' Ferrier
said nothing--stood there as meek as a lamb, listening to him--looking
straight at him. I nearly died of laughing behind them."
"Come here, Bobbie, you reprobate!" cried Chide from a distance. "Hold
your tongue, and bring me the guide-book."
Bobbie strolled off, laughing.
"Is it all a sham, then," said Diana, looking round her with a smile and
a sigh: "St. Francis--and the 'Fioretti'--and the 'Hymn to the Sun'? Has
it all ended in lazy monks--and hypocrisy?"
"Dante asked himself the same question eighty years after St. Francis's
death. Yet here is this divine church!"--Ferrier pointed to the frescoed
walls, the marvellous roof--"here is immortal art!--and here, in your
mind and in mine, after six hundred years, is a memory--an
emotion--which, but for St. Francis, had never been; by which indeed we
judge his degenerate sons. Is that not achievement enough--for one
child of man?"
"Six hundred years hence what modern will be as much alive as St.
Francis is now?" Diana wondered, as they strolled on.
He turned a quiet gaze upon her.
"Darwin? At least I throw it out."
"Darwin!" Her voice showed doubt--the natural demur of her young
ignorance and idealism.
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