Vanno Della Robbia wished to think no more of the false stars that he had followed; for there was every reason now to believe them false stars. Yet something deep down in him refused to believe this; and he could not help thinking of them as before. But he would not give way to what seemed like weakness, and so he fought against the memory.

If he had come to Monte Carlo only for the sake of the girl, he would have left again next morning. Having come for other things, however, it would have been weaker to go than stay. His brother and sister-in-law had not arrived yet at their villa at Cap Martin, and were not due for some days, as Angelo had taken his bride to Ireland, to show her to a much loved cousin, the Duchess of Clare. Also there was the week of aviation, to which Vanno had been looking forward with interest during the voyage from Alexandria to Marseilles. A parachute which he had invented was to be used for the first time.

Though he could not help thinking of the eyes which haunted him with their lure of purity and innocence, he would not concern himself further with the comings and goings of Miss M. Grant of London. He went instead about his own affairs. He slept badly; but Vanno was accustomed to taking little sleep, therefore it did not occur to him to be tired because he woke finally at seven, after having lain awake till the ringing of Ste. Devote's five o'clock bells, down in the ravine. Instead, he felt a kind of burning energy which forced him to activity of some sort. After his cold bath he dressed quickly, and went out to walk, wishing himself back in the Libyan desert, where he had not seen or thought of any woman.

It was only half-past seven, and the sun was still low in the east, just rising above the mountains of Italy. It shone through a slit in two long purple clouds, and its shining lit the sea. Vanno ran down the steps to the Casino terrace, coming upon it near the clump of nymphlike palms, and the marble bust of Berlioz that Mary could see from her window. Hercules' Rock was on fire with sunrise, and the Prince's palace looked in the magic flame like a strange Valhalla.

Not a soul was to be seen, not even a gardener employed by the Casino, and all the watching eyes of the horned animal were asleep. Vanno stared at the great cream-white building with a brooding resentment, because of the influence which he believed it to exert over his clouded star. He fancied that she had been drawn here by its extraordinary magnetism which pulsed like electricity across Europe; and that, if she had not already been swept off her feet, soon she would be, and her soul drowned. To his own surprise, he could himself feel the mysterious power of the place. As he looked at the long windows framed in rose-red marble he remembered what his Arab friend, the astrologer in the desert, had said to him about this month of December.

"Could it be possible, if there were anything in the science of astrology," Vanno asked himself, "that the stars could rule the chances in a game of chance?" Vaguely he thought, with the mystic side of his nature, that to study, and prove or disprove this idea, might be interesting. But the side that was stern and ascetic thrust away the suggestion. He remembered the thousands of people who drifted here from all over the world, hoping for one reason or other to get the gold guarded by this big white dragon. Some perhaps believed in their stars; others had studied systems, and tried them on little roulette wheels at home; but nearly all went away defeated. The form of the long, high mountain called the TÊte de Chien looked to Vanno like a giant man lying face down in despair, the shape of his head, his back, and supine legs tragic in desperate abandon. "That's a symbol," Vanno said, half aloud, and felt no longer the strange pulling at his heartstrings which for a moment had drawn him, too, under the influence. He thought of himself as one of the few, the very few, people within a wide range of Monte Carlo for whom the Casino meant nothing. For surely there were few indeed. Even the peasants among the mountains owed their living indirectly to the Casino. Because of its existence they were able to command large prices for their fruit and flowers and vegetables, or anything they could produce which pleasure-lovers drawn by the Casino could possibly want. Over there on the Rock, where red roofs of houses crowded closely together, everybody lived in one way or other by the Casino. No one, Vanno had been told, who was not Monegasque by birth or nationalization was allowed to live on the Rock. Probably many of the croupiers in the Casino and their families had houses there, and perhaps many were shopkeepers down in the Condamine, where the cheap hotels and lodging-houses were. Few of those hotels, or the more luxurious ones at Monte Carlo itself, would exist if it were not for the Casino, and the whole Riviera would be less prosperous. But Vanno was persuaded that he cared nothing for the gold of the dragon.

