let us turn to a subject nearer our hearts.
The favour you wished to ask? Which you may consider granted."

After all, it was not quite as easy to explain as Vanno had thought, in
his moments of exaltation on the mountain. But he was still determined
to carry out his plan.

"You know, Father, when I was a little boy I used to talk with you about
what I should do when I grew up, and how I should never fall in love
with any girl, no matter how beautiful, unless she had eyes like my
favourite stars? How you used to laugh about those 'eyes like stars!'
Yesterday I saw a girl in a train at Marseilles. I got into the train,
meaning to follow her, no matter how far. It was not like me to do
that."

"Pardon me. I think it was," chuckled the cure. "You would always act on
impulse, you man of fire--and ice."

"Well, she got off at Monte Carlo, where I myself wanted to stop. I
thought that was great luck, at first. I turned over in my mind ways of
making her acquaintance. I believed it would be hard to do, but I meant
to do it. Now, I'm not sure--not sure of anything about her. I'm not
even sure whether I want to know her or not. The favour I have to ask
is, that you help me to judge--and help her, if you have to judge
harshly."

"I?"

"Yes, you, Father. If she needs help, I'm not the one to help her. But
you could do it." And Vanno plunged deeper into explanations, warming
with his story and forgetting his first shy stiffness.

As he talked, the cure's gaze dwelt on him affectionately,
appreciatively. He admired the clear look and its fire of noble purity,
not often seen, he feared, on the face of a young man brought up to
believe the world at his feet. He admired the dark eyes, profound as the
African nights they had loved. He noted the rich brown of the swarthy
young face, clear as the profile on old Roman coins, and thought, as he
had thought before, that Murillo would have liked to paint that
colouring. He approved his Prince's way of speaking, when he lost
self-consciousness and his gestures became free and winged. "How his
mother would have loved him as he is now, if she had lived," the priest
thought, remembering the warm-hearted Irish-American girl, whose
impulses had been held down by the sombre asceticism of her husband,
which increased with years. No wonder Prince Vanno was his father's
favourite! Angelo had written that the duke disapproved his marriage,
but that Vanno when he had met the bride would "someho