strength of their love of God.

There was in all this nothing that was new to me, nothing that I did not
freely accept and implicitly believe without pausing to judge or criticize.
And yet, it was shrewd of her to have plied me then as she did; for
thereby, beyond doubt, she checked me upon the point of self-questioning to
which that day's happenings were urging me, and she brought me once more
obediently to heel and caused me to fix my eyes more firmly than ever
beyond the things of this world and upon the glories of the next which I
was to make my goal and aim.

Thus came I back within the toils from which I had been for a moment
tempted to escape; and what is more, my imagination fired to some touch of
ecstasy by those tales of sainted martyrs, I returned willingly to the
pietistic thrall, to be held in it more firmly than ever yet before.

We parted as we always parted, and when I had kissed her cold hand I went
my way to bed. And if I knelt that night to pray that God might watch over
poor errant Falcone, it was to the end that Falcone might be brought to see
the sin and error of his ways and win to the grace of a happy death when
his hour came.




CHAPTER IV

LUISINA