ican is seeking an unusually
large loan just now," she remarked, half-interrogatively.

The stranger could not suppress a smile. He read the other's surmise
that he might be of Hebrew birth and faith. "It is not the papal loan,
madam," he returned, "that takes me to Rome; it is a divorce case."

"A divorce case?" The blond lady could not disguise her interest at
these words, while even the statuesque beauty at the other end of the
compartment turned her face fully upon the speaker, and her lips parted
slightly, like the petals of an opening rosebud.

"Yes," resumed the young man, "a separation from one who has denied and
rejected me for the sake of another; one whom I must for ever shun in
the future, and yet cannot cease to love; one whose loss can never be
made good to me. I am going to Rome because it is a dead city and
belongs equally to all and to none."

The train halted at a station, and the young man alighted. After a few
words to the guard he disappeared from sight.

"Do you know that gentleman?" asked the blond lady of her escort.

"Very well," was the reply.

"And yet you two hardly exchanged a word."

"Because we were neither of us so disposed."

"Are you enemies?"

"Not enemies, and yet in a certain sense opponents."

"Is he a Jew or an atheist?"

"Neither; he is a Unitarian."

"And what is a Unitarian, pray tell me?"

"The Unitarians form one of the recognised religious sects of Hungary,"
explained the man. "They are Christians who believe in the unity of
God."

"It is strange I never heard of them before," said the lady.

"They live chiefly in Transylvania," added the other; "but the great
body of them, taken the world over, are found in England and America,
where they possess considerable influence. Their numbers are not large,
but they hold together well; and, though they are not increasing
rapidly, they are not losing ground."

The younger lady lowered her veil again and crossed herself beneath its
folds; but her companion turned and looked out of the window with a
curious desire to scrutinise the wicked heretic more closely. Both the
ladies, as the reader will have conjectured, were strictly orthodox in
their faith.

The train soon started again, after the customary ringing and whistling
and the guards' repeated warning of "_partenza!_" But the young heretic
seemed to put as little faith in bells and whistles and verbal warnings
as in the dogma of the Trinity; for he failed to a