"No more theology, please," interposed Arthur. "You forget, Edith, that I have been to church to-day, and too much piety at once might impair my spiritual digestion forever." A perception that the flippancy of his tone shocked his wife, made Helen turn the conversation again to Ninitta, arranging to go with Mrs. Fenton in the morning to find the missing girl. They fell into silence after this, the twilight deepening until only the glow of the fire lighted the room. Edith went to the piano and played a bit of Mozart, wandering off then into the hymn-tunes which she loved and which were familiar in all orthodox homes of the last generation: plaintive _Olmutz_ and stately _Geneva_, aspiring _Amsterdam_ and resonant _St. Martin's_, placid _Boylston_ and grand _Hamburg, Nuremburg, Benevento, Turner_ and _Old Hundred_; the tunes of our fathers, the melodies which embody the spirit of the old time New England Sabbath, a day heavy, constrained and narrow, it may be; but, too, a day calm, unworldly and pure. Arthur's cigar was finished, and he had fallen into a deep reverie, looking into the coals. He recalled his conversations with Helen before his marriage. He wondered whether his acquiescence in the limitations of his present condition, his yielding to his wife's social and religious views, was an advance or a deterioration. These pious tunes jarred upon his mood, and he was glad when his wife left the instrument. His Bohemian instinct stirred within him, and taunted the ease-loving quality of his nature which put him in subjection to that which he believed no more now than in the days when he was the most sharp-spoken of the Pagans. A wave of disgust and self-loathing swept over him. He turned abruptly in the dusk toward Helen. "Sing to us," he said. "Edith has never heard you." But Helen had been moved by the melodies, which came to her as an echo from her childhood. She understood the half-peremptory accent in Arthur's voice to which she had so often yielded, but to which she would not now submit. "No," she answered. "How can you ask me. My barbaric chant would be wholly out of keeping here. Some other time I shall be glad to sing for Mrs. Fenton; now I must go home." XXIV. IN PLACE AND IN ACCOUNT NOTHING. I. Henry IV.; v.--I. Notwithstanding her previous visit, Mrs. Fenton found it no easy matter to guide Helen to the place where Ninitta had taken refuge. The poorer classes of foreigners in any city are led by similarity of language and occupations to gather into neighborhoods according to their nationality, and the Italians are especially clannish. The fruit-venders and organ-grinders form separate colonies, each distinguished by the peculiarities incident to the calling of its inhabitants, the crooked courts in the fruit-sellers' neighborhood being chiefly marked to outward observance by the number of two-wheeled hand-carts which, out of business hours, are crowded together there.