The Art of Disappearing

CHAPTER I. THE HOLY OILS. EORACE ENDIGOTT once believed that life began for him the day he married Sonia Westfield. The ten months spent with the young wife were of a hue so roseate as to render discussion of the point foolish. His youth had been a happy one, of the roystering, innocent kind noisy with yachting, baseball, and a moderate quantity of college beer, but clean, as if his mother had supervised it yet he had never really lied in his twenty-five years, until the blessed experience of a long houeymoon and a little housekeeping with Sonis had woven into his life the light of sun and moon and stars together. However, as he admitted long afterrvards, his mistake was as terribIe as convincing. Life began for him that day he sat in the railway carriage across the aisle from distinguished Monsignor ODonnell, pelate of the Popes household, doctor in theology, and vcar-general of the New York diocese. The train being on its wag to Boston, and the journey dull, Horace whiled away a slow hour matching the Monsignor, and worldering what notives govern the tbe activity of the priests of Rome...