up and was taken by her uncle and aunt to the Vatican--and was
allowed to linger only in the parts which interested them.

"I never have had a taste for sculpture," Mrs. Ebley said. "People
may call it what names they please, but I consider it immoral and
indecent."

"A wonder to me," the Uncle Erasmus joined in, "that a prelate--
even a prelate of Rome--should have countenanced the housing of
all these unclothed marbles in his own private palace."

Stella Rawson stopped for a second in front of an archaic Apollo
of no great merit--because it reminded her of the unknown; and she
wished with all her might something new and swift and rushing
might come into her humdrum life.

After luncheon, for which they returned to the hotel, she wearily
went over to the writing-table in the corner of the hall to answer
her lover's chaste effusion--and saw that the low armchair beside
the escritoire was tenanted by a pair of long legs with singularly
fine silk socks showing upon singularly fine ankles--and a pair of
strong slender hands held a newspaper in front of the rest of the
body, concealing it all and the face. It was the English TIMES,
which, as everybody knows, could hide Gargantua himself.

She began her letter--and not a rustle disturbed her peace.

"Dearest Eustace," she had written, "we have arrived in Rome--"
and then she stopped, and fixed her eyes blankly upon the column
of births, marriages, and deaths. She was staring at it with