THE President of the “Literific,” who was wonderfully well equipped for that office, for she habitually spent weeks in London every year, and during them positively lived in galleries, concert-rooms, and theatres and had been to Venice no less than four distinct times, was dining informally, “taking pot-luck,” as Canon Alington expressed it, at his vicarage that night, and he could not but feel that it was a fortunate circumstance that Mrs. Owen should thus be dropping in while Hugh was there, for he distinctly liked Hugh to know that though they lived in the provinces they were not provincial, and that the pulse of artistic and intellectual life beat as strongly, if not more strongly, at Mannington than in town. The last of Mrs. Alington’s fortnightly dinners had taken place only the week before, so that it was impossible to parade the intellect of Mannington in its cohorts, but, as her husband dressed for dinner, he thought that this one informal guest would be likely to give Hugh a better notion of the high mental activity of Mannington than even one of the larger and more formal parties could have done. For Mrs. Owen, the brightest star in their intellectual constellation, really shone best alone, and Agnes often told her husband that he never talked half so well to her as he did to Mrs. Owen.

This was quite true, though the sentiment had no touch of resentment or regret about it, for Agnes was perfectly aware that it was quite natural that it should be so. For she had so identified herself with all the tastes, pursuits and industries of her husband’s life that such a thing as discussion, except on such points as floral decoration or outdoor relief, could hardly exist between them. But Mrs. Owen always had some fresh topic of literary or artistic interest, as indeed a person who was quite in “a set” in London and went to Venice so frequently could not fail to have, and necessarily she could talk about Tintoret to Canon Alington and strike out fresh lights from him in a way that Agnes was incapable of doing, though in the matter of actual familiarity with Venice the husband and wife were exactly on a par, since neither had ever been there. But he had so fine and retentive a memory that he could from photograph-knowledge only quite hold his own in these discussions, and indeed he sometimes corrected her as to the locality of some Titian or Tintoret, and what was referred to by Mrs. Owen as being in S. Giorgio was sometimes allocated by the Canon to its true position in the Scuola di San Rocco or the Accademia, a position which Baedeker, when consulted, confirmed. In fact, these very fruitful discussions on the subject of sixteenth century art sometimes rather narrowed down to the point as to where a particular picture was rather than what were its merits when it was there.

But in the matter of dates Canon Alington readily recognised the immense superiority of the guest’s knowledge, particularly in musical matters. She knew quite unerringly when Wagner was born, when Schubert died, how old Mozart was when he wrote the Jupiter Symphony, and in what year “Faust” was first presented. Nor was her knowledge confined to these bones, so to speak, of music. She herself had composed, and her compositions had been both published and sung, so that on the first page of the Daily Telegraph one was liable to see that “Galahad’s Good-night” (words and music to Gladys Owen) would be sung at the Drill Hall, Hastings, on the 12th. Her songs were mostly written in what is known as “waltz-time,” which when taken andante is meltingly pathetic, especially when there is a change to the minor in the second and middle part. They were, with the exception of “Galahad’s Good-night,” which was markedly religious throughout, based rather on one general plan. People met (long ago) in the first verse in an orchard or a meadow in which bowers generally rhymed with flowers, and were very loving and light-hearted; tribulations and sorrow (in the minor key) overtook them in the second verse, which was slower and in four time; while in the third, to the accompaniment of grave octaves from the left hand and arpeggios from the right, and the resumption of slow waltz-time, the tremulous hope was expressed that they would meet again “above.” They were equally suitable for either male or female voices (with the exception again of “Galahad’s Good-night”), for the sentiments expressed were perfectly creditable to those of either sex, and there was always an alternative high note on the word “heaven,” or “above,” or “love,” at the end of the third verse, where the tenor could crack the roof or burst himself if he felt inclined. Then the arpeggios ceased, and two or three loud thumps all over the piano denoted the accomplishment of their desires.

