releasing it with a slight sigh, he said:

"Well, at any rate, though we part now it will not be for long. We
MUST meet again!"

"Why, if we must, we shall!" rejoined Heliobas cheerily. "MUST
cannot be prevented! In the mean time ... farewell!"

"Farewell!" and as this word was spoken their eyes met.
Instinctively and on a sudden impulse, Alwyn bowed his head in the
lowest and most reverential salutation he had perhaps ever made to
any creature of mortal mold, and as he did so Heliobas paused in
the act of turning away.

"Do you care for a blessing, gentle Skeptic!" he asked in a soft
tone that thrilled tenderly through the silence of the dimly-lit
chapel,--then, receiving no reply, he laid one hand gently on the
young man's dark, clustering curls, and with the other slowly
traced the sign of the cross upon the smooth, broad fairness of
his forehead.--"Take it, my son! ... the only blessing I can give
thee,--the blessing of the Cross of Christ, which in spite of thy
desertion claims thee, redeems thee, and will yet possess thee for
its own!"

And before Alwyn could recover from his astonishment sufficiently
to interrupt and repudiate this, to him, undesired form of
benediction, Heliobas had gone, and he was left alone. Lifting his
head he stared out into the further corridor, down which he just
perceived a distant glimmer of vanishing white robes,--and for a
moment he was filled with speechless indignation. It seemed to him