Yet so kind and kingly was the old man, there was no sign of homage she
would not have gladly paid him, if she had known how.

They emerged at last upon the stone terrace at the edge of the garden
looking out upon the Campagna.

'Ah! there it is!'--said the ambassador, and, walking to the corner of the
terrace, he pointed northwards.

And there--just caught between two stone pines--in the dim blue distance
rose the great dome.

'Doesn't it give you an emotion?' he said, smiling down upon her.--'When
I first stayed on these hills I wrote a poem about it--a very bad poem.
There's a kind of miracle in it, you know. Go where you will, that dome
follows you. Again and again, storm and mist may blot out the rest--that
remains. The peasants on these hills have a superstition about it. They
look for that dome as they look for the sun. When they can't see it, they
are unhappy--they expect some calamity.--It's a symbol, isn't it, an
idea?--and those are the things that touch us. I have a notion'--he turned
to her smiling, 'that it will come into Mr. Manisty's book?'

Their eyes met in a smiling assent.

"Well, there are symbols--and symbols. That dome makes my old heart beat
because it speaks of so much--half the history of our race. But looking
back--I remember another symbol--I was at Harvard in '69; and I remember
the first time I ever saw those tablets--you recollect--in the Memorial
Hall--to the Harvard men that fell in the war?"