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quiet my nerves.'
"My mother smiled.
"'Well, now-a-days, we are all of us more or less like Saul; that is to say, we are all occasionally troubled with an evil spirit.'
"Thereupon her brow grew clouded, and she interrupted herself, for evidently the remembrance of my late father came to her mind; then she added, musingly—
"'And Saul was really to be pitied.'
"I did not give her an answer. I was only thinking why David had found favour in Saul's sight. Was it because 'he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to'? Was it also for this reason that, as soon as Jonathan had seen him, 'the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul'?
"Was Teleny's soul knit with my own? Was I to love and hate him, as Saul loved and hated David? Anyhow, I despised myself and my folly. I felt a grudge against the musician who had bewitched me; above all, I loathed the whole womankind, the curse of the world.
