ace of God in your heart, hold to your high vocation through any
torment: to lose it, to destroy it, as I destroyed mine, is to open wide
the soul to devils.' Wasn't that beautiful now? Then she asked him in
the name of God to call on her the next day, and he promised. He may be
here to-night to tell me about it."

"You say three. Was Edith Conyngham the third?"

"Oh, no, only a sister of our community."

He burst out laughing at the thought of the fox acting so cleverly
before the three geese. Claire must have laughed herself into a fit when
they had gone. He had now to put the Sister on her guard at the expense
of her self-esteem. He tried to do so gently and considerately, fearing
hysterics.

"You put the boy in the grasp of the devil, I fear," he said. "Convert
Sister Claire! You would better have turned your prayers on Satan! She
got him alone this afternoon in her office, as you permitted, and made
him a proposition, which she had in her mind from the minute she first
saw him. I arrived in time to give her a shock, and to rescue him. Now
we are looking for him to tell him he need not fear Sister Claire's
threats to publish how he made an attack upon her virtue."

"I do not quite understand," gasped Sister Magdalen stupefied. What
Arthur thought considerate others might have named differently.
Exasperation at the downright folly of the scheme, and its threatened
results, may have actuated him. His explanation satisfied the nun, and
her fine nerve resisted hysterics and tears.

"It is horrible," she said at the last word. "But we acted honestly, and
God will not desert us. You will find Louis before morning, and I shall
spend the night in prayer until you have found him ... for him and you
... and for that poor wretch, that dreadful woman, more to be pitied
than any one."

His confidence did not encourage him. Hour by hour the messengers of
Curran appeared with the one hopeless phrase: no news. He walked about
the park until midnight, and then posted himself in the basement with
cigar and journal to while away the long hours. Sinister thoughts
troubled him, and painful fancies. He could see the poor lad hiding in
the slums, or at the mercy of wretches as vile as Claire; wandering
about the city, perhaps, in anguish over his ruined life, horrified at
what his friends must read in the morning papers, planning helplessly to
escape from a danger which did not exist, except in his own mind. Oh,
no doubt Curran wo