He would, of the two, have preferred that she had not followed him, that he had been given five more minutes to himself; but he naturally does not say so.
"Since we are here, shall we go into the cloisters?" and he assents.
A small Dominican monk, with a smile and a bunch of keys, is opening a door to some strangers, prowling like our friends about the church. The latter follow, the little monk enveloping them too in his civil smile. Down some steps into the great cloister, under whose arches pale frescoes cover the ancient walls—where in Florence are there not frescoes?—and the hands that painted them seem all to have wielded their brushes in that astounding fifteenth century, which was to Florence's life what May is to Italy's year. For some moments they stand silent, side by side, perhaps picking out familiar scenes from among the sweet faded groups—a slim Rebecca listening to Eliezar's tale, and looking maiden pleasure at his gifts; a shivering Adam and Eve chased out of Paradise; an Adam and Eve dismally digging and stitching respectively; Old Testament stories that time has blurred, that weather—even in this dry air—has rubbed out and bedimmed, and that yet, in many cases, still tell their curious faint tale decipherably.
"Good news this evening, I hope?" says Mrs. Byng presently, growing a little tired of her companion's taciturnity, being indeed always one of those persons who are of opinion that the gold of which silence is said to be made has a good deal of alloy in it.
"I am to see her to-morrow."
He speaks almost under his breath, either because he has no great confidence in his voice, if he employ a higher key, or because there seems to him a certain sanctity in this promised meeting on the kindly hither side of the grave which has so lately yawned.
Mrs. Byng is much too old and intimate a friend of Jim's not to have been pretty well aware of the state of his feelings during the past eight years, though certainly not through any communication from him. So it is, perhaps, scarcely to be wondered at that she presently says, in a tone tinged with admiring surprise:
"How fond you are of her!"
He receives the remark in a jarred silence, his eye resting on the square of neglected graves in the middle of the cloister, how unlike our turfy quads and lawns. A commonplace nineteenth century photographer, with his vulgar camera planted on the time-worn stones, is evidently trying to persuade the little monk to pose for his picture. The gentle-looking Fra laughs, and draws up his cowl, then lowers it again, folding his arms, and trying various postures.
"You are so much fonder of her than you were!"