'canst thou not hear? Thy people forgot thee so long, but at last they have repented and remembered.'
Then, kneeling still, she prayed in Latin, as she had been taught, to the God who was to her a vast, unknown, incomprehensible Spirit brooding on the face of the waters and smiling with the sunbeams of the morning.
Maurice Sanctis felt his eyes grow moist, and he bent his knee beside her; though for prayer and paternoster he had the easy scorn of a modern student, yet for the old faith that moved the simple hearts of the women of his family he kept a reverent indulgence.
When Musa rose her face had grown tender, and had lost the suspicion and the impatience with which she had received him. He seized that moment of softer feeling to draw from her some account of how she lived there, and why, and of how her early years had passed in Joconda's house.
She told him, simply and frankly, having nothing to conceal; and unconscious of how her narrative made her short history stand before his mind's eye in as bold and pure and heroic lines as those of a Parthenaic frieze. What added to his interest was his
