Whether it is one that tacitly concedes to the Roman Church the monopoly of a guarantee of immortality, so that if one is indisposed to bargain with her for the precious gift, one must do without it altogether; or whether in an atmosphere so heavily weighted with echoes and memories one grows to believe that there is nothing in one's consciousness that is not foredoomed to moulder and crumble and become dust for the feet, and possible malaria for the lungs, of future generations--the fact at least remains that one parts half-willingly with one's hopes in Rome, and misses them only under some very exceptional stress of circumstance.

For this reason one may perhaps say that there is no other place in which one's daily temper has such a mellow serenity, and none, at the same time, in which acute attacks of depression are more intolerable.

Rowland found, in fact, a perfect response to his prevision that to live in Rome was an education to one's senses and one's imagination, but he sometimes wondered whether this was not a questionable gain in case of one's not being prepared to live wholly by one's imagination and one's senses.

The tranquil profundity of his daily satisfaction seemed sometimes to turn, by a mysterious inward impulse, and face itself with questioning, admonishing, threatening eyes.

"But afterwards... ?" it seemed to ask, with a long reverberation; and he could give no answer but a shy affirmation that there was no such thing as afterwards, and a hope, divided against itself, that his actual way of life would last forever.
He often felt heavy-hearted; he was sombre without knowing why; there were no visible clouds in his heaven, but there were cloud-shadows on his mood.