killed--dying, and behold they live'--let the puny sons of modern Italy
rage and struggle as they may. He--one of the most thorough sceptics of
his day, as she had good reason to know--she, a woman who had at one time
ceased to believe because of an intolerable anguish, and was now only
creeping slowly back to faith, to hope, because--because--

Ah!--with a little shiver, she recalled her thought, as a falconer
might his bird, before it struck. Oh! this old, old Europe, with its
complexities, its manifold currents and impulses, every human being
an embodied contradiction--no simplicity, no wholeness anywhere--none
possible!

She opened her eyes languidly, and they rested on Lucy Foster's head and
profile bent over her book. Mrs. Burgoyne's mind filled with a sudden
amused pity for the girl's rawness and ignorance. She seemed the fitting
type of a young crude race with all its lessons to learn; that saw nothing
absurd in its Methodists and Universalists and the rest--confident, as a
child is, in its cries and whims and prejudices. The American girl, fresh
from her wilds, and doubtful whether she would go to see the Pope in St.
Peter's, lest she should have to bow the knee to Antichrist--the image
delighted the mind of the elder woman. She played with it, finding fresh
mock at every turn.

* * * * *

'Eleanor!--now I have rewritten it. Tell me how it runs.'

Lucy Poster looked up. She saw that Mr. Manisty, carrying a sheaf of papers
in his hand, had thrown himself into a chair behind Mrs. Burgoyne. His look
was strenuous and absorbed, his tumbling black hair had fallen forward as