ather. She sank to
it with a little sigh, and I leaned on the balustrade beside her and
slightly over her. And now I grew strangely bold.

"Set me some penance," I cried, "that shall make me worthy."

Again came that little fluttering, frightened glance.

"A penance?" quoth she. "I do not understand."

"All my life," I explained, "has been a vain striving after something
that eluded me. Once I deemed myself devout; and because I had sinned
and rendered myself unworthy, you found me a hermit on Monte Orsaro,
seeking by penance to restore myself to the estate from which I had
succumbed. That shrine was proved a blasphemy; and so the penance I had
done, the signs I believed I had received, were turned to mockery. It
was not there that I should save myself. One night I was told so in a
vision."

She gave an audible gasp, and looked at me so fearfully that I fell
silent, staring back at her.

"You knew!" I cried.

Long did her blue, slanting eyes meet my glance without wavering, as
never yet they had met it. She seemed to hesitate, and at the same time
openly to consider me.

"I know now," she breathed.

"What do you know?" My voice was tense with excitement.

"What was your vision?" she rejoined.

"Have I not told you? There appeared to me one who called me back to the
world; who assured me that there I should best serve God; who filled me
with the conviction that she needed me. She addressed me by name, and
spoke of a place of which I had never heard until that hour, but which
to-day I know."

"And you? And you?" she asked. "What answer did you make?"

"I called her by name, although until that hour I did not know it."

She bowed her head. Emotion set her all a-tremble.

"It is what I have so often wondered," she confessed, scarce above a
whisper. "And it is true--as true as it is strange!"

"True?" I echoed. "It was the only true miracle in that place of false
ones, and it was so clear a call of destiny that it decided me to return
to the world which I had abandoned. And yet I have since wondered why.
Here there seems to be no place for me any more than there was yonder.
I am devout again with a worldly devotion now, yet with a devotion that
must be Heaven-inspired, so pure and sweet it is. It has shut out from
me all the foulness of that past; and yet I am unworthy. And that is why
I cry to you to set me some penance ere I can make my prayer."

She could not understand me, nor did she. We were not as