His look was gentle and commanding,—­his voice soft yet firm,—­and the worldly Abbe felt somewhat like a chidden child as he met the gaze of those clear true eyes that were undarkened by any furtive hypocrisies or specious meanings.

“I suppose it is, but unfortunately I have made the worst of it,” he answered, “and having made the worst I see no best.  Who is that singing?”

He lifted his hand with a gesture of attention as a rich mezzo-soprano rang out towards them,—­

    “Per carita
     Mostrami il cielo;
     Tulto e un velo,
     E non si sa
     Dove e il cielo. 
     Se si sta
     Cosi cola,
     Non si sa
     Se non si va
       Ahi me lontano! 
       Tulto e in vano! 
       Prendimi in mano
     Per carita!”

“It is Angela,” said the Cardinal, “She has a wonderfully sweet voice.”

    “Prendimi in mano,
      Per carita!”

murmured Abbe Vergniaud, still listening, “It is like the cry of a lost soul!”

“Or a strayed one,” interposed the Cardinal gently, and rising, he took Vergniaud’s arm, and leaned upon it with a kindly and familiar grace, an action which implied much more than the mere outward expression of confidence,—­“Nothing is utterly lost, my dear friend.  ’The very hairs of our head are numbered,’—­not a drop of dew escapes to waste,—­how much more precious than a drop of dew is the spirit of a man!”

“It is not so unsullied,” declared Vergniaud, who loved controversy,—­“Personally, I think the dew is more valuable than the soul, because so absolutely clean!”

“You must not bring every line of discussion to a pin’s point,” said Bonpre smiling, as he walked slowly across the room still leaning on the Abbe’s arm.  “We can reduce our very selves to the bodiless condition of a dream if we take sufficient pains first to advance a theory, and then to wear it threadbare.  Nothing is so deceptive as human reasoning,—­nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have decided to call ‘logic.’  The truest compass of life is spiritual instinct.”

“And what of those who have no spiritual instinct?” demanded Vergniaud.

“I do not think there are any such.  To us it certainly often seems as if there were masses of human beings whose sole idea of living is to gratify their bodily needs,—­but I fancy it is only because we do not know them sufficiently that we judge them thus.  Few, if any, are so utterly materialistic as never to have had some fleeting intuition of the Higher existence.  They may lack the force to comprehend it, or to follow its teaching,—­but in my opinion, the Divine is revealed to all men once at least in their lives.”