d
failed him and he had given away all his fortune--scattered it, no one
knew how, as something that was quite useless--and then he died, alone
and broken-hearted."

That was the end of the Reverend Mother's narrative. She did not try to
explain or justify or condemn her own or her sister's conduct, neither
did she attempt to apply the moral of her story to my own circumstances.
She left me to do that for myself.

I had been spell-bound while she spoke, creeping closer and closer to
her until my head was on her breast.

For some time longer we sat like this in the soft Italian night, while
the fire-flies came out in clouds among the unseen flowers of the garden
and the dark air seemed to be alive with sparks of light.

When the time came to go to bed the Reverend Mother took me to my room,
and after some cheerful words she left me. But hardly had I lain down,
shaken to the heart's core by what I had heard, and telling myself that
the obedience of a daughter to her father, whatever he might demand of
her, was an everlasting and irreversible duty, imposed by no human
law-giver, and that marriage was a necessity, which was forced upon most
women by a mysterious and unyielding law of God, when the door opened
and the Reverend Mother, with a lamp in her hand, came in again.

"Mary," she said, "I forgot to tell you that I am leaving the Sacred
Heart. The Sisters of my old convent have asked me to go back as
Superior. I have obtained permission to do so and am going shortly, so
that in any case we should have been parted soon. It is the Convent
of. . . ."

Here she gave me the name of a private society of cloistered nuns in the
heart of Rome.

"I hope you will write to me as often as possible, and come to see me
whenever you can. . . . And if it should ever occur that . . . but no, I
will not think of that. Marriage is a sacred tie, too, and under proper
conditions God blesses and hallows it."

With that she left me in the darkness. The church bell was ringing, the
monks of the Passionist monastery were getting up for their midnight
offices.

TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER

A week later I was living with my father in the Hotel Europa on the edge
of the Piazza di Spagna.

He was kinder to me than he had ever been before, but he did not tell me
what the plans were which he had formed for my future, and I was left to
discover them for myself.

Our apartment was constantly visited by ecclesiastics--Monsignori,
Archb