or I felt the sobs
coming. I could see, see vividly, that solitary garden, that leafless
old arbor, and half-hidden under the reddish leaves I saw that blue
bead, souvenir of the dead sister. . . . It depressed me dreadfully and
gave me a conception of that inevitable fading away of everything and
every one, of the great universal change that comes to all.

It is strange that my tenderly guarded infancy should have been so full
of sad emotions and morbid reflections.

I am sure that the sad days and happenings were rare, and that I lived
the joyous and careless life of other children; but just because the
happy days were so habitual to me they made no impression upon my mind,
and I can no longer recall them.

My memories of the summer time are so similar that they break with the
splendor of the sun into the dark places and things of my mind.

And always the great heat, the deep blue skies, the sparkling sand
of the beach and the flood of light upon the white lime walls of the
cottages of the little villages upon the "Island" induced in me a
melancholy and sleepiness which I afterwards experienced with even
greater intensity in the land of the Turk.

CHAPTER XIII.

"And at midnight there was a cry made: Behold, the Bridegroom cometh; go
ye out to meet him. . . . And they that were ready went in with him
to the marriage; and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other
virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.

"But he answered and said, Verily, I say unto you, I know you not.

"Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the
Son of man cometh."

After reading these verses in a loud voice, my father closed the Bible;
in the room where we were assembled there was a sound of chairs being
moved and we all went down upon our knees to pray. Following the usage
in old Huguenot families, it was our custom to have prayers just before
retiring to our rooms for the night.

"And the door was shut. . . ." Although I still knelt I no longer heard
the prayer, for the foolish virgins appeared to me. They were enveloped
in white veils that billowed about them as they stood before the door
holding in their hands the little lamps whose flickering flames were so
soon to be extinguished, leaving them in the gloom without before that
closed door, closed against them irrevocably and forever. . . . And a
time could come then when it would be too late; when the Saviour weary
of our trespassing would