Stone vases of magnificent design were placed at
regular intervals along the balustrade; and in the middle projection
of the terrace stood a hoary table with a broken porphyry plate,
suggestive of coffee and old-time costumes, and the ponderous gossip
of Roman grandees.
Cranbrook had walked for a while silently at Annunciata's side. He
was deeply impressed with all he saw, and yet a dreamy sense of their
unreality was gradually stealing over him. He imagined himself some
wonderful personage in an Eastern fairy-tale, and felt for the moment
as if he were moving in an animated chapter of the "Arabian Nights."
He had had little hesitation in asking Annunciata questions about
herself; they seemed both, somehow, raised above the petty etiquette
of mundane intercourse. She had confessed to him with an unthinking
directness which was extremely becoming to her, that her artistic
aspirations which he had found so mysterious were utterly destitute of
the ideal afflatus. She had, as a child, learned lace-making and
embroidery, and had earned many a _lira_ by adorning the precious
vestments of archbishops and cardinals. She was now making a design
for a tapestry, in which she meant to introduce the group from the
antique relief.
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