iour, had made a painful impression upon
him, and when, with the evident intention of compelling his reverence,
she had told him of the miracles performed by the "Bambino," he had
only responded with an incredulous smile. She had sent him a long,
reproachful glance; then, as the tears rose to her eyes, she had
hurried away and he had not dared to follow her.

While pursuing these sombre meditations, Cranbrook was seated--or
rather buried--in a deep Roman easy-chair, whose faded tapestries
would have been esteemed a precious find by a relic-hunter. Judging by
the _baroque_ style of its decorations, its tarnished gilding, and its
general air _a la_ Pompadour, it was evident that it had spent its
youthful days in some princely palace of the last century, and had by
slow and gradual stages descended to its present lowly condition. A
curious sense of the evanescence of all earthly things stole over the
young man's mind, as his thoughts wandered from his own fortunes to
those of the venerable piece of furniture which was holding him in its
ample embrace. What did it matter in the end, he reasoned, whether he
married his Nausicaa or not? To marry a Nausicaa with grace was a feat
for the performance of which exceptional qualities were required. The
conjugal complement to a Nausicaa must be a man of ponderous presence
and statuesque demeanor--not a shrill and nervous modern like himself,
with second-rate physique, and a morbidly active intellect. No, it
mattered little what he did or left undone. The world would be no
better and no worse for anything he could do. Very likely, in the arms
of this chair where he was now sitting, a dozen Roman Romeos, in
powdered wigs and silk stockings, had pined for twice that number of
Roman Juliets; and now they were all dust, and the world was moving on
exactly as before. And yet in the depth of his being there was a voice
which protested against this hollow reasoning; he felt to himself
insincere and hypocritical; he dallied and played with his own
emotions. Every mood carried in itself a sub-consciousness of its
transitoriness.

The daylight had faded, and the first faint flush of the invisible
moon was pervading the air. The undulating ridge of the Sabine
mountains stood softly denned against the horizon, and here and there
a great, flat-topped stone pine was seen looming up along the edges
of the landscape. Cranbrook ate hurriedly the frugal dinner which was
served him from a neighboring