Sublime

“His mother left upon him the traces of her sacrifice. . . . This is old magic, I should have remembered it, I was foolish to overlook it . . . but no matter. I can touch him now.”

Give us some wholesome young fellow of our own blood, who’ll play us none of these dusky old-world tricks. Painter as I am, I’ll never recommend a picturesque husband!’

“Christ, man,” Leo said huskily. “If you had the bollocks to die with her, don’t you think you could work up enough courage to live with her?”

His character excited considerable curiosity in this observer. It was not easy to reconcile his conversion to the Romish faith, with those proofs of knowledge and capacity that were exhibited by him on different occasions. A suspicion was, sometimes, admitted, that his belief was counterfeited for some political purpose.

Sometimes, as his published letters indicate, he would focus for a time on a particular book of the Bible such as Romans or the Psalms.