white doves flew and the bells of the Angelus rang. And the sun
dropped slowly into the west, crimson and glorious like the shining
rim of a Sacramental Cup held out and then drawn slowly back again
by angel hands within the Veil of Heaven.




VII.

Meanwhile, unconscious of the miracle his prayer had wrought,
Cardinal Bonpre and his young charge Manuel, arrived in Paris, and
drove from the station direct to a house situated near the Bois du
Boulogne, where the Cardinal's niece, Angela Sovrani, only daughter
of Prince Sovrani, and herself famous throughout Europe as a painter
of the highest promise, had a suite of rooms and studio, reserved
for her occasional visits to the French capital. Angela Sovrani was
a rare type of her sex,--unlike any other woman in the world, so
those who knew her best were wont to declare. Without being actually
beautiful, according to the accepted lines and canons of physical
perfection, she created around her an effect of beauty, which was
dazzling and exciting to a singular degree,--people who came once
within the charmed circle of her influence could never forget her,
and always spoke of her afterwards as a creature apart;--a "woman of
genius,--yes!"--they said, "But something more even than that." And
this "something more," was just the inexplicable part of her which
governed her whole being, and rendered her so indescribably
attractive. And she was not without beauty--or perhaps it should be
termed loveliness rather,--of an exquisitely suggestive kind, which
provoked the beholder into questioning where and how the glamour of