The fashion of their tatters
fascinated her; she stood gazing at them in a sort of terrified pity,
and could not be induced to look at anything else. Rowland went back to
Miss Garland and sat down beside her.
"Well, what do you think of Europe?" he asked, smiling.
"I think it 's horrible!" she said abruptly.
"Horrible?"
"I feel so strangely--I could almost cry."
"How is it that you feel?"
"So sorry for the poor past, that seems to have died here, in my heart,
in an hour!"
"But, surely, you 're pleased--you 're interested."
"I am overwhelmed. Here in a single hour, everything is changed. It is
as if a wall in my mind had been knocked down at a stroke. Before me
lies an immense new world, and it makes the old one, the poor little
narrow, familiar one I have always known, seem pitiful."
"But you did n't come to Rome to keep your eyes fastened on that narrow
little world. Forget it, turn your back on it, and enjoy all this."
"I want to enjoy it; but as I sat here just now, looking up at that
golden mist in the dome, I seemed to see in it the vague shapes of
certain people and things at home.
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