caught in a mesh of darkness. It gave me a strange sensation, as
if I were not human at all, but an elfin spirit. I wonder why
these little things move me so deeply? It is because I have a
most 'unbalanced intellect,' I suppose." Then, looking out on
Florence, she cries, "God! how beautiful it is, and how glad I am
that I am alive to-day!" And she tells me that she is drinking
in the beauty like wine, "wine, golden and scented, and shining,
fit for the gods; and the gods have drunk it, the dead gods of
Etruria, two thousand years ago. Did I say dead? No, for the
gods are immortal, and one might still find them loitering in
some solitary dell on the grey hillsides of Fiesole. Have I seen
them? Yes, looking with dreaming eyes, I have found them sitting
under the olives, in their grave, strong, antique
beauty--Etruscan gods!"

In Italy she watches the faces of the monks, and at one moment
longs to attain to their peace by renunciation, longs for
Nirvana; "then, when one comes out again into the hot sunshine
that warms one's blood, and sees the eager hurrying faces of men
and women in the street, dramatic faces over which the disturbing
experiences of life have passed and left their symbols, one's
heart thrills up into one's throat. No, no, no, a thousand times
no! how can one deliberately renounce this coloured, unquiet,
fiery human life of the earth?" And, all the time, her subtle
criticism is alert, and this woman of the East marvels at the
women of the West, "the beautiful worldly women of the West,"
whom she sees walking in the Cascine, "taking the air so
consciously attractive in their brilliant toilettes, in the
brilliant coquetry of their manner!" She finds them "a little
incomprehensible," "profound artists in all the subtle