Isabel glanced back into the street. A sick beggar, who was at his post on a doorstep of the opposite convent so constantly that one might well believe he had no other home, leaned back and seemed to sleep, his pallid face whiter than the white stone it lay against. A poor man slept in the shadow of the garden wall above, lying flat on his face on the pavement. Further up, a woman, with two little children clinging to her, sat on the ground in the shadow, and ate her dinner of a piece of bread. “It seems to me,” the girl said thoughtfully, as she followed the others up-stairs, “that there should be a perpetual thanksgiving society which every one who has a home or a roof to cover them should join.” The Signora touched Isabel’s arm affectionately and smiled in her pretty, sober face. She found this girl changing, or, rather, developing into something nobler and more serious than she had expected. “There is a Perpetual Thanksgiving Society in Rome, my dear,” she said. “I am so glad you have had the thought without having heard of it. It is one of the most beautiful societies in the world. It has its meetings the third Thursday of every month, at the Caravita, a little church that used to belong to the Jesuits. There is an instruction, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and afterward the _Magnificat_ is sung. The special objects of the association are to thank God constantly for the good we receive through the Blessed Sacrament of the altar, the Sacred Heart, and by the intercession of the Virgin Mary; and the special festas of the society are Epiphany, Pentecost, Corpus Domini, Sacred Heart, Annunciation, Visitation, Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin, St. John the Evangelist, St. Gertrude, St. Felix de Cantalice, and Our Lady of Grace. The loveliest thing of all is the practice enjoined on the members of making constantly the aspiration, 'Thanks be to God.’ I wish this society were in every town in the world. We beg, we are always begging, and the showers are always coming down. How beautiful is the idea of a society which asks nothing, but sends up a perpetual _Deo gratias_, as the earth sends up mists in return for the rain!” “I shall join that society at once,” Isabel said with decision. The Signora laughed. “You had better take off your bonnet and have some dinner now,” she said. “Your society pleases me very much,” Mr. Vane remarked. “But the most perfect act of thanksgiving I know is that in the _Gloria_: 'We give thee thanks for thy great glory.’” There was a little moonlight reception and tea-party that evening out on the _loggia_. Clive Bailey came to take leave before going away for a few weeks into the country. Mr. Coleman also had been unexpectedly called to England on business, and was so afflicted about going that the Signora was vexed.