,
and died rather than yield. It was all very fine to talk of a
minute of weakness--mere weakness of bodily will, not of virtue,
but the world splits no straws of that sort. If a woman has fallen
she has fallen, and there is no question of body or soul.

"Oh dear, how she cried! When I caught sight of her red eyes, I
felt she ought to get herself forgiven. And after all I'm not so
sure that she should tell her husband, seeing that it would so
shock and hurt him. She thinks that after one has done wrong the
best thing to do next is to say nothing about it. There _is_
something in that, isn't there?

"One thing I must say for the poor girl--she has been a different
woman since this happened. It has converted her. That's a shocking
thing to say, but it's true. I remember that when I was a girl in
the convent, and didn't go to mass because I hadn't been baptized
and it was agreed with the Baron that I shouldn't be, I used to
read in the Lives of the Saints that the darkest moments of 'the
drunkenness of sin' were the instants of salvation. Who knows?
Perhaps the very fact by which the world usually stamps a woman as
bad is in this case the fact of her conversion. As for my friend,
she used to be the vainest young thing in Rome, and now she cares
nothing for the world and its vanities.

"Two days hence my letter will fall into your hands--why can't I
do so too? Love me always. That will lift me up to your own level,
and prove that when you fell in love with me love wasn't quite
blind. I'm not so old and ugly as I was yesterday, and at all
events nobody could love you more. Good-night! I open my window to
say my last good-night to the stars over Monte Mario, for that's
where England is! How bright they are to-night! How beautiful!
ROMA."

VIII

Next morning the Countess was very ill, and Roma went to her
immediately.

"I must have a doctor," she said. "It's perfectly heartless to keep me
without one all this time."

"Aunt Betsy," said Roma, "you know quite well that but for your own
express prohibition you would have had a doctor all along."

"For mercy's sake, don't nag, but send for a doctor immediately. Let it
be Dr. Fedi. Everybody has Dr. Fedi now."

Fedi was the Pope's physician, and therefore the most c