Once before, when he was almost a boy, he had come here with his brother Angelo for a few days. They had gone to see the Prince, whose ancient family, the Grimaldis, was older and more important even than the house of Rienzi. Vanno had promised Angelo that he would call at the palace this time, and he decided to do so formally in the afternoon; the morning he resolved to spend in walking up to La Turbie and down again. The exercise would clear his brain; and he fancied that he remembered the way well enough to find it again without asking directions.

There was something else he might do also, if there were time. A priest whom, as a boy, he had known well at Monte Della Robbia was now curÉ at Roquebrune. They corresponded, and in coming to the Riviera, Vanno had planned to look him up. He was in a mood to want a full day's programme.

In a few moments' walking he left Monte Carlo behind and came out upon the open hillside, where, above him, he saw the path leading skyward like an interminable staircase. Often as he mounted, bareheaded, his hat in his hand, he caught himself mentally trespassing on forbidden ground, thinking of his lost Giulietta, and wondering what she had been doing, every day and hour of her life since she was a child. He had never felt this pressing, insistent curiosity about any human being before. His thoughts followed the girl everywhere, wherever she might be; and something—the same Something which refused to disbelieve in her—seemed to know where she was at that moment, even how she looked, and what was in her soul, though his outer intelligence could see nothing. That rebellious Something longed to turn back toward Monte Carlo, to keep near her and guard her. It cried out strongly to do this, but Vanno would not listen. He sang to himself as he walked up the mule path among olive trees; and peasants coming down from the mountains, their nailed boots rattling on the cobblestones, were singing, too, strange wordless songs without tune, songs neither French nor Italian, but with a wild eastern lilt leaping out of their monotony, reminiscent of the days when Saracens ruled the coast. Some faces, too, were like the faces of eastern men, high featured, with enormous, flashing eyes. Here and there was one of a bold yet dreamy, gray-eyed, brown-haired type Vanno had not met before in any of his travels. He remembered that this country had belonged to the Ligurians before his ancestors, the Romans, took it after two hundred years' hard fighting: and types are persistent. He had heard that there were ruined Ligurian forts to be traced still, among the higher hills and mountains; and the monument of La Turbie, whither he was bound, was Augustus CÆsar's emblem of triumph over the Ligurian tribes.

The funicular was not running at this hour, and the white lacings of the Upper Corniche were empty save for a cart or two, bringing down loads of wallflower-tinted stone from some mountain quarry, for the building of a villa. Vanno had easily found his way on to a mule path, rough yet well kept, and ancient perhaps as the hidden Ligurian forts. Round him was the gray-green shimmer of olive trees, and their old, thick roots that crawled and climbed the rocks were like knotted snakes asleep. Bands of pines marched and mourned along the skyline, and in the midst of glittering laurels cypress trees stood up straight and black as burnt-out torches.

Clouds that had darkened the east when Vanno started veiled the sun now, like lazy eyelids. The gay glitter was gone from the world, and the sea was of a dull velvety gray, dappled with silver-gleams that sifted through holes in the clouds, making the water look like scales on a fish's back. Far below lay the strip of frivolous fairyland, all that most strangers know of the Riviera: the pleasure towns with their palms and tropical flowers, the decorated villas, to live in which Vanno thought would be like living in hollowed-out birthday cakes. And the soft, thoughtful grayness which was dimming the sunshine suited this different, higher world as well as it suited his mood. The loveliness of trees, and the pale splendour of mountain peaks carved in bas-relief against the pearl-gray sky, rang out to his soul like a chime of bells from a cathedral tower, giving him back the mastery of himself. It was good to be here, where there were no sounds except the voice of Nature, singing her eternal song, in the universal language, and where the life of man seemed as distant as the far-down windows that glittered mysteriously out of shadows, as the eyes of a cat glitter at night.

Inarticulate, enchanting whispers of the love and joy which have been in the world and may be again floated up to Vanno's imagination like the chanting of mermaids heard under the sea. He felt that, if he should meet his Giulietta now, he would believe in her, and his belief would make her worthy of itself, if she were not already worthy. "May the wings of our souls never fail us," he said aloud, as if it were a prayer.

