her, and she felt suddenly that the talk which she had been looking forward to would be a failure, and she almost wished him out of her box.  Neither had spoken for some time, and, to break an awkward silence, she said that she had been that morning at St. Joseph’s.  He looked up; their eyes met unexpectedly, and she seemed to read an impertinence in his eyes; they seemed to say, “I wonder how you dared go there!” But his words contradicted the idea which she thought she had read in his eyes.  He asked her at once eagerly and sympathetically, if she had seen her father.  No, he was not there, and, growing suddenly shy, she sought to change the conversation.

“You are not a Roman Catholic, I think....  I know you were born a Catholic, but from something you said the other day I was led to think that you did not believe.”

“I cannot think what I could have said to give you such an idea.  Most people reproach me for believing too much.”

“The other day you spoke of the ancient gods Angus and Lir, and the great mother Dana, as of real gods.”

“Of course I spoke of them as real gods; I am a Celt, and they are real gods to me.”

Now his face had lighted up, and in clear, harmonious voice he was arguing that the gods of a nation cannot die to that nation until it be incorporated and lost in another nation.

“I don’t see how you reconcile Angus and Lir with Christianity, that is all.”

“But I don’t try to reconcile them; they do not need reconciliation; all the gods are part of one faith.”

“But what do you believe ... seriously?”

“Everything except Atheism, and unthinking contentment.  I believe in Christianity, but I am not so foolish as to limit myself to Christianity; I look upon Christianity as part of the truth, but not the whole truth.  There is a continuous revelation:  before Christ Buddha, before Buddha Krishna, who was crucified in mid-heaven, and the Gods of my race live too.”

She longed to ask Ulick so many questions that she could not frame one, so far had the idea of a continuous revelation carried her beyond the limits of her habitual thoughts; and while she was trying to think out his meaning in one direction, she lost a great deal of what he said subsequently, and her face wore an eager, puzzled and disappointed look.  That she should have been the subject of this young man’s thoughts, that she should have suggested his opera of Grania, and that he should have at last succeeded, by means of an old photograph, in imagining some sort of image of her, flattered her inmost vanity, and with still brightening eyes she hoped that he was not disappointed in her.

“When did you begin to write opera?  You must come to see me.  You will tell me about your opera, and we will go through the music.”

“Will you let me play my music to you?”

“Yes, I shall be delighted.”

At that moment she remarked that Ulick’s teeth were almost the most beautiful she had ever seen, and that they shone like snow in his dark face.