How many such martyrs are there in our days! With tears and sobs they fall on their knees, stretch forth their hands to Heaven, and cry from the depths of their souls: “God! show me some miracle that I may again believe in Thee! It is only through Thy wonders and miracles worked in the early days of Christianity that people turned to Thee and believed. Why were these early Christians dearer to Thee than I? I love thee; it is hard for me to tear myself away from Thee! A miracle, a miracle, I beseech Thee! I will then believe _anything_, even what is against all reason and logic—only come to my help I implore Thee! Give me a sign or a miracle!” But there are no more miracles, and death and despair enter like iron into the soul of the sufferer. III Like most Roman _pensions_, that in which Irene was staying was teeming with old maids of all nationalities. There must be some mysterious wind that blows them from all corners of the earth to the Eternal City. They go there in the hope of finding peace and spiritual rest, and their hope is almost always justified. What wonder indeed? For Rome is not a town; it is a picturesque cemetery, glorified by a golden sunset. On active, life-loving people it produces a gloomy impression; but to those who let life slip past them this cemetery is dear and precious. In other towns these lifeless people feel strange and out of place; the storm and stress, the feverish rush of life in a modern city shocks and angers them. In Rome one cannot think either of the present or the future. One’s thoughts linger in the past, and one is interested only in those who have long ago crumbled into dust in their graves. Irene did not like old maids. She saw in these “brides of Christ” something incomplete, something eternally expectant. She avoided their society, and associated preferably with married women, calling herself jokingly an “old bachelor,” an appellation that struck her as less disagreeable than the more usual one, which she refused to admit.