Page:The Saint (1906, G. P. Putnam's Sons).djvu/46

12 silence of the ante-chamber of Eternity, and that carillon (which honestly is beginning to exasperate me) may pass for the voices of summoning angels. Finally, because at Bruges there is a dark young lady slight, tall, and whom we may also call intelligent, although she speaks Italian badly, and does not understand music."

Noemi pursed her lips and wrinkled her nose.

"What nonsense," she said.

Carlino continued, saying he did not yet know how, but in some way or another the brunette would become the penitent of the old priest. Noemi protested, laughing. How? The girl could not be herself. A heretic go to Confession? Carlino shrugged his shoulders, One Comedy of Errors more or less, what did it matter? Protestantism and Roman Catholicisnt were, after all, much the same thing. The priest would then regain his old faith through contact with the simple, steadfast belief of the girl. Here Carlino interrupted his story, avowing, in parenthesis, that he really did not know what kind of belief Noemi held. She flushed, and replied that she was a Protestant. Protestant, certainly; but a Protestant pure and simple? Noemi lost her patience. "I am a Protestant, that is enough," she exclaimed; "and you need not trouble yourself about my faith."

Noemi was, in fact, true to her own faith, not so much from conviction as from her reverent affection for the memory of her parents; and in