Mrs. Owen was tall, rather thin, not exactly pretty, but, as everybody said, she had a very sweet expression. She had pale blue eyes, and even when she was talking on the most grave and serious subjects her mouth was generally smiling, which, no doubt, was largely responsible for the sweet expression. When she laughed, which she often did, she quite closed her eyes, and sometimes she clapped her hands softly at that which had amused her. She always dressed in pale, soft colours, cut in a somewhat Greek and classical style, and wore as ornaments a necklace of Greek silver coins and a couple of bracelets composed of the same. Her hair, too, was braided something in the Greek manner, and the flower or two that she wore in it was secured by a Venetian ducat of the dogeship of one of the Mocenigos. Throughout the dinner the conversation had ranged over an infinite variety of topics, deep calling unto deep, and now toward the end, after the Royal Academy, the New Gallery, and the Opera (for she had only just returned from a whole month in London), the drama was being discussed.

“Yes, I adore the theatre,” she was saying, “but London really has been such a whirl that I did not go as often as I should have wished. But I went to see ‘Gambits.’ You have seen ‘Gambits,’ Mr. Grainger?”

“Oh, yes! I have been more than once,” said he.

Mrs. Owen leaned forward.

“Now, I wonder if we agree about it. I thought it was beautiful, so pathetic, and so teaching, if I may borrow one of your words, Canon Alington. It showed us, did it not, how from misery is born misery, and how wretchedness is the result of our mistakes.”

She looked from Hugh to the Canon, whose upper lip had begun to lengthen a little.

“Oh, I am sure you are going to scold me for being a wee bit Bohemian!” she said.

“Well, Hugh agrees with you,” he said. “I should have to scold you both.”

Mrs. Owen looked down at her plate a moment. “You have seen it?” she asked.

“No; but I have read a review of it. That, as I told Hugh, was enough.”

Mrs. Owen hesitated.

“Now I’m going to be very brave,” she said. “I am going to ask you to see it. There is something in it, is there not, Mr. Grainger, which somehow redeems the painful character of the plot. It is not wrong-doing that one condones, I think; it is the dreadful punishment that one pities. Surely one may pity everyone who is being punished, however justly.”

Then Canon Alington made an enormous concession.

“I do not wish to condemn the play unheard,” he said. “And when I am in town next I will go to see it. But I don’t think anybody but you could have persuaded me to! You see, I hold very strong views on the question of what are fit subjects for Art to treat of. I believe that the object of all Art is to raise our aspirations, to make us braver, better than we were. But pity, I allow, is a Christian virtue. I confess I had not thought of the play in that light. From what I read, I drew a very different conclusion; indeed, it inspired me with the subject I am going to talk about on Tuesday at the Literific.”

Mrs. Owen clapped her hands, not having heard what was known in Mannington as the Canon’s “last portmanteau-word.”

“Literific!” she cried. “How delightful! What a sweet portmanteau. And is the paper written? And what is its title? Is it fair to ask?”

“Yes, Agnes sent out the cards this afternoon, did you not, dear? So it is no longer a secret. I call it: ‘The True Test of Literary and Artistic Immortality.’”

Mrs. Owen’s face beamed at the thought.

“And now,” she said, “I am going to be very brave again. Might we, dear Canon Alington, hear a little of it, just a little, if it would not tire you, after dinner? It would be such a treat!”

Ambrose, as has been mentioned, though he did not dine, sat with his parents during dinner, either reading or drawing some simple object on the table, or joining in the conversation. As a rule he went to bed at dessert-time, having been given two or three strawberries (which were not reckoned among his ration), but when Mrs. Owen dined he was allowed to sit up and hear her sing one song. Here he turned to his father.

“Oh, papa,” he said, “may I for a great treat sit up a little later to-night and hear you read? I shall have heard Mrs. Owen sing, and have heard you read: it will make me so happy.”

“You wouldn’t understand it, my son,” said Canon Alington.

This was interpreted by Mrs. Owen to mean that he would read to them, and she clapped her hands again.

“How it pays to be brave!” she said. “Oh, thank you, dear Canon Alington!”

Ambrose never interrupted, and he waited, looking at his father through his spectacles till she had finished.

“But I could try, papa,” he said; “and I’m sure I should understand some of it, because it’s about books and pictures and music being meant to make us better, and I understand that. And when Uncle Hugh sings or Mrs. Owen sings I always feel that I want to be good. So I do understand some of it.”

“And it will make you happy?” asked his father.

“Yes.”

“Well, as I heard of a little boy to-day who gave away his strawberries to make a poor old woman happy, you shall sit up till half-past nine.”