Almost before the time when Vanno Della Robbia had known words enough to clothe his most childish thoughts, he had possessed an unknown land, a kingdom and a castle of his own more beautiful than sunset clouds. To this land he always travelled when he was alone, and often at night in dreams. It had been around him in the desert where his errand had been to study the eastern stars; and the observatory at Monte Della Robbia, built with money left him by his mother, was one gateway to that land. When he was in this secret kingdom he was brother to the stars. All knowledge came echoing through his soul, as if whispered to him by past selves, other incarnations of himself, who had gleaned it in their lives, from days when the world was young. He had a thousand souls, which had known great sorrows and joys and adventures. His blood seemed to smoke gold, like spray on rushing surf in sunshine. Never had he admitted any one he had known (except the people his own mind created for inhabitants of that kingdom) into his land; but now the girl whose name he scarcely knew stood at the door of the castle, asking to come in, saying with her eyes, which he had likened to stars, that she was the princess who had a right to live there. Hers was the face of his dream. She was the song of the mermaids. The voice he had heard—would always hear in the sea—spoke of her. She was the light of the morning. Hers the face in the sunrise, and the twilight. If he lost her, still her spirit would haunt him, in music, in all beauty, for she was the one woman, the ideal which is the heart of a man's heart. She must be worthy, because there was no other princess for this kingdom of his, east of the sun and west of the moon; and without her the rooms of the castle would hold only echoes.

Vanno would have died rather than speak out such thoughts to any one on earth, for they were the property of that self which his brother Angelo said was at war with the other self, the self which the world knew.

Now and then, as he walked up the mule path with a step which became lighter with the lightness of the air, he threw a word in Italian to a passing peasant, some Ligurian-looking man who drove a bright-coloured market garden ending in a donkey's head and tail. Eyes and teeth flashed comprehension, but the answer was in a queer patois, a hotch-potch of Latin, Italian, French, and Arabic.

On the top of the mountain Vanno breakfasted, at a pink hotel fantastically built in hybrid Moorish style. From his window-table he could see the Tour de Supplice on a height below; a broken column of stone said to mark the place where Romans tortured and executed their prisoners. Far beneath lay the Rock of Hercules and Monte Carlo, the four unequal horns of the great white animal springing saliently to the eye even at this height. To the right, the great iron-gray bulk of the TÊte de Chien hid the promontories which, like immense prehistoric reptiles, swam out to sea beyond Beaulieu; but to the left were the mountains of Italy, their highest ridges marbled with dazzling snow; and Cap Martin's green length was frilled with silver ripples.

Still Vanno was happy, as he had not been since he saw Mary dining alone in the restaurant of the HÔtel de Paris. He had made a plan for the next hours, which gave him hope for the future.

After breakfast, he walked into the gray and ancient mountain-village of La Turbie, whose old houses and walls of tunnelled streets were built from the wreckage of CÆsar's Trophy. Jewish faces peered at him from high, dark windows, for here it was that, in the Middle Ages, Jews fled from persecution, and made La Turbie a Jewish settlement. Even in the newer town of pink and blue and yellow houses there were Jewish faces to be seen in dusky shops where fruit was displayed for sale, in heaps like many-coloured jewels.

Just beyond the oldest outskirts Vanno came to the foot of the monument, unspeakably majestic still, though long ago stripped of its splendid marbles, and its statues that commemorated CÆsar's triumph. Men were working in the shadow of the vast column of stone and crumbling Roman brick, digging for lost knowledge in the form of broken inscriptions, hands and heads of statues, bits of carved cornice, and a hundred buried treasures by means of which the historical puzzle-picture might gradually be matched together. Vanno became interested, and spent an hour watching and talking to the superintendent of the work, a cultured archÆologist. When he began his descent of the mountain, a train on the funicular railroad was feeling its way cautiously down the steep mountainside, like a child on tiptoe. A little weak, irritable sniff came up from its engine as the toy train paused at one of the three stopping places below La Turbie. It was like a very young girl blowing her nose after crying.

Vanno did not go down to the low levels; but asking the way of an old peasant whose head was wrapped in a red handkerchief, he learned how to find the hill-village of Roquebrune, keeping to the mule paths. He had made up his mind to invite himself to lunch with his old friend the curÉ.

