So said Ragna; she had yet to realize that the future is made up of the past--of a thousand pasts, that one can no more wipe a past event out of one's life, than one can discard all one's past personality, the growth of years and of circumstance, and put on a new one. Every act has it consequence, and the complex interweaving of these consequences build up what men call fate,--also we are bound as much by the consequences of the acts of others, as by those of our own,--we are bound by the acts of countless generations past. Every day that passes, we dislodge stones that shall rebound, we know not where, or when, in the years to come, stones that shall wound men and women we will never know, who will be unconscious of our existence. CHAPTER VII The whole party was dull as a result of the _veglione_, following in that the general relaxation in the surrounding atmosphere. With the evening of _Mardi Gras_, the carnival gaiety had reached its highest pitch, the flame had burnt itself out with the _moccoli_ and the reaction precipitated the city from an orgy of light and colour into the grey asceticism of fasting and prayer. Rome, for six weeks, turned her back on the World, the Flesh and the Devil. The gay crowds who had paraded the streets in mask and domino now flocked to the churches for early Mass, the charming sinner sought the confessional, and if, on Sundays, irrepressible Frivolity lifted a corner of the pall of Piety, giving the outer world a glimpse of twinkling eyes and flashing teeth, Monday promptly replaced the black veil. Even the sun was keeping Lent; day after day the dawn rose on grey, sodden skies. Draggled black-robed priests plodded unceasingly through the rain, and dripping multitudes thronged the churches tramping the slime of the streets in over the marble floors. "I've had enough of this!" Astrid complained over and over again, "for Heaven's sake let us get to some place where the sun shines!" Estelle Hagerup had lost her enthusiasm for the Eternal City, with all the pictures covered up in the churches, and the awful weather that kept one from getting about there was nothing left to do, she declared. Even listening to a sweet-voiced gentleman in striped trousers, singing "_Lontano del mar_" is apt to pall on one, especially if the said gentleman happens to know no other song.