Camille went by a night train, and Olive began to “see Rome” on the following morning. She took the tram to the Piazza Venezia and walked from thence to the church of Santa Maria Ara Coeli.
The flight of steps to the west door is very long, and she climbed slowly, stopping once or twice to take breath and look back at the crowded roofs and many church domes of Rome, and at the green heights of the Janiculan hill beyond, with the bronze figure of Garibaldi on his horse, dominant, and very clear against the sky.
The cripple at the door lifted the heavy leather curtain for her and she put a soldo into his outstretched hand as she went in. The church seemed very still, very quiet, after the clamour of the streets. The acrid scent of incense was as the breath of spent prayer. Little yellow flames flickered in the shrine lamps before each altar, but it was early yet and for the moment no mass was being said. An old, white-haired monk was sweeping the worn pavement. He was swathed in a blue linen apron, and his rusty brown frock was tucked up about his ankles. A lean black cat followed him, mewing, and now and then he stopped his work to stroke it. There was a great stack of chairs by the door, and a few were scattered about the aisles and occupied by stray worshippers, women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads in deference to St Paul’s expressed wishes, two or three old men, and some peasants with their market baskets. A be-ribboned nurse carrying a baby had just come in to see the Sacro Bambino, and Olive followed them into the sacristy and saw the child laid down before the bedizened, red-cheeked wooden doll in the glass case. As they passed out again the monk who was in attendance gave Olive a coloured card with a prayer printed on the back. She heard him asking what was the matter with the little one. The woman lifted the lace veil from the tiny face and showed him the sightless eyes. He crossed himself. “Poveretto! Dio vi benedica!”
As Olive left the sacristy a tall man came across the aisle towards her. It was Prince Tor di Rocca.
“This is a great pleasure,” he said. “But not to you, I am afraid. You are not glad to see me.”
“I am surprised. I—do you often come into churches?”
He laughed. “I sometimes follow women in. I saw you coming up the steps just now. You are right in supposing that I am not devout. I want to speak to you. Shall we go out?”
She looked for a way of escape but saw none.
“If—very well,” she said rather helplessly.
The hunchback woman at the south door watched them expectantly as they came towards her, and she brightened as she saw the man’s hand go to his pocket. He threw her a piece of silver as they passed out. He was in a good humour, his fine lips smiling, a glinting zest in his insolent eyes. He thought he understood women, and he had in fact made a one-sided study of the sex. He had seen their ways of loving, he had listened to the beating of their hearts; but of their endurance, their long patience, their daily life he knew nothing. He was like a man who often wears a bunch of violets in his coat until they fade, and yet has never seen, or cared to see them, growing sparsely, small and sweet, half hidden in leaves on a mossy bank by the stream.