The prayer they had just prayed together, both wrapt in inward contemplation, had been composed by Giovanni, and ran as follows: "Father, let it be with us as Jesus prayed that last night; life with Him in Thee, for all eternity." Even in the present they were two in one, in the narrowest, the most accurate sense of the phrase, for their duality was also perceptible in their spiritual union; as, when a green current mingles with a blue current, it sometimes happens, at the beginning of their united course, that broken waves flash here and there--some the colour of the woods, some as blue as the sky.

Giovanni was a mystic, who harmonised all human affections with Divine love, in his heart.

His wife, who had come through him from Protestantism to a Catholicism thirsting for reason, had entered into his mystic soul as far as was possible; but love for Giovanni predominated in her over every other sentiment.

She was rich and he comfortably off, but they lived almost poorly, that they might have greater means for their broad charities.

They lived in Rome in the winter, in Subiaco from April to November, in the modest villa of which they had hired the second floor.