And I must hold myself ready to give him the extreme
unction when I am sent for, if it be now or not till next week."
Vanno had set his heart upon his plan, and could hardly bear to have it
indefinitely postponed; but he had learned through old experience that
his good friend was not one to be persuaded from duty.
"You'll let me know the moment you're free, in any case," he urged.
"That very moment. But, meanwhile, something may happen that will help
you to judge the lady for yourself--something definite."
"I should have judged her already, if it weren't for her eyes," Vanno
said, with a sigh. "They have a look as if she'd just seen heaven! I can
hardly tell you how, but they are different from all other women's eyes.
They send out a ray of light, like an arrow to your heart."
"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed the priest.
"Don't laugh, Father. It's true, or I wouldn't have felt about her as I
did from the first moment we looked at each other. She's beautiful, but
I assure you it wasn't her beauty that made me follow her. It was
something more mysterious than that. I swear to you, it was as if her
eyes said to me, 'Why, here you are at last, you whom I've known since
the beginning of things. I am the one you've waited for all your life.'"
"All your life! Twenty-seven years, is it not?"
"Twenty-nine this month, Father. I'm not a boy, and I've cared very much
only for one woman. I wasn't twenty then, and it's partly her fault that
it's hard for me to believe in others.
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