looked up.  It was not the ignoble old man who had admitted him, but a pale, gaunt personage, of a graver and more ascetic, and yet of a benignant, aspect.  Rowland’s face bore the traces of extreme trouble.  The frate kept his finger in his little book, and folded his arms picturesquely across his breast.  It can hardly be determined whether his attitude, as he bent his sympathetic Italian eye upon Rowland, was a happy accident or the result of an exquisite spiritual discernment.  To Rowland, at any rate, under the emotion of that moment, it seemed blessedly opportune.  He rose and approached the monk, and laid his hand on his arm.

“My brother,” he said, “did you ever see the Devil?”

The frate gazed, gravely, and crossed himself.  “Heaven forbid!”

“He was here,” Rowland went on, “here in this lovely garden, as he was once in Paradise, half an hour ago.  But have no fear; I drove him out.”  And Rowland stooped and picked up his hat, which had rolled away into a bed of cyclamen, in vague symbolism of an actual physical tussle.

“You have been tempted, my brother?” asked the friar, tenderly.

“Hideously!”

“And you have resisted—­and conquered!”

“I believe I have conquered.”

“The blessed Saint Francis be praised!  It is well done.  If you like, we will offer a mass for you.”

“I am not a Catholic,” said Rowland.

The frate smiled with dignity.  “That is a reason the more.”

“But it ’s for you, then, to choose.  Shake hands with me,” Rowland added; “that will do as well; and suffer me, as I go out, to stop a moment in your chapel.”

They shook hands and separated.  The frate crossed himself, opened his book, and wandered away, in relief against the western sky.  Rowland passed back into the convent, and paused long enough in the chapel to look for the alms-box.  He had had what is vulgarly termed a great scare; he believed, very poignantly for the time, in the Devil, and he felt an irresistible need to subscribe to any institution which engaged to keep him at a distance.

The next day he returned to Rome, and the day afterwards he went in search of Roderick.  He found him on the Pincian with his back turned to the crowd, looking at the sunset.  “I went to Florence,” Rowland said, “and I thought of going farther; but I came back on purpose to give you another piece of advice.  Once more, you refuse to leave Rome?”

“Never!” said Roderick.

“The only chance that I see, then, of your reviving your sense of responsibility to—­to those various sacred things you have forgotten, is in sending for your mother to join you here.”

Roderick stared.  “For my mother?”

“For your mother—­and for Miss Garland.”

Roderick still stared; and then, slowly and faintly, his face flushed.  “For Mary Garland—­for my mother?” he repeated.  “Send for them?”

“Tell me this; I have often wondered, but till now I have forborne to ask.  You are still engaged to Miss Garland?”