On the first Sunday afternoon following their return, on their going together to Saint Peter's, he delivered himself of a lyrical greeting to the great church and to the city in general, in a tone of voice so irrepressibly elevated that it rang through the nave in rather a scandalous fashion, and almost arrested a procession of canons who were marching across to the choir.

He began to model a new statue--a female figure, of which he had said nothing to Rowland.

It represented a woman, leaning lazily back in her chair, with her head drooping as if she were listening, a vague smile on her lips, and a pair of remarkably beautiful arms folded in her lap.

With rather less softness of contour, it would have resembled the noble statue of Agrippina in the Capitol.

Rowland looked at it and was not sure he liked it.