"Why not? It is very unimportant where one dies. A moment after your breath is gone you are in exile for ever--or at home for ever." Colville sat musing upon this phase of Americanism, as he had upon many others. At last he broke the silence they had both let fall, far away from the topic they had touched. "Well," he asked, "how did you enjoy the veglione?" "Oh, I'm too old to go to such places for pleasure," said the minister simply. "But it was very interesting, and certainly very striking: especially when I went back, toward daylight, after seeing Mrs. Bowen home." "Did you go back?" demanded Colville, in some amaze. "Oh yes. I felt that my experience was incomplete without some knowledge of how the Carnival ended at such a place." "Oh! And do you still feel that Savonarola was mistaken?" "There seemed to be rather more boisterousness toward the close, and, if I might judge, the excitement grew a little unwholesome. But I really don't feel myself very well qualified to decide. My own life has been passed in circumstances so widely different that I am at a certain disadvantage." "Yes," said Colville, with a smile; "I daresay the Carnival at Haddam East Village was quite another tiling." The old man smiled responsively. "I suppose that some of my former parishioners might have been scandalised at my presence at a Carnival ball, had they known the fact merely in the abstract; but in my letters home I shall try to set it before them in an instructive light. I should say that the worst thing about such a scene of revelry would be that it took us too much out of our inner quiet. But I suppose the same remark might apply to almost any form of social entertainment." "Yes." "But human nature is so constituted that some means of expansion must be provided, or a violent explosion takes place. The only question is what means are most innocent. I have been looking about," added the old man quietly, "at the theatres lately." "Have you?" asked Colville, opening his eyes, in suppressed surprise. "Yes; with a view to determining the degree of harmless amusement that may be derived from them. It's rather a difficult question. I should be inclined to say, however, that I don't think the ballet can ever be instrumental for good." Colville could not deny himself the pleasure of saying, "Well, not the highest, I suppose."