oung men, and their heads moved uneasily
on the tops of their high collars, until they were able to get away from
her.

Guido saw how they left her, with a discomfited expression, and as if
they had suddenly acquired the conviction that their clothes did not fit
them, for that is generally the first sensation experienced by a very
well-dressed young man when he has been made to feel that he is foolish.
Guido saw, and understood, and he was worldly wise enough to know that
unless Cecilia would show a little more willingness to seem pleased, she
would presently be sitting alone on a sofa, waiting for her mother to go
home. As soon as this inevitable result followed, he sat down beside
her. She turned her face slowly, when he had settled himself, and she
looked at him with slightly bent head, a little upwards, from under her
lids. The light that fell from a shaded lamp above her marked the sharp
curve of arching brows sharply against the warm shadow over the deep-set
and widely opened eyes.

For a few seconds Guido returned the steady gaze, before he spoke.

"Are you the Sphinx?" he asked suddenly. "Have you come to life again to
ask men your riddle?"

"I ask it of myself," she answered softly, and then looked away. "I
cannot answer it."

"Are you good or evil?" Guido asked, speaking again.

The questions came to his lips as if some one else were asking them with
his voice.

"Good--I think," answered the young girl, motionless beside him. "But I
might be very bad."

"What is the riddle?" Guido enquired, and now he felt that he was
speaking out of his own curiosity, and not as the mouthpiece of some one
in a dream. "Do you ask yourself what it all means? I suppose so. We all
ask that, and we never get any answer."

"It is too vague a question. It cannot have a definite answer. No. I ask
three questions which I found in a German book of philosophy when I was
a little girl. I tried hard to understand what all the rest of the book
was about, but I found on one page three questions, printed by
themselves. I can see the page now, and the questions were numbered one,
two, and three. I have asked them ever since."

"What were they?"

"They were these: 'What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I
hope?'"

"There would be everything in the answers," Guido said, "for they are
big questions. I think I have answered them all in the negative in my
own life. I know nothing, I do nothing, and I hope nothing."

Cecili