idence to Mrs. Lander,
but so loud that Clementina could hear, "I suppose she's told you who
the belle of the ball was, the other night? Went out to supper with
a lord!" He seemed to think a lord was such a good joke that if you
mentioned one you had to laugh.

The Russian's card bore the name Baron Belsky, with the baron crossed
out in pencil, and he began to attack in Mrs. Lander the demerits of the
American character, as he had divined them. He instructed her that
her countrymen existed chiefly to make money; that they were more
shopkeepers than the English and worse snobs; that their women were
trivial and their men sordid; that their ambition was to unite their
families with the European aristocracies; and their doctrine of liberty
and equality was a shameless hypocrisy. This followed hard upon her
asking, as she did very promptly, why he had scratched out the title on
his card. He told her that he wished to be known solely as an artist,
and he had to explain to her that he was not a painter, but was going to
be a novelist. She taxed him with never having been in America, but he
contended that as all America came to Europe he had the materials for a
study of the national character at hand, without the trouble of crossing
the ocean. In return she told him that she had not been the least
sea-sick during the voyage, and that it was no trouble at all; then he
abruptly left her and went over to beg a cup of tea from Clementina, who
sat behind the kettle by the window.

"I have heard this morning from that American I met in Pompeii" he
began. "He is coming northward, and I am going down to meet him in
Rome."

Mrs. Lander caught the word, and called across the room, "Why, a'n't
that whe'e that lo'd's gone?"

Clementina said yes, and while the kettle boiled, she asked if Baron
Belsky were going soon.

"Oh, in a week or ten days, perhaps. I shall know when he arrives. Then
I shall go. We write to each other every day." He drew a letter from his
breast pocket. "This will give you the idea of his character," and he
read, "If we believe that the hand of God directs all our actions, how
can we set up our theories of conduct against what we feel to be his
inspiration?"

"What do you think of that?" he demanded.

"I don't believe that God directs our wrong actions," said Clementina.

"How! Is there anything outside of God?

"I don't know whether there is or not. But there is something that
tempts me to do wrong, somet