Hugh had given a slight groan at Ambrose’s allusion to the moral effects of his singing, but even if heard, it was at once forgotten in the boy’s cries of joy who ran galloping round the table with very high action of his small knickerbockered legs to kiss his father, while Agnes, having told Mrs. Owen in good, firm French, so that Ambrose should not understand, the story of the little boy who gave the old woman the strawberries, rose to go.

“You mustn’t sit long over your cigarettes, Dick,” she said, “or we shall never get through with all we are going to do.”

“No, we won’t be long,” he said; “there’s a heavy programme in front of us, eh, Mrs. Owen?”

“I’m sure your part of it won’t be heavy,” she said.

Dick passed the port to Hugh when the ladies had left the room with Ambrose prancing on ahead.

“A very charming, cultivated woman,” he said. “She knows Venice as I know my parish. And I would be far from asserting off-hand that there was not something to be said of her view of ‘Gambits.’ It was an idea that hadn’t occurred to me. You found a valuable ally there, eh, Hugh?”

Hugh poured out a glass of port, lit a cigarette, and then drank off the port merely with the air of a thirsty man, neither tasting it nor thinking about it. That sort of thing always rather annoyed the Canon, who paid high prices for sound wine, though he did not take it himself.

“Oh, I don’t know that one wants allies if one is quite convinced of a thing,” he said. “In matters of conviction you are perfectly content to stand alone, if nobody agrees with you.”

Hugh always spoke very quickly, but in the speed of this his brother-in-law thought he detected the note of impatience.

“You rather imply that you would sooner Mrs. Owen didn’t agree with you,” he said.

“Yes, I think I do. I’m sure her view of the play is founded on reason which is a faculty perfectly incapable of judging works of art.”

“Indeed, what do you judge by, then?”

“Why, by impulse, by instinct. You don’t want to reason about beautiful things, or find out why they are beautiful. You want just to enjoy them, to lose yourself in their beauty.”

“A rather dangerous view, surely?”

“Why dangerous?” asked Hugh.

The upper lip again lengthened itself.

“Because it rather implies that you exempt beauty from other standards, such as those of morals and enlightenment. Of course, I am sure you can’t mean that. Shall we go?”

Hugh got up.

“Do I mean that?” he asked. “I’m not sure that I don’t.”

“My dear fellow, of course you can’t. I should like to discuss it with you, but we have received our marching orders, have we not? But, indeed, the point is rather fully discussed in the paper that Mrs. Owen insists on my reading.”

Mrs. Owen always brought “her music” with her when she went out to dine, because it was always quite certain that she would be asked to sing, and she always consented, saying that she did happen to have brought a song or two which was in the hall with her cloak. She always said hall, especially if it happened to be a very narrow passage with a barometer on one side and a hat rack on the other and a rich smell of cooking coming from kitchen stairs at the end. For she was incapable of sarcasm, and thus if the hall happened to be an artery of this description, it merely made her hosts think that the “entry” was larger than they had supposed. Canon Alington, however, in his commodious vicarage had a hall, and almost immediately after joining the ladies in the drawing-room he, with Ambrose again prancing in front of him, went to fetch “the music” in. Ambrose asked to be allowed to carry it, and this boon was granted him. Mrs. Owen always played her own accompaniments, and Ambrose, who was full of treats to-night, turned over for her, being already able to follow music if it did not go too fast, which Mrs. Owen’s songs did not. But at the end of this particular combination of orchards, tribulation and heaven above, he was terribly torn in half, for on the one hand Mrs. Owen was perfectly willing to sing again, and on the other bedtime was inexorably fixed for half-past nine, so that the longer Mrs. Owen sang the less he would hear of his father’s paper for the Literific. So with the simplicity of childhood he settled that “mamma should choose,” and mamma, as she could hardly fail to do, chose another song first.

There was no time for Hugh to sing after this, if the tests of immortality in literature and art were to be really inquired into, and, indeed, he had with some adroitness protested that it would be too hard to make him sing after Mrs. Owen, feeling quite sure that no sarcastic intention could possibly be imputed to him, since both his sister and Dick considered that Mrs. Owen sang with more expression than anyone they had ever heard, professional or amateur. Thus there was a full half-hour of reading for Ambrose before half-past nine sounded, and a full half-hour of reading for the rest of them afterwards, for the author’s suggestion that he should leave out or abridge his work was strongly deprecated by Mrs. Owen if he was quite sure it did not hurt his throat, and he felt perfectly certain it did not.

