om, with its rosy blood, waving palm-branch and golden crown,
is figured there. Life, and the joy of life, beauty so profuse that it
can afford to have a few blemishes like a slatternly Venus, and the
_dolce far niente_ of poverty that neither works nor starves,--they
lie all along the road.

Silvia was young, and had all her life looked forward to this journey.
She could not be quite indifferent. She looked and listened, though
all the time her heart was heavy for Claudio. They reached the gate of
St. John Lateran just as all the bells began to ring for the noon
_Angelus_, and in fifteen minutes were at the Signora Fantini's door
and Silvia in the kind lady's arms. It seemed to the girl that she had
found her mother again. That this lady was more gracious, graceful,
kind and beautiful than her mother had ever been she would not think.
She was simply another mother. And when Matteo had gone away home
again, not too soon, and when, after a few days' sightseeing, the
signora, suspecting that the continued sadness of her young guest had
some other cause than separation from her brother and sister, sought
persistently and artfully to win her secret, Silvia told her all with
many tears. She was going to be a nun because her mother had said that
she must--and she was willing to be a nun--certainly she was willing.
But, for all that, if it could have been so, she would have been so
happy with Claudio, and she never should be quite happy without him.

"Then you must not be a nun," the signora said decidedly. "The thing
is all wrong. You have no vocation. You should have said all this
before."

For already the signora had taken Silvia to see the Superior at Monte
Cavallo, who had promised to receive the young novice in three weeks,
and had told her what work she could perform in the convent. "You are
not strong, I think," she had said, "but you can knit the stockings.
All have to work."

And Monsignor Catinari, whose business it was to examine all
candidates for the conventual life, had held a long conversation with
her and gone away perfectly satisfied.

But when the signora proposed to undo all this, Silvia was wild with
terror. No, no, she would be a nun. Her mother had said so, she wished
it, and Matteo would kill her if she should refuse.

"Leave it all to me," the signora said, and laid her motherly hand on
the trembling little ones held out to her in entreaty. "We will look
out for that. Matteo shall not hurt you o