Then in a few moments she half laughed, as if at some droll thought, and said, “But how could you drag me?  You are not nearly so big as I am.  The angels must have helped you;” and holding up the poor crushed asphodels, she went on:  “As soon as I came to myself, I saw the asphodels in my hand, and I said, ‘Asphodel for burial;’ and tried to throw them away, so that if Robert came he would not find me dead with them in my hand, for only yesterday he said to me, ’Please never pick an asphodel—­I can’t bear to see you touch one.’”

Slowly I soothed her and she recovered her color and strength.  The owner of the basin, followed by a half-dozen chattering vetturini, had climbed up to us, but we had peremptorily sent them all away.  It was evident that she was not seriously hurt.  The terror, rather than the fall, had caused her fainting.  It was probably a sudden dizziness which had come as she drew back and turned after picking the flowers.  Had she fallen in the act of picking them she must have been dashed to the ground below.  At the end of an hour she was so nearly well, that she walked slowly down the long stairs, leaning on my arm, and taking frequent rests by the way.  I was about to beckon to one of the vetturini, when she said, “Oh no! my own carriage is near here, up by the gate of the Palace of the Caesars.  I rambled on, without thinking at first of coming to the Coliseum:  it will do me good to walk back; every moment of the air makes me feel better.”

So we went slowly on, up the solemn hill, arm in arm like friends, sitting down now and then on old fallen columns to rest, and looking back at the silent, majestic ruins, which were brightened almost into a look of life under the vivid sun.  My companion spoke little; the reaction after her fearful shock had set in; but every few moments her beautiful eyes would fill with tears as she looked in my face and pressed my arm.  I left her at her apartment on the Via Felice; my own was a mile farther on, in the Piazza del Popolo, and I would not let her drive so far.

“It grieves me not to go with you to your door,” she said, as she bade me good-bye, “but I shall come and see you to-morrow and bring my husband.”

“No, you must not,” I replied.  “To-morrow you will be wise enough—­or, if you are not wise enough, you will be kind enough to me because I ask it—­to lie in bed all day, and I shall come very early in the morning to see how you are.”

She turned suddenly on the carriage-steps, and, leaning both her hands on my knees, exclaimed, in a voice full of emotion.

“Will you let me kiss you?  Not even my mother gave me what you have given.  For you have given me back life, when it was too infinitely precious to lose.  Surely you will not think me presuming?” and her cheek flushed a little.

“Presuming! my dear child, I loved you the first moment I saw you lying there on the stones; and I am almost old enough to be your mother, too,” I replied, and I kissed her sweet face warmly.