adoration in his arms, and again their lips met in a long, passionate
kiss of love.

So it was settled, and Zuleika went to the convent school of the Sacred
Heart, feeling that her happiness was assured, but impatient of and
dissatisfied with the long delay that must necessarily intervene before
the realization of her hopes, the dawn of her woman's future.

The Viscount Massetti, though he had professed himself willing to wait,
was, on his side, thoroughly discontented with the arduous task he had
undertaken. It was one thing to make a rash promise in the heat of
enthusiasm, but quite another to keep it, especially when that promise
involved a separation from the lovely girl who had inextricably entwined
herself about the fibres of his heart and was the sole guiding star of
his life and love.

The convent school of the Sacred Heart was located in the convent of
that Sisterhood, about three miles beyond the Porta del Popolo on the
northern side of Rome. The convent was a spacious edifice, but gloomy
and forbidding, with the aspect of a prison. Narrow, barred windows,
like those of a dungeon of the middle ages, admitted the light from
without, furnishing a dim, restricted illumination that gave but little
evidence of the power and brilliancy of the orb of day. At night the
faint, sepulchral blaze of candles only served to make the darkness
palpable and more ghastly.

The huge school-room was as primitive and comfortless in its
appointments and furniture as well could be. The walls were of dressed
stone and loomed up bare and grisly to a lofty ceiling that was covered
with a perfect labyrinth of curiously carved beams, the work of some
unknown artist of long ago. The scholars' dormitories were narrow
cell-like affairs, scantily furnished, in which every light must be
extinguished at the hour of nine in the evening. Once admitted to the
school, the pupils were not permitted to leave its precincts save at
vacation or at the termination of their course of studies, a
circumstance that heartily disgusted the gay, light-hearted Italian
girls sent there to receive both mental and moral training. Another
source of grave vexation to them was the regulation, already alluded to,
that rigorously excluded all male visitors, with the exception of
parents or guardians.

Attached to the convent was an extensive garden, full of huge trees that
had, apparently, stood there for centuries, so bent, gnarled and aged
were they. An ancie