ago, ere you were born. From the very edge of death was your father
brought back to life and strength. He would have used that life and that
strength to cheat God of the price of His boon to me."

"And if," Fra Gervasio questioned almost fiercely, "Agostino in the end
should have no vocation, should have no call to such a life?"

She looked at him very wistfully, almost pityingly. "How should that be?"
she asked. "He was offered to God. And that God accepted the gift, He
showed when He gave Giovanni back to life. How, then, could it come to
pass that Agostino should have no call? Would God reject that which He had
accepted?"

Fra Gervasio rose again. "You go too deep for me, Madonna," he said
bitterly. "It is not for me to speak of my gifts save reverently and in
profound and humble gratitude for that grace by which God bestowed them
upon me. But I am accounted something of a casuist. I am a doctor of
theology and of canon law, and but for the weak state of my health I should
be sitting to-day in the chair of canon law at the University of Pavia.
And yet, Madonna, the things you tell me with such assurance make a mock of
everything I have ever learnt."

Even I, lad as I was, perceived the bitter irony in which he spoke. Not so
she. I vow she flushed under what she accounted his praise of her wisdom
and divine revelation; for vanity is the last human weakness to be
discarded. Then she seemed to recollect herself. She bowed her head very
reverently.

"It is God's grace that reveals to me the truth," she said.