This was another world from the world of the Casino and shops and hotels. The very air was different; nimble, and crystal clean. All the perfumes were aromatic; balsam of pine, and the country sweetness of thyme and mint, the pure breath of nature. Sloping down the mountains eastward toward Italy and descending more than halfway from La Turbie, Vanno came to the rock-town with the ruined castle which Mary had looked up to from Monte Carlo in last night's sunset. It seemed to have slid from a taller height above, and to have been arrested by miracle before much harm was done; and Vanno remembered the curÉ's first letter which had told him the legend of the place: how Roquebrune in punishment for the sins of its inhabitants was shaken off its high eyrie by a great earthquake, but stopped on the shoulder of the mountain through intercession of the Virgin, the special patron sainte vierge of the district. The town and its dominating castle seen from below showed as if flattened against the mountain's breast; but coming into the place on foot, the mountain retired into the background, and the huge mediÆval ruin was sovereign lord of all.

The whole village had been made by robbing the castle of brick and stone, as La Turbie was built of the Trophy. The castle itself grew out of the rock, so that it was difficult to see where nature's work ended or men's began; and the old, old houses crowding up to and huddled against its foundations had cramped themselves into ledges and boulders like men making their last stand in a mountain battle. The streets were tunnels, with vistas of long, dark stone stairways running up and down into mystery. Here and there above secretive doorways were beautiful carvings set into the thick stone walls, relics of the castle's decorations. At sharp corners were tiny shops with dark interiors, and strange assortments of golden oranges, big pearly onions, ruby beets, and bright green, peasant pottery in low-browed windows and on uneven doorsteps. Dark Saracen eyes gleamed out of the cold shadows in tunnelled streets, seeming to warm them with their light; and as Vanno reached the tiny Place where towered a large, old church, the pavement was flooded by a wave of brown-faced boys and girls, laughing and shouting. School was just out; and behind the children followed a man in the black cassock of a priest. He was walking slowly, reading from a little book. Vanno stood still, with eagerness and affection in his eyes, and willed him to look up.

This man had been the Prince's tutor, after Vanno was six, until he had passed his tenth birthday. It was years now since they had seen each other, eight perhaps, for it must be as long ago that the curÉ had come back to visit Rome. But the cheery, intelligent dark face had not changed much, except that it was less round, and the silvering of the once black hair had spiritualized it strangely.

The wave of children, after glances thrown at the newcomer, had ebbed away in different directions. The little cobble-paved Place became suddenly still. The priest moved leisurely, reading his book. Then, when he was quite near Vanno, he suddenly lifted his thick black lashes as if a voice had called his name. His good brown eyes and sunburned face lit up as though in a flash of sunlight.

"Principino!" he exclaimed.

Vanno grasped both his hands, book and all.

"What a happy surprise!" cried the curÉ, in Italian, and Vanno answered in the same language.

"But you knew I was coming one of these days. You got my letter? And perhaps Angelo has written?"

"Yes. He has written. I am to take the second breakfast with him and his bride one day soon after they arrive at Cap Martin, and bless their villa for them. You see, he too remembers the poor old friend!" and the curÉ smiled, a charming smile, showing beautiful teeth, strong and white as a boy's. "He said you would meet him, for the week of the flying men, but that is not quite yet. And your letter said the same. I did not look for you till some days later."

"Well, here I am," cried Vanno. "I came only yesterday afternoon, and my first thought is for you, Father. You look just the same. It might be months instead of years since we saw each other last! Will you give me lunch? I had only a cup of coffee and a croissant at La Turbie, and I'm as hungry as a wolf."

"A wolf this shepherd is not afraid to let into his fold. Will I not give you lunch? Though, alas! not being prepared for an honoured guest, it will hardly be worth your eating. If you have changed, my Principino, it is for the better. From a youth you have become a man."

They walked together across the Place, Vanno very slim and tall beside the shorter, squarer figure of the man of fifty. Into the church the curÉ led the Prince, and through the cool, incense-laden dusk to a door standing wide open. Outside was a green brightness, which made the doorway in the twilit church look like a huge block of flawed emerald set into the wall.

"My garden," said the priest, speaking affectionately, as of a loved child. "I think, Principino, you would like your dÉjeuner in the grape arbour. It is only a little arbour, and the garden is small. But wait, you will see it has a charm that many grander gardens lack."