Hugh went up to bed that night rather early, though, as a matter of fact, he felt particularly wakeful, for he wanted, somewhere deep down inside him, to get away alone, to lie on his bed and think, or, better still—a plan which he put into operation—to get behind the curtains of his window and lean out into the night. He wanted to be alone, but to be in the presence of the very simple things of the world, the night, the large silent sky, the things that grew unconsciously and did not improve themselves or anyone else, and, he added rather viciously to himself, did not sing. He had passed his evening with perfectly sincere and unaffected people (with the exception of Ambrose, for with the best will in the world he could not believe that Ambrose really liked giving his strawberries to an old woman, and even if he did, a child had no right to be unselfish and kind at that age, and ought to be smacked for it), yet in spite of their sincerity he felt that the whole evening had been unreal. He was sure that Mrs. Owen was genuine in her musical tastes, but it was not real music that she liked, but false sentiment. He was sure that his brother-in-law was desperately in earnest on the true tests of immortality in art, but what he really liked was writing about it. He was certain that Agnes was genuinely interested in parish work, true tests of immortality, music and all the topics of the evening, but not of her own self, only because they were of interest to her husband. All the sincerity, he felt, was second-hand; they none of them cared for things quite simply and passionately with the mere love of life for the things of life. There had been, too, whole lumps of knowledge flying about all evening in every direction: they had all kept up a perfect fusillade of facts; but what of wisdom? Where should wisdom be found? He had once compared his brother-in-law’s mind to a rich sort of cake, that consists entirely of other things—you came upon an almond one moment, a raisin the next, a piece of spice, or sometimes a large hard stone. These were all (except the stone) proper ingredients for making cake, but, somehow, there wasn’t any cake: it was all ingredients. There was his golf, his gardening, his literary abilities, his fragments of rock from Nazareth, his mottoes, his knowledge of the galleries of Venice, but where was It, the man, the personality, the deeps? And all the time he was aware that both Agnes and Dick felt that he himself wanted deepening, and very likely Mrs. Owen and Ambrose thought so, too. And he felt himself injured and inflamed at the thought, so that he was moved to say out loud: “Thank God, I don’t want any of your deepening, not at any price.” As likely as not Dick and his sister were talking over the evening now, feeling, dear, good souls! that amusement had been combined with instruction, and that sun of culture had shone on the scene without intermission.

Hugh felt rather better when he had announced to the night that he did not wish to be subjected to this process of deepening, and leaned further out into the soft darkness. The moon was not yet risen, but behind the gray square Norman tower of the church that rose on the right the sky was dove-coloured and the stars burned with a half-quenched light, showing that moon-rise would not be long delayed. Just below his windows stretched the herbaceous bed that led down each side of the road to the gate, and in the deep dusk of this summer night it was only white flowers like the tobacco-plant and the Madonna lily that could be distinguished in the fragrant huddle of the summer. A little breeze stirred there occasionally, making the purple clematis that climbed up on each side of his window tremble and vibrate, and like wavelets lisping on the edge of a calm sea it whispered and bore to him the veiled odours of the beds and the damp smell of the dew-drenched lawn. Beyond lay the water-meadows of the Kennet, with wisps and streamers of white mist lying here and there like gauzy raiment of the fairies hung out to dry, while down the centre wandered the steel-coloured stream; and again, but with diminished viciousness, Hugh thought to himself that he was glad that he knew nothing whatever about the formation of dew or the cooling that made the moisture of the atmosphere condense. His own enjoyment and appreciation of it, his mental likening it to fairy raiment was quite enough for him, nor did he believe he would be deeper if he knew about its formation. To the left stood the elms of the hedgerow, black blots against the sky, and outlined with stars, while glimmering here and there against the black hillside he caught glimpses of the white road along which he had walked that morning. Far away, too, in another grove of trees there glimmered a light or two from the windows of the house he had visited that morning.

