"Why will you persist in treating me like a child, uncle? I am very impressionable, I grant you; but I have gone around the world alone, and do not need to be dry-nursed through a tour in Ireland."
"What do you intend to do during your stay here?"
I had no plans and instead of answering I shrugged my shoulders and looked round the apartment. There was a statue of the Virgin upon my uncle's desk. I looked at its face, as he was wont to look in the midst of his labor. I saw there eternal peace. The air became luminous with an infinite net-work of the jeweled rings of Paradise descending in roseate clouds upon us.
"Uncle," I said, bursting into the sweetest tears I had ever shed, "my wanderings are over. I will enter the Church, if you will help me. Let us read together the third part of Faust; for I understand it at last."
"Hush, man," he said, half rising with an expression of alarm. "Control yourself."
"Do not let tears mislead you. I am calm and strong. Quick, let us have Goethe:
Das Unbeschreibliche,
Hier ist gethan;
Das Ewig-Weibliche,
Zieht uns hinan."
"Come, come. Dry your eyes and be quiet. I have no library here."
"But I have—in my portmanteau at the hotel," I said, rising. "Let me go for it. I will return in fifteen minutes."
"The devil is in you, I believe. Cannot——"