If that were not
enough to sate and enchant Herminia, she would indeed have been
difficult. And with Alan by her side, every joy was doubled.
She had never before known what it was to have her lover
continuously with her. And his aid in those long corridors, where
bambinos smiled down at her with childish lips, helped her
wondrously to understand in so short a time what they sought to
convey to her. Alan was steeped in Italy; he knew and entered into
the spirit of Tuscan art; and now for the first time Herminia found
herself face to face with a thoroughly new subject in which Alan
could be her teacher from the very beginning, as most men are
teachers to the women who depend upon them. This sense of support
and restfulness and clinging was fresh and delightful to her. It
is a woman's ancestral part to look up to the man; she is happiest
in doing it, and must long remain so; and Herminia was not sorry to
find herself in this so much a woman. She thought it delicious to
roam through the long halls of some great gallery with Alan, and
let him point out to her the pictures he loved best, explain their
peculiar merits, and show the subtle relation in which they stood
to the pictures that went before them and the pictures that came
after them, as well as to the other work of the same master or his
contemporaries.
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