“Beginning of July.”
“You’ll be there in the dead season.”
“I like Rome then. The heat doesn’t hurt me and I love the peace. Antiquity seems to descend upon the city in August, returning to its own when America is far away.”
Carey stared at him hard.
“A rising diplomatist oughtn’t to live in the past,” he said bluntly.
“I like ruins.”
“Unless they’re women.”
“If I loved a woman I could love her when she became what is called a ruin.”
“If you were an old man who had crumbled gradually with her.”
“As a young man, too. I was discussing—or rather flitting about, dinner-party fashion—that very subject to-night.”