"Oh, that's easy enough," said Miss Penny. "Almost anything would do. What about this, for example? You explain that the fever has just abated; for the first time for days the young man is fully conscious. He feels himself to be well, reborn, as it were, in a new world--a world so bright and novel and jolly that he can't help laughing at the sight of it. He looks about him; the flies on the ceiling strike him as being extremely comic. How do they manage to walk upside down? They have suckers on their feet, says Sister Agatha, and wonders if her natural history is quite sound. Suckers on their feet--ha, ha! What an uproarious notion! Suckers on their feet--that's good, that's damned good! You can say charming, pathetic, positively tender things about the irrelevant mirth of convalescents the more so in this particular case, where the mirth is expressed by a young man who is to be taken back to jail as soon as he can stand firmly on his legs. Ha, ha! Laugh on, unhappy boy. It is the quacking of the Fates, the Parcæ, the Norns!" Miss Penny gave an exaggerated imitation of her own brassy laughter. At the sound of it the few lunchers who still lingered at the other tables looked up, startled. "You can write pages about Destiny and its ironic quacking. It's tremendously impressive, and there's money in every line." "You may be sure I shall." "Good! Then I can get on with my story. The days pass and the first hilarity of convalescence fades away. The young man remembers and grows sullen; his strength comes back to him, and with it a sense of despair. His mind broods incessantly on the hateful future. As for the consolations of religion, he won't listen to them. Sister Agatha perseveres--oh, with what anxious solicitude!--in the attempt to make him understand and believe and be comforted. It is all so tremendously important, and in this case, somehow, more important than in any other. And now you see the _Geschlechtsleben_ working yeastily and obscurely, and once again the quacking of the Norns is audible. By the way," said Miss Penny, changing her tone and leaning confidentially across the table, "I wish you'd tell me something. Tell me, do you really--honestly, I mean--do you seriously believe in literature?" "Believe in literature?" "I was thinking?" Miss Penny explained, "of Ironic Fate and the quacking of the Norns and all that." "'M yes." "And then there's this psychology and introspection business; and construction and good narrative and word pictures and _le mot juste_ and verbal magic and striking metaphors." I remembered that I had compared Miss Penny's tinkling ear-rings to skeletons hanging in chains. "And then, finally, and to begin with--Alpha and Omega--there's ourselves, two professionals gloating, with an absolute lack of sympathy, over a seduced nun, and speculating on the best method of turning her misfortunes into cash. It's all very curious, isn't it?--when one begins to think about it dispassionately."