will not accept you. And if you tell her, and she does not
accept you, she will not allow you to see her any more, you
will be exiled from her presence. And I thought, you did not
wish to be exiled from her presence, You would stake, then,
this great privilege, the privilege of seeing her, of knowing
her, upon a. chance that has a thousand to one against it.
You make light of the conventional barriers--but the principal
barrier of them all, you are forgetting. She is a Roman
Catholic, and a devout one. Marry a Protestant? She would as
soon think of marrying a Paynim Turk."

In the end, no doubt, a kind of exhaustion followed upon his
excitement. Questions and answers suspended themselves; and he
could only look up towards Ventirose, and dumbly wish that he
was there. The distance was so trifling--in five minutes he
could traverse it--the law seemed absurd and arbitrary, which
condemned him to sit apart, free only to look and wish.

It was in this condition of mind that Marietta found him, when
she came to announce dinner.

Peter gave himself a shake. The sight of the brown old woman,
with her homely, friendly face, brought him back to small
things, to actual things; and that, if it was n't a comfort,
was, at any rate, a relief.

"Dinner?" he questioned. "Do peris at the gates of Eden DINE?"

"The soup is on the table," said Marietta.