said he. "Here is Gervasio become an image breaker to
some purpose. What now of your miraculous saint, Agostino?"

My answer was first a groan over my shattered illusion, and then a
deep-throated curse at the folly that had made a mock of me.

The friar set a hand upon my shoulder. "You see, Agostino, that your
excursions into holy things do not promise well. Away with you, boy! Off
with this hypocrite robe, and get you out into the world to do useful
work for God and man. Had your heart truly called you to the priesthood,
I had been the first to have guided your steps thither. But your mind
upon such matters has been warped, and your views are all false; you
confound mysticism with true religion, and mouldering in a hermitage
with the service of God. How can you serve God here? Is not the world
God's world that you must shun it as if the Devil had fashioned it? Go,
I say--and I say it with the authority of the orders that I bear--go and
serve man, and thus shall you best serve God. All else are but snares to
such a nature as yours."

I looked at him helplessly, and from him to Galeotto who stood there,
his black brows knit; watching me with intentness as if great issues
hung upon my answer. And Gervasio's words touched in my mind some chord
of memory. They were words that I had heard before--or something very
like them, something whose import was the same.

Then I groaned miserably and took my head in my hands. "Whither am I
to go?" I cried. "What place is there in all the world for me? I am an
outcast. My very home is held against me. Whither, then, shall I go?"

"If that is all that troubles you," said Galeotto, his tone unctuously
humorous, "why we will ride to Pagliano."

I leapt at the word--literally leapt to my feet, and stared at him with
blazing eyes.

"Why, what ails him now?" quoth he.

Well might he ask. That name--Pagliano--had stirred my memory so
violently, that of a sudden as in a flash I had seen again the strange
vision that visited my delirium; I had seen again the inviting eyes,
the beckoning hands, and heard again the gentle voice saying, "Come to
Pagliano! Come soon!"

And now I knew, too, where I had heard words urging my return to the
world that were of the same import as those which Gervasio used.

What magic was there here? What wizardry was at play? I knew--for they
had told me--that it had been that cavalier who had visited me, that man
whose name was Ettore de' Cavalcanti, who h