It was irresistible, though I had a humiliating sensation that she asked me only because there was no one else at hand. She broke away just when the delirium of enjoyment was at its height.

‘No longer!’ she cried. ‘Not a moment more! That was perfect. Good-night!’

She made me a tricksy sign of adieu with her fan, and tripped away; she could hardly help dancing as she moved.

I stood bewildered for a moment, then rushed to the door that I might see her as she passed to her carriage. She was leaning on her father’s arm as she went down the steps. The link-man raised his torch to guide them, and a sudden glare of light showed me the features of the Count.

I drew a long breath.

‘IT is as well that I am going to fight that man tomorrow,’ I thought. ‘If not, he would inevitably have been my father-in-law. In the first place, I have not enough to marry upon; in the second, we should have made the little thing miserable between us.’

The wind detached a fragment of her swansdown cloak. I stooped and picked it up.

Practically speaking, the disposition of my time had been in no degree influenced by the Count’s grotesque requirement. I had intended all along to stay at home until eight o’clock, to dine with the Princess X., to go to the dance, and to visit the dearest friend that I had in the world. He was a Dominican monk, of great learning and acuteness, resident in the monastery of S. Petrox, about half a mile off. We were old schoolfellows, and, though our ways of life were very different, he had never lost the ascendancy over me which, as a boy, he had understood how to gain.

He was busy reading when I entered his cell; he laid his finger on his lips, to show me that I must not interrupt him.

After a long pause, he closed the great volume reverently and asked me what I wanted at that time of night.

‘I want an immortal soul.’

‘Curious!’ he remarked, pushing his spectacles up on his forehead, ‘I have just been studying the question of the soul.’

‘Well! what is the result of your investigation?’

‘My friend,’ returned the Dominican, ‘what would it avail were I to tell you? I know your mind upon these subjects.’

‘That is more than I know myself, then—more than I should ever have wished to know but for a strange occurrence.’

I told him all the circumstances of my conversation with the Count—not mentioning his name, of course.

‘You have helped me at many a difficult pass before now,’ I said. ‘Help me again. Pour out the contents of that great volume upon my head!’

‘You would be as wise as you were before. I know you, amico mio. You own no teacher save experience.’

‘What is the experience that can make a man believe in that of which he has none? Tell me, that I may seek it.’