l try not to be foolhardy. But you said something else
too, something about women. Don't you remember?"

She stopped, took his hands impulsively and pressed them.

"Father, I've scarcely ever been of any use all my life. I've scarcely
ever tried to be. Nothing within me said, 'You could be,' and if it had
I was so dulled by routine and sorrow that I don't think I should
have heard it. But here it is different. I am not dulled. I can hear.
And--suppose I can be of use for the first time! You wouldn't say to me,
'Don't try!' You couldn't say that?"

He stood holding her hands and looking into her face for a moment. Then
he said, half-humorously, half-sadly:

"My child, perhaps you know your own strength best. Perhaps your safest
spiritual director is your own heart. Who knows? But whether it be so or
not you will not take advice from me."

She knew that was true now and, for a moment, felt almost ashamed.

"Forgive me," she said. "But--it is strange, and may seem to you
ridiculous or even wrong--ever since I have been here I have felt as if
everything that happened had been arranged beforehand, as if it had to
happen. And I feel that, too, about the future."

"Count Anteoni's fatalism!" the priest said with a touch of impatient
irritation. "I know. It is the guiding spirit of this land. And you too
are going to be led by it. Take care! You have come to a land of fire,
and I think you are made of fire."

For a moment she saw a fanatical expression in his eyes. She thought of
it as the look of the monk crushed down within his soul. He opened his
lips again, as if to pour forth upon her a torrent of burning words. But
the look died away, and they parted quietly like two good friends. Yet,
as she went to the hotel, she knew that Father Roubier could not give
her the kind of help she wanted, and she even fancied that perhaps no
priest could. Her heart was in a turmoil, and she seemed to be in the
midst of a crowd.

Batouch was at the door, looking elaborately contrite and ready with
his lie. He had been seized with fever in the night, in token whereof he
held up hands which began to shake like wind-swept leaves. Only now had
he been able to drag himself from his quilt and, still afflicted as he
was, to creep to his honoured patron and crave her pardon. Domini gave
it with an abstracted carelessness that evidently hurt his pride, and
was passing into the hotel when he said:

"Irena is going to marry Hadj, Madame."