He had been conscious all day that somewhere deep inside him, far below the superficial perceptions and interests that had gone to make up the ordinary mental life of the others, a current was moving slowly and irresistibly in one direction. He knew, too, that it called to him to come down out of the sunlight and surface of things, and though he longed to obey this summons which all the time he knew he could not resist, yet he feared it, with the awe that hangs about the unknown. Ever since that evening of June a month ago, when he had come into the lit tent where dinner was in progress on the lawn at Cookham, the call of the deep had been in his ears, very softly at first and very distantly, but gradually getting more insistent, till the whole air by now had become thick with it. All this month, too, another hidden river had been flowing within him—his worship, for it was no less than that, for the beautiful unknown mind which had spoken to him so often and so intimately across the footlights. This morning those two rivers had met and joined; they flowed down mingled together now, and the two voices were one. The river had its name too; it was River Edith.

And with that, swift as a stone falls through the divided air, he took the plunge that had been so long delayed, down from the surface of everyday happenings, from the comedies and the pleasant sunny ways of life, into the depths and well-springs of being, surrendering himself and all he was or had, and by the very completeness of surrender unfolding the banner of the conqueror.

All this, this leap into the infinite, was measured in the world of time but by one deep-drawn breath and drunk in with the full inspiration of the singer, head back so that song could come from the open throat, and next moment whispered below his breath, yet with each note round and shining as a pearl, came the first line of the Schumann song he had sung to her and Peggy on that evening by the riverside. But now he sang it alone, but he sang it to her; wherever she was, he was there too, his spirit enfolded and embraced hers. He sang no more than that first line; it was all there on the birthday of his life.

And then, swift as the plunge itself, which had been a spiritual thing, there rushed in (for the mind is mated with the spirit and acts but infinitesimally less quickly) the stubborn actuality, and he was heaved back into the confines of things probable and real, and the humility, the knowledge of utter unworthiness that always goes hand in hand with the winged irresistible god came to him. How had he ever allowed himself to imagine, though only for this one second or two, that she could ever look at him presenting himself in the capacity of lover? She would not laugh at him, for she was too kind for that, but how gently her heart would pity him, and how that pity would hurt! How kindly and with what real regret—for he could assert that they were friends, which is a big word—would she look at him out of those wonderful eyes; how softly, how tremulously perhaps for she was so kind, would her mouth say the inevitable word! How gently would she reject him! And then—somehow he felt sure she would not find it necessary to speak those unspeakable banalities about hoping that they would still remain great friends. Her wisdom would do better than that. Yet what could it do? She would know.

But love never acquiesces long in that sort of surrender; its true surrender is the surrender he had felt before, when above his head as he gave up his sword floated the scarlet and gold of the triumphant banner. Again, as he looked out across the water-meadows hung with the skeins and wisps of mist, to where a light or two still burned very small and distantly in the house among the trees, the imperiousness of love that admits no defeat, and in thought breaks any obstacle or impossibility away as a heedless foot breaks away the gossamer webs that are woven in the dark between stems of meadow grass, invaded and occupied him. And, had he but known it, even then by a window the light of which had been that moment quenched there stood another also looking out into the velvet dusk of the night across those same meadows between them toward the house from which he looked. And, as she let the blind fall again over the open sash, she said below her breath that first line of song which he had whispered to the night and her.

The moon by now had risen and the shadow of the window-bars lay black on the blind she had drawn down. Outside the air was very still, but every now and then the little breeze that had stirred among the flowers in the garden at St. Olaf’s moved here also, and tapped with the wooden roller of the blind against the window-frame as the soft leaden-footed hours passed. But though she lay without closing her eyes until the dawn began to lift tired eyelids in the east, she was conscious of none of the tedium and fret that often goes with watchfulness. She had not the wish to sleep even, the desire for it was as remote from her as the power. She lay there thinking intently. She wanted first of all to find out and lay before herself as before the tribunal of her mind exactly what had happened.

