They clambered down the terraced ravines sometimes, a day or two
later, to arid banks by a dry torrent's bed where Italian primroses
really grew, interspersed with tall grape-hyacinths, and scented
violets, and glossy cleft leaves of winter aconite. But even the
primroses were not the same thing to Herminia as those she used to
gather on the dewy slopes of the Redlands; they were so dry and
dust-grimed, and the path by the torrent's side was so distasteful
and unsavory. Bare white boughs of twisted fig-trees depressed
her. Besides, these hills were steep, and Herminia felt the
climbing. Nothing in city or suburbs attracted her soul. Etruscan
Volumnii, each lolling in white travertine on the sculptured lid of
his own sarcophagus urn, and all duly ranged in the twilight of
their tomb at their spectral banquet, stirred her heart but feebly.
St. Francis, Santa Chiara, fell flat on her English fancy. But as
for Alan, he revelled all day long in his native element. He
sketched every morning, among the huddled, strangled lanes;
sketched churches and monasteries, and portals of palazzi; sketched
mountains clear-cut in that pellucid air; till Herminia wondered
how he could sit so long in the broiling sun or keen wind on those
bare hillsides, or on broken brick parapets in those noisome
byways.
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