They stepped from the brown dusk of the church out into the bright picture of a garden, which seemed unreal, a little garden in a dream, as complete and perfect in its way, Vanno thought, as an old Persian prayer rug.

It was a tangle of orange and lemon trees, looped with garlands of roses and flowering creepers, carpeted with a thousand fragrant, old-fashioned flowers, and arboured with grapevines, whose last year's leaves, though sparse, were still russet and gold: altogether a mere bright ribbon of beauty pinned like a lover's knot on a high shoulder of jutting rock. Below fell a precipice, overhanging steep slopes of vineyard, or orange plantations that went sliding down toward the far-off level of the sea, and the world of the strangers. Above, towered the ruined castle, immensely tall, its foundation-stones bedded in dark rock and draped in ivy. In the little garden, the hum of bees among the flowers was like an echo of far off, fairy harps.

"I think I am dreaming this," said Vanno. And he added, to himself: "It's part of my kingdom, that I never saw before."

The curÉ laughed, delighted. "Luckily for me it is real," he said. "And now that you are in it, my Principino—my one-time pupil, my all-time friend—it is perfect. I should like you to love it. I should like—yes, I should like some great happiness to come into your life here. That is an odd fancy, isn't it? for the great happiness seems likely to be mine in having you with me. But the idea sprang into my mind."

"It is a good idea," said Vanno. "I should like it to come true. I have a favour to ask you, and perhaps—who knows?—your granting it may somehow bring the wish to pass."

A tiny figure of a woman—so old, so fragile as to look as if she were made of transparent porcelain—appeared as he spoke from an arbour at the far end of the little garden, an arbour whose grapevines hung bannerlike over the precipice. She had a dish in her minute, wrinkled hands, and was so surprised at sight of the tall young stranger that she nearly dropped it.

"My little housekeeper," explained the curÉ. "She comes to me for a few hours every day, to keep me fed and tidy; and she brings my meals here to the arbour when the weather is fine; for I never tire of the view, and it gives me an appetite that nothing else does."

"I see now why your letters have always been so happy," Vanno said, "and why, when it was offered, you refused promotion in order to stay here."

"Oh, yes, I am very happy, thank Heaven, and I do my best to make others so. God loves mirth. Dulness is of the devil! I love the place and the people, and the people love me, I trust," the curÉ answered, with a bright and curiously spiritual smile which transfigured the sunburned face. "You have no idea, my Principino, of the thousand interests we have here in this little mountain village. Once it was of great importance. An English king came in the fourteenth century to visit the Lascaris family at the castle. Those down below hardly know of its existence, even those who come back year after year, but Roquebrune and my garden are world enough for me. Is breakfast ready, Mademoiselle Luciola? Thanks; we will begin as soon as you have brought things to lay another place. Is that not a good name for the wee body—Firefly? Oh, but you should see our fireflies here in May, when the Riviera is supposed to be wiped off the map, not existent till winter. And the glow-worms. I have three in my garden. No garden is complete without at least one glow-worm. I had to beg my first from a neighbour."

"I should like to live up here, and be your neighbour, and cultivate glow-worms," said Vanno, as his host guided him along a narrow path which led between flower-beds to the arbour.

"Why not?" cried the priest, enraptured. "You could buy beautiful land, a plateau of orange trees and olives, carpeted with violets—the petite campagne I spoke of. You could build a villa, small enough to shut up and put to sleep when you tired of it. We would be your caretakers, the old Mademoiselle and I."

"Would you have me live in my villa alone?" Vanno smiled.

The curÉ looked merrily sly. "Why not with a bride?" he ventured. "Why not follow your brother Angelo's example?"

"I must see his bride first, to judge whether his example is worth following. We haven't met yet."

"Ah," exclaimed the priest, "that reminds me of rather a strange thing! There came a lady here—but I will tell you, Principino, while we lunch."

Beaming with pleasure in his hospitality, the curÉ ushered his guest into the arbour, which, like a seabird's nest, almost overhung the cliff. Under shelter of the thick old grapevine and a pink cataract of roses, a common deal table was spread with coarse but spotless damask. In a green saucer of peasant ware, one huge pink rose floated in water. The effect was more charming than any bouquet. There was nothing to eat but brown bread with creamy cheese, and grapes of a curious colour like amber and amethysts melted and run together; yet to Vanno it seemed a feast.

