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ARIADNE. 75see them even. No doubt all she ever saw indaylight orhi darkness was one face alone.It seemed to me asifthat journey would neverend;to meitwaslike ahorrible,distorteddream,a nightmare in which an appalling horror leanedfor everon my heart; all the splendours of earlyspring, of virgin snows,of clear blue ice, of fallingavalanche and glacier spread uponthe mountainside, and underneath in the deep valleysthe lovely light of the fresh green,and of thepurples and azuresmantling the rocks where thegentians blossomed — all these,Isay, only servedto heighten the ghostliness of that long passagethrough the slow short days back to my country.For despair went with me.But tardy and terrible though it was,it drewon towards its end before many suns had risenand set.Itis so beautiful, that highway to our Romeacross the land from Etrurian Arezzo; theUmbrian soil is rich and fresh, masses of oakclothe the hills,avenues of oak and beech andclumps of forest-trees shelter the cattle andbreakthe lines of olive and of vine; behind are the