This intelligence threw him into silence, and again her eyes fed upon his firelit face with inappeasable hunger. She was one of those women, to be met with the world over and in any station, who are remarkable for a love of youth and the world, which age, sickness, and isolation but deepen rather than subdue; and his sudden presence at her fireside was more than grateful. Not satisfied with what he had told, she led the talk back to the blue-grass country, and got from him other facts of his life, asking questions in regard to the features of that more fertile and beautiful land. In return she sketched the history of her own region, and dwelt upon its differences of soil, people, and religion--chiefly the last. It was while she spoke of the Order of the Stricken Heart that he asked a question he had long reserved. "Do you know the history of any of these Sisters?" "I know the history of all of them who are from Kentucky. I have known Sister Dolorosa since she was a child." "Sister Dolorosa!" The name pierced him like a spear. "The nun who was here to-day is called Sister Dolorosa. Her real name was Pauline Cambron." The fire died away. The old man left the room on some pretext and did not return. The story that followed was told with many details not given here--traced up from parentage and childhood with that fine tracery of the feminine mind which is like intricate embroidery, and which leaves the finished story wrought out on the mind like a complete design, with every point fastened to the sympathies. As soon as she had finished he rose quickly from a desire to be alone. So well had the story been knit to his mind that he felt it an irritation, a binding pain. He was bidding her good-night when she caught his hand. Something in his mere temperament drew women towards him. "Are you married?" she asked, looking into his eyes in the way with which those who are married sometimes exchange confidences. He looked quickly away, and his face flushed a little fiercely. "I am not married," he replied, withdrawing his hand. She threw it from her with a gesture of mock, pleased impatience; and when he had left the room, she sat for a while over the ashes. "If she were not a nun----" then she laughed and made her difficult way to her bed. But in the room above he sat down to think. Was this, then, not romance, but life in his own State? Vaguely he had always known that further south in Kentucky a different element of population had settled, and extended into the New World that mighty cord of ecclesiastical influence which of old had braided every European civilisation into an iron tissue of faith. But this knowledge had never touched his imagination. In his own land there were no rural Catholic churches, much less convents, and even among the Catholic congregations of the neighbouring towns he had not many acquaintances and fewer friends.