The curÉ explained that the grapes had been grown on this arbour, and that he had them to eat and to give away, all winter. When the porcelain doll of a woman came back, she brought a bottle of home-made wine for Vanno, and some little sponge cakes. But when the Prince said that in England such cakes were named "lady fingers," the curÉ laughed gayly, and pretended to be horrified. This brought him back to his story, which, in the excitement of helping his guest to food, he had almost forgotten.

"I was going to tell you," he went on, "of a strange thing, and a lady unknown to me, who called here. She was from England, I should say."

Vanno's heart gave a quick throb. "Could it be possible?" he wondered, "Was she young and beautiful?" he asked aloud. But the answer dashed his rather childish hope.

"Not beautiful, and not a girl, but young still. 'Striking' would be the word to express her. And her age, about thirty."

Vanno lost interest. "Why was it so strange that she should call?" he inquired. "People must find their way here sometimes; even those who haven't you for a friend."

"Yes, sometimes; and I am glad to see them. This was strange only because the lady knew that I was a friend of your family. She came because of that, and put a great many questions; but she refused to tell her name. She said it was not necessary to mention it."

Interest came back again in a degree. "What was she like?" the Prince wanted to know.

The curÉ thought for a moment, and answered slowly. "I can see her still," he said, "because there was something different about her from any one else I ever saw. As she came toward me in the Place, where you and I met, she looked like a statue moving, her face was so white, and her eyes seemed to be white, too, like the eyes of a statue. But when she drew nearer, I saw that they were a pale, whitish blue, rimmed with thin lines of black. There was very little colour in her lips or in her light brown hair, and she had on a gray hat and travelling dress."

"Idina Bland!" Vanno exclaimed.

"You recognize the lady from my description?"

"Yes. What you say about her eyes is unmistakable. She's a distant cousin of ours—on our mother's side: Irish, from the north of Ireland; but she has lived a good deal in America with my mother's brother and sister. She has no nearer relatives than ourselves, and for three winters she was in Rome—oh, long after you went away. I thought she was in America now. I wonder——" He broke off abruptly, and his face was troubled. "What questions did she ask you?" he went on. "Were they about—my brother?"

"Yes. She wished to know if I could tell her just when he was expected with his bride, and what would be their address when they arrived. I had the impression from something she said that she had heard about me from you."

"I don't remember," said Vanno. "I may have mentioned to her that we had a friend, a curÉ near Monte Carlo. She has a singularly good memory. She never forgets—or forgives," he added, half under his breath. "When did she come here?"

"The day before yesterday it was, Principino."

"Did she say whether she was staying in the neighbourhood?"

"No, she said nothing about herself, except that she had known your family well for years."

"And about Angelo—what?"

"Nothing, except the questions. She wanted me to tell her whether I had ever met or heard anything of his bride."

"I suppose you didn't give her much satisfaction?"

"Not much, my Principino. I could not, if I would. But I did say that I believed they were expected in ten days or a fortnight. I hope I was not indiscreet?"

"Not at all. Only—but it doesn't matter."

"Then, if it doesn't matter, let us turn to a subject nearer our hearts. The favour you wished to ask? Which you may consider granted."

After all, it was not quite as easy to explain as Vanno had thought, in his moments of exaltation on the mountain. But he was still determined to carry out his plan.

"You know, Father, when I was a little boy I used to talk with you about what I should do when I grew up, and how I should never fall in love with any girl, no matter how beautiful, unless she had eyes like my favourite stars? How you used to laugh about those 'eyes like stars!' Yesterday I saw a girl in a train at Marseilles. I got into the train, meaning to follow her, no matter how far. It was not like me to do that."

"Pardon me. I think it was," chuckled the curÉ. "You would always act on impulse, you man of fire—and ice."

"Well, she got off at Monte Carlo, where I myself wanted to stop. I thought that was great luck, at first. I turned over in my mind ways of making her acquaintance. I believed it would be hard to do, but I meant to do it. Now, I'm not sure—not sure of anything about her. I'm not even sure whether I want to know her or not. The favour I have to ask is, that you help me to judge—and help her, if you have to judge harshly."

