ing into the fire with her foot on the grate. "And I think I shall also write to your father," she added.
"Papa would not object. He does no believe that he belongs to a chosen people."
Margaret Garrison stood for some time without speaking, her large and substantial figure looming black against the firelight as though in ominous protest against the untried; and Anne received an odd impression that on the other side of Marga ret, and with the firelight, were the safe, trusted things of her home, the comfort and security of its well-defined ideals against a historical back ground that was shallow, but of transparent clarity; and that behind Margaret, with herself, in the spa cious gloom of a Roman room, were the unknown things, the uncertain ideals, a life she believed to be disorderly under all its rigidity of etiquette; but a mystery and twilight with a flame at its heart.
"I cannot tell you why I feel so," said Mar garet, speaking from her world of the tried and the secure, "but I believe that for you to love and be loved by Gino Curatulo would be the greatest mis fortune that could happen to you."
"It might be so," said Anne slowly.
"Promise me then, that if you find yourself in danger of loving him, you will run away."
74
