh, I don’t care for them, cara Signora,” he hastened to say with an ironical smile, “I don’t understand them, and, therefore, I detest them.”
“Why, then?”
“To be able to speak to you alone in a place which is completely deserted at this hour and season.”
“Why don’t you come to my house?” she replied, growing more austere; “I am alone sometimes.”
“Yes; but Marco Fiore can come there any minute, neither can you deny him entrance,” he replied coldly.
“Do you hate Marco Fiore so much, Provana?”