It was so few weeks ago that she had said to Peggy that she did not expect very much from life, though she believed that many pleasant things would be hers, and that little joys and occupations would keep her busy and cheerful. And when she had said that it was absolutely true. But to-day she knew it was true no longer. All that had then seemed so cheerful and bright was at this moment as gray as ash to her; indoors, perhaps, it would still be possible to see that fire lived and burned in those embers, but they were now as if the sun had shone on them, dimming and rendering invisible in that glorious blaze the lesser illumination of the sticks and coals. With what honesty, too, and complete straightforwardness of purpose she had come down to settle here in Mannington, to absorb herself, in pursuance of the future she had sketched out to Peggy, in the quiet occupations with which her garden and the little local interests of the place would supply her, while she pushed forward over the gray sea of elderly years. And then, without warning almost, so swift had been its coming, the bomb had exploded, so to speak, in the middle of her flower-beds. She loved Hugh, no longer with the pale snowdrop love of girls, but with the full colour and glory of her mature womanhood. So much was certain.

She believed as she lay there, hearing the tapping blind, seeing the darkness-shrouded shapes of the things in her room, that more than this was certain. Vivid, full of moods and brightnesses as he was, she had never seen on his face until to-day the look that was there when she told him who that was for whom he had been seeking so diligently, whose was the mind that had conceived and the hand that wrote the work which had inspired him with so heartfelt a sympathy and admiration. All the last month they had been advancing daily in intimacy and friendliness, but there was something in the blank silence with which he received her announcement, something in his quiet salute of the hand that had written “Gambits,” something in the boyish shout of exultation with which he had thrown up his hat into the air, that told her that it was as if his soul had leaped some stream or barrier across which up till now they had done no more than shake friendly hands, and that they stood together now, not friends any longer, but lovers. In the stillness and loneliness of night, when above all other times a woman is honest with herself, neither exaggerating nor extenuating, but setting down quietly and firmly what she believes, Edith believed that. She could not and did not attempt to reason her way to the conclusion, any more than a bird measures the distance of the branch on which her nest is built or calculates the speed of flight when she would drop there. She just lights there, without calculation, by the nest-side, where love “keeping her feet” has guided her.

Again, for a little space, as she turned in her cool rustling bed, she detached these thoughts from herself and but listened to the tapping of the blind against her window. But it was for few seconds that that detachment was possible, for all her warm woman’s heart, tender and kind and starving to give and to receive this love which was its appointed, God-ordained food, beat upon her and shook her into life again. It was no wind that tapped there; it was he who tapped at her heart and had been admitted with doors flung back and kingly welcome. And, half laughing to herself, laughter that comes not out of the lips or of the amused brain, but of the deep bubbling with the well-spring of the heart, “Come in, Hughie, come in!” she whispered, and looked toward the window, knowing that it was but her imagination that made her speak, yet feeling it would not be strange if she saw there, across the shadow of the window-bars, the shadow of his head. And what then? She would go across to the window, not frightened, knowing it was he, and he would say the words that were wine to her, and she would give him wine for his wine.

Then suddenly the character and significance of the tapping blind changed altogether, and she sat up in her bed, frightened at its new message. It warned her, and warned her with terrible distinctness. He was so young, it told her, while for her all youth was gone. There might be one or two bright warm November days for her, a week perhaps of Indian summer, but after that, chill and the fogs of November and its frosts; she would be no match for that dear spirit of spring that had lost its way and come here by mistake, making it shiver, making it long to escape. It would be unable to see below the rime and the fog; it would judge, as all youth did, by appearance, by the flush of smooth cheeks, by the brightness of the eye in its unwrinkled frame, by the gloss of abundant hair, by laughter and the indefatigable joy of day and night; and since these things would be soon missing to her, it would think that the surface rime pierced below, that the depths were hard with the iron of age, that the heart was silvered with frost even as the head was silvered.

She got quickly out of bed and lit her candles, for this was nightmare, and placing them one on each side of her looking-glass, looked long at herself, critically and honestly. And as she looked courage and hope came back to her. Where were the wrinkles she had feared, or where the frosted hair? Thick and black and untouched by white it lay round her head, and her face was smooth and unpitted by the years that had gone, and her eyes were bright with the dawn of the fulfilment of her womanhood, which she had missed so long, but was now streaking her heaven in lines of gold and crimson, and flush of delicate green, even as outside across the water-meadows and behind the gray tower of St. Olaf’s dawn was coming swiftly. Surely it had been but for a moment that night had been heavy, and on the wings of the morning came joy.

