'But then, too, if I am not a Catholic--how far ought one to be taking
part--in--in what--'

'In what one disapproves?' said Mrs. Burgoyne, smiling. 'You would make the
world a little difficult, wouldn't you, if you were to arrange it on that
principle?'

She spoke in a dry, rather sharp voice, unlike that in which she had
hitherto addressed the new-comer. Lucy Foster looked at her with a
shrinking perplexity.

'It's best if we're all straightforward, isn't it?'--she said in a low
voice, and then, drawing towards her an illustrated magazine that lay on
the table near her she hurriedly buried herself in its pages.

* * * * *

Silence had fallen on the three ladies. Eleanor Burgoyne sat lost in
reverie, her fair head thrown back against her low chair.

She was thinking of her conversation with Edward Manisty on the
balcony--and of his book. That book indeed had for her a deep personal
significance. To think of it at all, was to be carried to the past, to feel
for the hundredth time the thrill of change and new birth.

When she joined them in Rome, in mid-winter, she had found Manisty
struggling with the first drafts of it,--full of yeasty ideas, full also of
doubts, confusions and discouragements. He had not been at all glad to see
his half-forgotten cousin--quite the contrary. As she had reminded him, she
had suffered much the same things at his hands that Miss Foster was likely