"I?"

"Yes, you, Father. If she needs help, I'm not the one to help her. But you could do it." And Vanno plunged deeper into explanations, warming with his story and forgetting his first shy stiffness.

As he talked, the curÉ's gaze dwelt on him affectionately, appreciatively. He admired the clear look and its fire of noble purity, not often seen, he feared, on the face of a young man brought up to believe the world at his feet. He admired the dark eyes, profound as the African nights they had loved. He noted the rich brown of the swarthy young face, clear as the profile on old Roman coins, and thought, as he had thought before, that Murillo would have liked to paint that colouring. He approved his Prince's way of speaking, when he lost self-consciousness and his gestures became free and winged. "How his mother would have loved him as he is now, if she had lived," the priest thought, remembering the warm-hearted Irish-American girl, whose impulses had been held down by the sombre asceticism of her husband, which increased with years. No wonder Prince Vanno was his father's favourite! Angelo had written that the duke disapproved his marriage, but that Vanno when he had met the bride would "somehow make it all come right." It would be a terrible thing if this younger son should fall in love with the wrong woman; but it was too early yet to begin preachings and warnings. The curÉ's kind heart gave him great tact.

"I am to go downstairs and look at this lady, then?" he said.

"Downstairs?"

"Only my expression for going down there. I always say that I live upstairs, here at Roquebrune. And I like the upstairs life best."

"Well, you must come down and dine with me, anyhow. Then you will see her, and tell me what you think."

The curÉ broke into a laugh, like a boy's. "Me dine at your HÔtel de Paris, my son? That is a funny thought. You're inconsistent. If you think it unsuitable for a lady alone, what about me, a poor country priest from the mountains?"

"You wouldn't be alone. And you're a man. Besides, it's a good object. When you've seen her, you must make acquaintance with her somehow. I won't do it. Not while I doubt her."

"Hm! My Principino, you don't know what you are asking me. I am a priest."

"That's why I ask you. She's—I'll tell you, Father, if she goes on winning money, you can write to beg for your poor. Then, if she's charitable, she'll give, and come up to see your church."

"And you think the rest is simple! Well, for your sake I will do what I can."

"Will you dine with me to-night?"

"Impossible. I cannot leave the village for so much as an hour for the present. I am shepherd of a mountain flock, remember, and my first duty is to them. At any moment I may have a summons to one who is dying. A black sheep he has been perhaps, but all the more should he be washed white at the last. And I must hold myself ready to give him the extreme unction when I am sent for, if it be now or not till next week."

Vanno had set his heart upon his plan, and could hardly bear to have it indefinitely postponed; but he had learned through old experience that his good friend was not one to be persuaded from duty.

"You'll let me know the moment you're free, in any case," he urged.

"That very moment. But, meanwhile, something may happen that will help you to judge the lady for yourself—something definite."

"I should have judged her already, if it weren't for her eyes," Vanno said, with a sigh. "They have a look as if she'd just seen heaven! I can hardly tell you how, but they are different from all other women's eyes. They send out a ray of light, like an arrow to your heart."

"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed the priest.

"Don't laugh, Father. It's true, or I wouldn't have felt about her as I did from the first moment we looked at each other. She's beautiful, but I assure you it wasn't her beauty that made me follow her. It was something more mysterious than that. I swear to you, it was as if her eyes said to me, 'Why, here you are at last, you whom I've known since the beginning of things. I am the one you've waited for all your life.'"

"All your life! Twenty-seven years, is it not?"

"Twenty-nine this month, Father. I'm not a boy, and I've cared very much only for one woman. I wasn't twenty then, and it's partly her fault that it's hard for me to believe in others."

"That's scarcely fair to the others. One woman isn't all womanhood."

"Ah, it's odd you should have said that, for the thought in my mind has been that this girl—this girl who has a child's face, I tell you, Father—seems somehow to represent womanhood, the woman of all time: the type, you know, that no man can resist. There's a kind of divine softness about her which calls to all there is in one of manhood—or romance. I can't describe it."

"You have made me understand," the curÉ answered quietly. "And you have made me—for your sake—want to find out as soon as I possibly can what truth is under all this sweetness."

---