"Of course there isn't," returned Casteno gaily. "We want our men to be as bright, as cheerful, and as ardent lovers of beauty and goodness as we can. We never interfere with their religions. That is their affair. Ours, we own, is a frankly worldly organisation, which, although it is under divine favour, we hope, as witness our watchwords: `God' and `England,' does really work to a worldly and an obvious conclusion. Therefore we make use of all the best things of the world, and amongst those we place beauty and things of beauty as of the highest therapeutic importance!" "Is that why you have that statue in the entrance hall?" I questioned--"that wonderful figure of a woman, with the face of a Greek goddess, which stands on a pedestal, and before which there seem to be constant offerings of flowers and candles." Jose stopped at the mere suggestion, and laughed quite loudly. "Good gracious, no, man!" he replied so soon as he recovered his breath, "that statue has nothing to do with the members--nothing at all. You must know that poor old Bruno Delganni, although he really was a patriotic genius, had also a strangely poetic and romantic vein in his composition. Hence, when he found that the dream of his life, the Order of St Bruno, did actually take form and substance and become a living organism powerful for great historical ends and occasions, he bethought himself of another vision of his youth--the woman who would not marry him. "Of course, this idol of his, like all women with these faces of perfect beauty of form and expression, had no soul and no heart. In my opinion all those women in history who inspired noble resolves were like the idol of poor Bruno Delganni--Dante's Beatrice, I mean, Paolo's Francesca, Werther's Charlotte, and so forth--mere mirrors in which great men saw depicted their own great possibilities. "At all events, the woman in question married Bruno's elder brother, because he was the better off, but Bruno never forgot her, and on his deathbed he ordered that her statue should be carved from an old photograph of her that he had in his possession and that a replica of that work of art should be placed in the refectory of each house connected with the Order of St Bruno and duly and regularly adorned with so many candles and flowers. "Unfortunately, we graceless bachelors, when we feel particularly irreverent, say that our founder had the image placed there as a fearful warning to us against pretty women, as a dumb but forcible appeal to each one of us to remember that `handsome is as handsome does,' that `beauty is only skin deep,' and that as the flowers around the statue fade so does woman's charm. But it means nothing beyond this--nothing whatever." And he caught me by one arm and stayed my steps opposite to one of the doors let into the wall.