"Rahal, I am much thy debtor. This affair I will now take into my own hands. To thee, my promise stands good for all my life days--and thou may tell Boris, it may be worth his while to forgive Sunna. There is some fault with him also; he has made love to Sunna for a long time, but never yet has he said to me--'I wish to make Sunna my wife!' What is the reason of that?" "Well, then, Adam, a young man wishes to make sure of himself. Boris is much from home----" "There it is! For that very cause, he should have made a straight clear road between us. I do not excuse Sunna, but I say that wherever there is a cross purpose, there has likely never been a straight one. Thou hast treated me well, and I am thy debtor; but it shall be ill with all those who have led my child wrong--the more so, because the time chosen for their sinful deed makes it immeasurably more sinful." "The time? What is thy meaning? The time was the usual hour of all entertainments. Even two hours after the midnight is quite respectable if all else is correct." "Art thou so forgetful of the God-Man, who at this time carried the burden of all our sins?" "Oh! You mean it is Lent, Adam?" "Yes! It is Lent!" "I was never taught to regard it." "Yet none keep Lent more strictly than Conall Ragnor." "A wife does not always adopt her husband's ideas. I had a father, Adam, uncles and cousins and friends. None of them kept Lent. Dost thou expect me to be wiser than all my kindred?" "I do." "Let us cease this talk. It will come to nothing." "Then good-bye." "Be not hard on Sunna. One side only, has been heard." "As kindly as may be, I will do right." Then Adam went away, but he left Rahal very unhappy. She had disobeyed her husband's advice and she could not help asking herself if she would have been as easily persuaded to tell a similar story about her own child. "Thora is a school girl yet," she thought, "but she is just entering the zone of temptation." In the midst of this reflection Thora came into the room. Her mother looked into her lovely face with a swift pang of fear. It was radiant with a joy not of this world. A light from an interior source illumined it; a light that wreathed with smiles the pure, childlike lips. "Oh, if she could always remain so young, and so innocent! Oh, if she never had to learn the sorrowful lessons that love always teaches!" Thus Rahal thought and wished. She forgot, as she did so, that women come into this world to learn the very lessons love teaches, and that unless these lessons are learned, the soul can make no progress, but must remain undeveloped and uninstructed, even until the very end of this session of its existence. CHAPTER III ARIES THE RAM O Christ whose Cross began to bloom With peaceful lilies long ago; Each year above Thy empty tomb More thick the Easter garlands grow. O'er all the wounds of this sad strife Bright wreathes the new immortal life.