“It was the portrait of Arvida, a woman of our race,” she said, regarding the spot and its remnant of frame thoughtfully. “At one time her tomb was here, under the picture.” “And is in the chapel no longer?” “No; they branded her a heretic and drove her to her grave, as our chronicles say; and still not satisfied, they disinterred her body and burned it in Milan.” “How strange it all seems in this day,” he mused, “when one may think as he will about his soul without putting his body in peril before or after it has returned to the ground.” “And yet,” she said, quickly, as if in an outburst of feeling long restrained, “there is still a power that persecutes--that takes the soul and enchains the body.” “The power you mean is duty,” he said, positively, as one who understood. “Yes,” she affirmed, eagerly, glad in the knowledge that he read her thought. There was silence between them as they moved to a part of the chapel where a broad window looked out on the landscape of ploughed fields that stretched high into the rainy distance. When he spoke again it was in the tone of one who had come to a decision. “The world’s cruelest wrongs have been committed in the name of duty,” he said. “Fortunately for the happiness of the race, we have cut loose from many ancient notions of obligation. The zealots who persecuted Arvida acted from a sense of duty. With new ideals of justice rise new conceptions of what we owe to others.” “How can we know what to do?” she asked of him, humbly. “Ah, it is hard to know what to do--to decide what is right. But there is a path that we may follow with safety at all times. It is the path which keeps us true to ourselves. We have a right to be true to ourselves!” he asserted, warmly--“a right no man may deny.” “And when one renounces that right for the sake of others?” she asked. “What then?” “That is the noblest of all self-sacrifices,” he answered her, reverently. But in her sudden release of a breath and the drooping of her eyes he read, with the magic sensitivity of love, that his answer was a disappointment; that for the bread of censure the woman asked he had given a stone of praise. When he spoke again Hera, with quickening pulse, knew the calm of his character was going; and she was glad for the passion in his tone and the anger that hardened his voice. “The sacrifice is divine!” he exclaimed. “But the demand for it, the permitting of it, that is monstrous! No human interest can justify the ruin of a life, the desecration of a soul!” He drew closer to her, his studied control of the past all gone. “Donna Hera!” he cried, “this must not be--this marriage to-morrow. It is hideous in the eye of God and man.” There was command in his words, and the glow of a splendid hope filled her soul. But it lived only a moment, assailed by the thought that commiseration was all that he had for her. “Well may you pity me,” she said, the doubt that had risen bringing a dreary smile to her lips.