He blushed vividly.  “I haven’t decided on the name yet, but it can’t matter to you, as I do not expect you to buy the book when it comes out; nor need you be afraid that you will figure in the pages.  If I were to call my book ‘In Search of—­anything,’ it would be, ’In Search of Peace.’”

With this, the strange child rose from the table, and bowing, departed, leaving me lost in wonder at him.  He was but an infant, and an impertinent infant at that; yet suddenly I had had a glimpse through the great sea-blue eyes, of a soul, weary after some tragic experience.  At least this was the impression which flashed into my mind, with the one look I surprised before lashes hid its secret; but in a moment I was laughing at myself.  Ridiculous to have such a thought in connection with a slip of a boy, seventeen at most!  I lingered over my breakfast, so that the Brat have finished his sightseeing and got away, before my tour of the Hospice began.

He and I had had the table to ourselves at first, but I sat so long that others came in, evidently persons who had spent the night at the monastery.  There was a Russian family, of so many daughters that I wondered their parents had found names for them all; a couple of German women in plaid blouses so terrible that they set me speculating.  Had the material been chosen by their husbands, with the view of alienating all masculine admiration, as a Japanese girl, when married, blackens her teeth?  Or had the ladies inflicted the frightful things upon themselves, by way of penance for some grievous sin?  I should have liked to ask, especially as one of the wearers was very pretty, with a large, madonna loveliness.  But under my dreaming eyes, she began eating honey with her knife, and I sprang from the table hastily.  As I paused, I heard two stolid Cockneys asking each other why the—­dickens they had come to this “beastly, cold, God-forsaken hole, with nothing but a lot of ugly mountains to see.  There was better sport in Oxford Street.”  I should not have considered it murder if I had killed them where they sat, but I refrained, rather than soil my hands.  And after all, if a primrose on a river’s brim, but a yellow primrose was to them, what did it matter to me?

I visited the bibliotheque, which was haunted by a fragrance intoxicating to booklovers, of dead centuries, leather bindings, and parchment.  I saw the piano given by the King when he was Prince of Wales; the fine collection of coins and early Roman remains found in the neighbourhood of the monastery; I dropped a louis into the box of offerings in the chapel, and then was taken by a mild-eyed, frail-looking monk to see some of the rooms allotted to guests at the Hospice.  Seeing them, I was inclined to wish that I had pushed on through the darkness last night, and reached this mountain-top to sleep.  I liked the wainscoted walls, the white, canopied beds, but most of all, I liked the deep-set windows with their