w it was.
There is no question of a mistake this time. And when you have talked
together in my garden to-morrow afternoon, she will forgive and
understand everything."

"Is she going to your place?"

"At three o'clock she will be there. You had better come a little
earlier."

"I shall not come at all," Vanno blazed out, with violence. "She
believes already that I've persecuted her. I won't give her reason to
think it."

"Poor child, she is very unhappy," the cure sighed, meekly.

"At least, it isn't I who have made her so."

"Perhaps it is herself, and that is sadder--to have only herself to
blame. You say you must be allowed to go to the devil in your own way.
Well, you are a man. You do not want another man, even if he be a
priest, to try and save you. But she needs a man to save her, a strong
man who loves her well. She is drifting, without a rudder. She told me
to-day--with such a look in her eyes!--that she has 'gambler's blood' in
her veins. Only one thing can save her now, for she has got the idea in
her head that she is the victim of Fate. The one thing is: an interest
ten million times greater than gambling--Love."

The blood rushed to Vanno's face.

"I'm not fit----" he stammered.

"The soul that's in you is fit to do God's work, for love is part of
God. 'Thy soul must overflow, if thou another's soul would reach.' Now,
my son, I won't keep you any longer. At two-thirty to-morrow in my
garden."

He did not remember until he was halfway up the mule path that he had
meant to speak of Idina Bland.

XXIII

There came a moment when it seemed to Mary that she had promised to do
an undignified thing, a thing which would make Vanno respect her less
than ever. To go out deliberately to meet him, after all that had
passed!--it was impossible. She must send a message to the cure saying
that she could not come to his garden.

She even began such a letter, late on the night after his call; but as
she wrote, the good brown eyes of the priest seemed to look at her,
saying, "I thank you for trusting me." Then she tore up the sheet of
paper, and went on trusting him blindly. She slept better afterward than
she had slept since Christmas, her first night in the Villa Bella Vista.

Mary's habit was to go to the Casino every morning as soon as the doors
opened, and she paid the artist whom she had met in the Paris train to
seize a place for her, in the rush of early players. For doing this he
received t