as much calmness as I
could muster:

"'What do you mean by that? Have I the evil-eye, think you?'

"Curly-haired Pippa stretched out her arms to me--I had often caressed
the little one, and given her sweetmeats and toys--but her mother held
her back with a sort of smothered scream, and muttered:

"'Holy Virgin! Pippa must not touch him; he is mad.'

"Mad? I looked at the woman and child in scornful amazement. Then
without further words I turned, and went swiftly away down the street
out of their sight. Mad! Was I indeed losing my reason? Was this the
terrific meaning of my sleepless nights, my troubled thoughts, my
strange inquietude? Fiercely I strode along, heedless whither I was
going, till I found myself suddenly on the borders of the desolate
Campagna. A young moon gleamed aloft, looking like a slender sickle
thrust into the heavens to reap an over-abundant harvest of stars. I
paused irresolutely. There was a deep silence everywhere. I felt faint
and giddy: curious flashes of light danced past my eyes, and my limbs
shook like those of a palsied old man. I sank upon a stone to rest, to
try and arrange my scattered ideas into some sort of connection and
order. Mad! I clasped my aching head between my hands, and brooded on
the fearful prospect looming before me, and in the words of poor King
Lear, I prayed in my heart:

"'O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heavens!'

"PRAYER! There was another thought. How could _I_ pray? For I was a
sceptic. My father had educated me with broadly materialistic views; he
himself was a follower of Voltaire, and with his finite rod he took the
measure of Divinity, greatly to his own satisfaction. He was a good
man, too, and he died with exemplary calmness in the absolute certainty
of there being nothing in his composition but dust, to which he was as
bound to return. He had not a shred of belief in anything but what he
called the Universal Law of Necessity; perhaps this was why all his
pictures lacked inspiration. I accepted his theories without thinking
much about them, and I had managed to live respectably without any
religious belief. But NOW--now with the horrible phantom of madness
rising before me--my firm nerves quailed. I tried, I longed to PRAY.
Yet to whom? To what? To the Universal Law of Necessity? In that there
could be no hearing or answering of human petitions. I meditated on
this with a kind of sombre ferocity. Who portioned out this Law of
Necessity? What bru