, for we must never meet again." She
reached the door, went down the stair, and, turning mechanically to the
right, found herself at last in the pavilion, where she leaned against
the parapet and looked into space. She had lost the capacity of
thinking.

It was fortunate the padre was so long delayed, for when he came up at
last with the signorine she had so far recovered herself as to be
standing upright, apparently absorbed in the view.

"I don't wonder this view has made you speechless," her friends called
out. "It is simply glorious."

"Yes," said the padre: "on these cliffs we seem on the brink of
eternity; down there among the morasses of the Maremma man cannot stay
his feet; and beyond is the sea."

"How beautiful the thought," said Julia, "that good men dying here have
no longer need to stay their feet! One step from these cliffs, and they
must be in heaven."

"Who knows, who knows," sighed the padre, "if any of us have found it
so? But now let us go to the library."

The signora followed them, since she could not do otherwise. They
stopped before the carved door, which the padre said was undoubtedly Fra
Giovanni's own work, and he pointed out the details of the beautiful
workmanship. At length he opened the door, which the signora felt sure
she had not closed. One glance around the hall showed her it was empty.

The padre was too much occupied with his emotions over the
scantily-supplied shelves, and the ladies with their surprise and
admiration, to notice her excited condition, which she at length
succeeded in quieting enough to hear the padre say, "They have taken our
precious manuscripts from us, dating as far back as the eleventh
century. Many of our order had spent their lives translating and copying
manuscripts, and our greatest loss is here. Fra Lorenzo is just now
translating some Latin chronicles of our first history into Italian. You
can see by his beautiful handwriting that he is a worthy disciple of his
learned predecessors. But how is this?"--as he searched among the rolls
of yellow parchment. "I see he has not yet commenced it." The old man
looked troubled, and, turning from the table, went on: "These carved
depositories for the choral-books, and the frescos at the head of the
stairs, are about all you can admire here now, except the architecture
of the hall."

The padre was very silent at dinner. He only said, noticing that the
signora ate nothing, "This will not do, my daughter. You lo