She asked fewer questions than before, and seemed to have lost heart for consulting guide-books and encyclopaedias.
From time to time, however, she uttered a deep, full murmur of gratification.

Florence in midsummer was perfectly void of travelers, and the dense little city gave forth its aesthetic aroma with a larger frankness, as the nightingale sings when the listeners have departed.
The churches were deliciously cool, but the gray streets were stifling, and the great, dove-tailed polygons of pavement as hot to the tread as molten lava.

Rowland, who suffered from intense heat, would have found all this uncomfortable in solitude; but Florence had never charmed him so completely as during these midsummer strolls with his preoccupied companion.

One evening they had arranged to go on the morrow to the Academy.

Miss Garland kept her appointment, but as soon as she appeared, Rowland saw that something painful had befallen her.