he wondered at her stopping to talk. But you may imagine whether he
was glad or not to have an opportunity of speaking about something
besides Dante.

"Yes, signorina," he answered, "Professor Grandi says it was built for
public baths; but, of course, we all think it was a temple."

"Were you ever there at night?" asked she, indifferently, and the sun
through the window so played with her golden hair that Nino wondered
how she could ever think of night at all.

"At night, signorina? No indeed! What should I go there at night to
do, in the dark! I was never there at night."

"I will go there at night," she said briefly.

"Ah--you would have it lit up with torches, as they do the Coliseum?"

"No. Is there no moon in Italy, professore?"

"The moon, there is. But there is such a little hole in the top of the
Rotonda"--that is our Roman name for the Pantheon--"that it would be
very dark."

"Precisely," said she. "I will go there at night, and see the moon
shining through the hole in the dome."

"Eh," cried Nino laughing, "you will see the moon better outside in
the piazza. Why should you go inside, where you can see so little of
it?"