The old man said nothing to this. "The fact is," Colville went on, "I'm so habituated to being there that I'm rather spoiled." "Ah, it's a nice place," Mr. Waters admitted. "Of course I made all the haste I could to get away, and I have the reward of a good conscience. But I don't find that the reward is very great." The old gentleman smiled. "The difficulty is to know conscience from self-interest." "Oh, there's no doubt of it in my case," said Colville. "If I'd consulted my own comfort and advantage, I should still be at Palazzo Pinti." "I dare say they would have been glad to keep you." "Do you really think so?" asked Colville, with sudden seriousness. "I wish you would tell me why. Have you any reason--grounds? Pshaw! I'm absurd!" He sank back into the easy-chair from whose depths he had pulled himself in the eagerness of his demand, and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. "Mr. Waters, you remember my telling you of my engagement to Miss Graham?" "Yes." "That is broken off--if it were ever really on. It was a great mistake for both of us--a tragical one for her, poor child, a ridiculous one for me. My only consolation is that it was a mistake and no more; but I don't conceal from myself that I might have prevented it altogether if I had behaved with greater wisdom and dignity at the outset. But I'm afraid I was flattered by an illusion of hers that ought to have pained and alarmed me, and the rest followed inevitably, though I was always just on the point of escaping the consequences of my weakness--my wickedness." "Ah, there is something extremely interesting in all that," said the old minister thoughtfully. "The situation used to be figured under the old idea of a compact with the devil. His debtor was always on the point of escaping, as you say, but I recollect no instance in which he did not pay at last. The myth must have arisen from man's recognition of the inexorable sequence of cause from effect, in the moral world, which even repentance cannot avert. Goethe tries to imagine an atonement for Faust's trespass against one human soul in his benefactions to the race at large; but it is a very cloudy business." "It isn't quite a parallel case," said Colville, rather sulkily. He had, in fact, suffered more under Mr. Waters's generalisation than he could from a more personal philosophy of the affair. "Oh no; I didn't think that," consented the old man.