"Come! Ulick, my boy. You've got to stop your ways of living else land in a hospital, or worse--perhaps in a mad-house, for the epileptic spasm you call love. You are bartering your birthright of soul and body. Now listen! Here is a fair proposition. There is to be a retreat for men at our college, men like you, weary of the world, men who have the honesty to repeat your favourite Baudelaire's prayer: 'O! Lord God! Give me the force and courage to contemplate my heart and my body without disgust.' Admirable humility, for where you end Christianity begins. Yours is not an exceptional case. The whole world is morally out of joint. It is become godless, and were it not for the saving remnant, God in His just wrath would destroy the earth as he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. But He leaves the wicked to their own devices. A catastrophe will surely come to Europe, perhaps Asia and America, a catastrophe that beggars the imagination in the contemplation thereof. Satan will be released from his fiery pit and Antichrist will rule the nations. Presumptuous man has tried to regulate the mighty diapason of the spheres with his pitiful tuning-fork and lo! he has miserably failed. Woe, woe, I say to souls unprepared--" Ulick interrupted. "Honestly, Milt, I don't mean to be rude, but you ought to charge admission. Hire a hall. You are a born missionary. I mean it." "Don't mock, Ulick. Reality is stranger than rhetoric. You are at the crossroads. Decide at once. My college, as you know, is up-country. A week's retreat will therefore be hygiene for body as well as soul. And after the retreat there is to be a Novena of the Blessed Virgin. Be with us, dear brother! You will bathe in the lustral waters and become cleansed. Born anew everything will work out for the best. Your bohemian life is your undoing. You look like a man with spinal trouble. Pardon me, is it so!" Ulick shook his head but his knees shook too. Marry Mona! There it is at last! Not a hint but a veiled command. Of course, he would marry the girl. Marriage was the only way for an honourable man. "I've nothing seriously the matter with me, Milt, I've inherited bad blood from my father. Mona needn't fear. I shan't taint her. But I'm in no physical or mental condition to marry at present. Give me time to recuperate my forces. I've been going it hard for the past years. Paris couldn't be worse than New York." Milt was gloomy. "Keep away from Dora, and that other enchantress, Istar. The pair of them would kill Casanova," Milt sullenly replied.