“How can I?  You must think for me.”

A hasty consultation.  The count was standing where I had left him:  “We shall be at the Sistine Chapel to-morrow at two o’clock.”

He bowed and was gone.

I did not sleep well that night.  A pretty person I am to take charge of a young girl!  I wonder what Mr. St. Clair would think if he knew I had made an appointment for his daughter to meet a young Spaniard?  On the way, however, I admonished Helen, as if no misgiving of my own wisdom had ever crossed my mind:  “You must be firm with him.  Tell him so decidedly that he cannot doubt you really mean it.”

“Yes,” said she, “but I do dread it so.  I can’t bear his thinking that I encouraged him.”

“Then you did?”

“I didn’t mean to, but I do like him; and I didn’t think of his taking it so to heart.  Men are so strange!  You think you have a charming friend, and then they will go on just so, boys and all, and you have to take them or lose them; and you can’t take them.  It is too bad!”

We were at the door.  The keeper opened it, and there stood the count waiting for us.  It was not the first time we had been in the wonderful chapel.  Fortunately, there were very few persons there on this afternoon—­none that we knew.  I sat down to look at the grand frescoes:  Helen and the count walked on to the farthest corner.  I looked at the Cumaean Sibyl, the impersonation of age and wisdom, and wished, as I glanced at the youthful figures talking so earnestly in the distance, but not a murmur of whose voices reached my ear, that she would impart to me her far-reaching vision of futurity.  I gazed on the image of the Eternal Father sweeping in majestic flight through the air, bearing the angels on His floating garment as He divides the light from the darkness.  I saw Adam, glad with new life, rising from the earth, because the outstretched finger of his Creator gave him a conscious strength.  I looked at “The Last Judgment,” grown dim with years, till every figure started out in intensity of life, and it seemed as if the faces would haunt me for ever.

And yonder still progressed the old, ever-new drama of love and anguish, with its two actors, who seemed scarcely to have changed their position or taken their eyes from each other.  At length they walked slowly toward me with more serenity of aspect than I had dared to hope.

“Shall we go into the picture-gallery?” asked the count.

“I think we may have time to walk through it,” I answered.  “It is half-past three.”

“Is it possible that we have kept you waiting so long?” they asked simultaneously.

“An hour and a half is a short time in a place like the Sistine Chapel,” I remarked sententiously.

As soon as we were alone I drew Helen to the confessional:  “Did you tell him about Mr. Denham?”