“Is it?” She took the little mandarin in her hand, but without examining him.  “I’ve no doubt you’ve been dreadfully worried about them—­papa’s clients, I mean.”

“W-well—­a little—­or, rather, not at all.  That is, I should have been worried if it hadn’t been for the conviction that something would look out for them.  Something always does, you know.”

The faint smile that seemed to have got frozen on her lips quivered piteously.  “I wish you could have that comfortable feeling about me.”

“Oh, I have.  That’ll be all right.  You’ll be taken care of from start to finish.  Don’t have a qualm of doubt about it.  There’s a whole host of ministering spirits—­angels some people call them—­I don’t say I should myself—­but there are legions of mighty influences appointed to wait on just such brave steps as you’re about to take.”

“That is, if I take them!”

“Oh, you’ll take ’em all right, dearie.  You’ll not be able to help it when you see just what they ought to be.  In a certain sense they’ll take you.  You’ll be passed along from point to point as safely as that bit of jade”—­he took the carving from between her fingers and held it up—­“as safely as that bit of jade has been transmitted from the quarries of Tibet to brighten my old eyes.  It’s run no end of risks, but the Angel of Beauty has watched over all its journeys.  It’s been in every sort of queer, mysterious place; it’s passed through the hands of mandarins, merchants, and slaves; it’s probably stood in palaces and been exposed in shops; it’s certainly come over mountains and down rivers and across seas; and yet here it is, as perfect as when some sallow-faced dwarf of a craftsman gave it the last touch of the tool a hundred years ago.  And that’s the way it’ll be with you, dearie.  You may go through some difficult places, but you’ll come out as unscathed as my little Chinaman.  The Street called Straight is often a crooked one; and yet it’s the surest and safest route we can take from point to point.”

* * * * *

As, a few minutes later, she hurried homeward, this mystical optimism was to her something like a rose to a sick man—­beautiful to contemplate, but of little practical application in alleviating pain.  Her mind turned away from it.  It turned away, too, from the pillar of cloud, of which the symbolism began to seem deceptive.  Under the stress of the moment the only vision to which she could attain was that of the Misses Rodman begging for the pitiful job of teaching Italian in a young ladies’ school.  She remembered them vaguely—­tall, scraggy, permanently girlish in dress and manner, and looking their true fifty only about the neck and eyes.  With their mother they lived in a pretty villa on the Poggio Imperiale, and had called on her occasionally when she passed through Florence.  The knowledge of being indebted to them, of having lived on their modest substance and reduced them to poverty, brought