Canon Alington, as his wife often told him, had a great deal of tact, and how prodigious was the amount with which Nature had endowed him may be gathered from the fact that he never asked any of the guests who might happen to be staying at St. Olaf’s over a Sunday whether or no they were going to church. He was, such was his liberal doctrine, primarily their host, and as such was bound to give them religious as well as all other liberties, and consequently when Hugh at about ten minutes to eleven came through the hall, where Ambrose was prancing about in a slightly subdued and Sabbatical manner with a hymn-book and prayer-book and a Bible in his hand, and a threepenny bit in his pocket, and met Canon Alington just coming out of his study on his way to church, Hugh’s appearance in gray flannels and a straw hat roused no comment of disapprobation. Indeed, Canon Alington said, “It will be cool in the garden.” But Ambrose’s tact was not equal to his father’s. He looked up at Hugh with the light shining on his spectacles.

“Aren’t you coming to church, Uncle Hugh?” he asked.

“No, not this morning.”

“Aren’t you well, Uncle Hugh? I’m so sorry! Shall I stop behind, as mamma does when I’m not well, and read the psalms and lessons to you? Or shall I go to church and tell you about the sermon afterward?”

“Yes, thanks awfully, old boy!” said Hugh; “I think that would be the best plan. Now run after your father, or else you will be late.”

Canon Alington had purposely walked on at the beginning of this colloquy, and into his head there came the words “a little child shall lead them.” He was a trifle disconcerted when he found that his little child was not leading anybody, until Ambrose explained the plan about the sermon.

But there was for Hugh no coolness of the garden, not, at any rate, of this garden, and he only waited for the low thunder of the organ to come booming out from the open church door, to set out, at a pace most unsuited to this hot morning, along the road up which he had gone at much about the same time yesterday. All the doubts and questioning of the evening before were gone, or if not gone were invisible in the flame that consumed them, were perhaps but the sticks and fuel that contributed to the brightness of its burning. He had to declare to her his love; that was his part, and nothing else was his part. He had no spare emotion with which to feel nervous or afraid; all he felt or was, it seemed to him, was caught up into the burning, into the beacon that leaped in flame within him. He did not know whether the road seemed long or short, or the morning hot or cold; the minor consciousness of life had no existence for him just then. In a few minutes he would be with the reality of life, the best was no more than shadow. And once again he was told she was in the garden, and once again, hatless, he followed the butler out.

She saw and knew; it was the face of her lover that looked at her dumbly, eagerly, and both waited, for he had but the one word to say to her, till they were alone. Then he came a step closer to her, and his eyes were like hot coals.

“Meine Seele, mein Herz,” he said, still very quietly, still without putting out his hand even to her.

And but for those burning eyes, and his mouth that trembled a little, you would have said that nothing momentous, nothing that concerned life and death and the deeps of the human soul, was passing on that quiet, sunny terrace.

But how well she knew it, and how it seemed to her that her heart must take wings and fly to him. Yet even as it poised, fluttering, in act to go, all the warnings of the tapping window blind last night came into her mind. He was so young, and the years that would make her old would but be adding strength and vigour to his manhood. And she put up her hand, as if to keep him off.

“No, no,” she said. “You don’t mean it, Hugh, you don’t consider—you don’t know.”

“It is all I know,” he said.

There was a moment’s absolute silence; he had said all that he had come to say, but from her answer he had to say more.

“Do you send me away?” he asked.

She turned from him, and looked out across the blue haze of heat that hung on the meadows.

“Ah, no, not that!” she half moaned to herself.

“What then?” said he quietly.

Then she turned to him again, and in her eyes no less than in his shone the authentic fire. Whatever trouble was there, whatever perplexity, it paled in the brightness of that shining.

“Just this, dear Hugh,” she said—“that I ask you—oh, how feeble it seems!—I ask you to give me a little time, to let me think and determine. It is all so new and strange, and—and so wonderful. I ask you to go away now, but not in the way you meant. Thank you for your love for me—it is precious, so precious! But I had never thought of it, never guessed it till yesterday.”

Hugh’s mouth had suddenly gone quite dry. He tried to moisten his lips to speak, but could not, and it was but a whisper that came.

“You love me?” he asked.

“Ah! you mustn’t ask me any more now. I have had enough. I—there, go, dear. I want——”

And she threw herself down on the garden bench where they had sat yesterday and burst into a passion of sobbing.