even if a heretic did say it."

The monk shook his head and turned again to Miss Carson with a tolerant
smile.

"He is very young," he said, as though Kalonay did not hear him, "and
wild and foolish--and yet," he added, doubtfully, "I find I love the
boy." He regarded the young man with a kind but impersonal scrutiny,
as though he were a picture or a statue. "Sometimes I imagine he is
all I might have been," he said, "had not God given me the strength to
overcome myself. He has never denied himself in anything; he is as
wilful and capricious as a girl. He makes a noble friend, Miss Carson,
and a generous enemy; but he is spoiled irretrievably by good fortune
and good living and good health." The priest looked at the young man
with a certain sad severity. "`Unstable as water, thou shalt not
excel,'" he said.

The girl, in great embarrassment, turned her head away, glancing from
the ocean to the sky; but Kalonay seated himself coolly on the broad
balustrade of the terrace with his hands on his hips, and his heels
resting on the marble tiling, and clicked the soles of his boots
together.

"Oh, I have had my bad days, too, Father," he said. He turned his head
on one side, and pressed his lips together, looking down.

"Unstable as water--that is quite possible," he said, with an air of
consideration; "but spoiled by good fortune--oh, no, that is not fair.
Do you call it good fortune, sir," he laughed, "to be an exile at
twenty-eight? Is it good fortune to be too poor to pay your debts, and
too lazy to work; to be the last of a great name, and to have no chance
to add to the glory of it, and no means to keep its dignity fresh and
secure? Do you fancy I like to see myself drifting farther and farther
away from the old standards and the old traditions; to have English
brewers and German Jew bankers taking the place I should have, buying
titles with their earnings and snubbing me because I can only hunt when
someone gives me a mount, and because I choose to take a purse instead
of a cup when we shoot at Monte Carlo?"

"What child's talk is this?" interrupted the priest, angrily. "A
thousand horses cannot make a man noble, nor was poverty ever ignoble.
You talk like a weak boy. Every word you say is your own condemnation.
Why should you complain? Your bed is of your own making. The other
prodigal was forced to herd with the swine--you have chosen to herd
with them."

The girl straightened herself and half r