Never before had any one spoken to me as Mother Anastasia had just spoken. Never before had I felt as I felt in leaving the house where she had spoken to me. I did not admit all that she had said; and yet not even to myself could I gainsay her statements. I was not convinced that I had been wrong, but I could not help feeling that she was right. I was angry, I was mortified, I was grieved. The world seemed cold and dark, and the coldest and darkest thing in it was the figure of Mother Anastasia, as she rose to leave me.

When I reached New York, I bethought myself of my promise to Miss Laniston. It tortured my soul to think of what had happened; I knew it would torture it still more to talk of these things. But I am a man who keeps his promises; besides, I wanted to see Miss Laniston. I did not like her very much, but the people whom I did like seemed to be falling away from me, and she was a woman of vigorous spirit, to whom one in my plight would naturally turn. That she could give me any encouragement was not likely, but she might offer me an enheartening sympathy; and, moreover, she was well acquainted with Mother Anastasia, and there were a good many questions I wanted to ask about that lady.

I found Miss Laniston at home, but I was obliged to wait a good while before she made her appearance.

"If you were any other man in this world," she said, "I should have felt obliged to excuse myself from seeing you, for I am engaged on most important business with a modiste who is designing a gown for me; but I am perfectly wild to hear about your interview with Mother Anastasia, and I was afraid, if I sent you away, that you would not come back again; so tell me about it, I pray you. I know you have seen her, for you look so uncommonly glum. I am afraid that you have not yet become a brother of the House of Martha."

There was nothing inspiring about this badinage, but I braced myself to the work, and told her what had happened in Washington.

"This is truly dreadful," she declared. "Of course I had no idea that Mother Anastasia would consider your plan as anything more than the wild outreachings of a baffled lover, but I did not imagine that she would take it in this way. This is very bad."

"It is," I answered. "Everything is knocked from under me."

"Oh, bless you," said the lady, "I wasn\'t thinking of you, but of Mother Anastasia. It was the happiest news I can remember when I heard that she was soon to drop that name and all that belonged to it, and to begin a life in which she would be a woman among her peers, no matter with what sex they happen to be classed. But if she stops short and remains in that miserable House of Martha, the result is bound to be disastrous. If she believes it is necessary to spend her life in protecting Sylvia from your assaults, she is the woman to spend her life in that way."

"What her friends should do," said I, "is to convince her that it is not necessary."

Miss Laniston gazed upon me fixedly. "You think it would be a great pity for a beautiful woman—a remarkably fine woman like Mother Anastasia—to hide herself away in that make-believe convent?"

"Indeed I do," I answered, with animation.

"And since one fine woman is shut up for life in that prison, you think it a shame that another one should remain within its walls?"

I assented warmly.

"Now, then," remarked Miss Laniston, rising, "it is absolutely necessary for me to go to the Frenchwoman, who, I know, is fuming for me, and whose time is very precious. I shall be with you again in about twenty minutes, and during that time I wish you would make up your mind with whom you are in love,—Mother Anastasia or Sylvia Raynor. When that point is settled, we will see what can be done."

It was a man of a bewildered mind who was left alone in that drawing-room. I did not understand what had been said to me, but now that ideas of this kind had been put into words, there seemed to be a certain familiarity about them. How dared she speak to me in t............