ot reproach me. Your door is
never shut against the wretched. Let us sit up all night and talk."

"You may thank my position and my charity for your admission, Zeno,"
he said. "For the sake of the neighbors, I had rather you played the
fool in my study than upon my doorstep at this hour. Walk upstairs
quietly if you please. My housekeeper is a hard-working woman: the
little sleep she allows herself must not be disturbed."

"You have a noble heart, uncle. I shall creep like a mouse."

"This is my study," he said as we entered an ill-furnished den on the
second floor. "The only refreshment I can offer you, if you desire
any, is a bunch of raisins. The doctors have forbidden you to touch
stimulants, I believe."

"By heaven----!" He raised his finger. "Pardon me: I was wrong to
swear. But I had totally forgotten the doctors. At dinner I had a
bottle of Grave."

"Humph! You have no business to be traveling alone. Your mother
promised that Bushy should come over here with you."

"Pshaw! Bushy is not a man of feeling. Besides, he is a coward. He
refused to come with me because I purchased a revolver."

"He should have taken the revolver from you, and kept to his post."

"Why will you persist in treating me like a child, uncle? I am very
impressionable, I grant you; but I have gone around the world alone,
and do not need to be dry-nursed through a tour in Ireland."

"What do you intend to do during your stay here?"

I had no plans and instead of answering I shrugged my shoulders and
looked round the apartment. There was a statue of the Virgin upon my
uncle's desk. I looked at its face, as he was wont to look in the
midst of his labor. I saw there eternal peace. The air became luminous
with an infinite net-work of the jeweled rings of Paradise descending
in roseate clouds upon us.

"Uncle," I said, bursting into the sweetest tears I had ever shed, "my
wanderings are over. I will enter the Church, if you will help me. Let
us read together the third part of Faust; for I understand it at
last."

"Hush, man," he said, half rising with an expression of alarm.
"Control yourself."

"Do not let tears mislead you. I am calm and strong. Quick, let us
have Goethe:

Das Unbeschreibliche,
Hier ist gethan;
Das Ewig-Weibliche,
Zieht uns hinan."

"Come, come. Dry your eyes and be quiet. I have no library here."

"But I have--in my portmanteau at the hotel," I said, rising. "Let me
go for it. I will return