With a cry he sprang sitting up, and looked around him. 'A dream!' he whispered. 'A dream! What a hideous dream! Ah, that is the most terrible dream I have ever had. God, forgive me. God pardon me, if in one brief moment yesterday I allowed a question of any of Your inconceivable qualities to enter my mind.' He flung himself out of bed and dropped on his knees, facing the light. He threw his hands up to Heaven beseechingly, imploringly, and prayed with all the fervour of his nature, asking for strength and grace and undying faith. He covered his face with his hands, bowed his head to the floor, and wailed for mercy, for forgiveness. He admitted that for one moment yesterday his faith had been shaken. He admitted this with all the humility of his soul. He was unworthy to raise his eyes to Heaven, he who had sinned so heinously; but the All-Merciful might show him mercy. Mercy had been promised to all who humbled themselves and asked for mercy. He lay there, prone, full of pitiful sorrow and passionate importunity. Grant him mercy, grant him mercy, grant him hope! Here he paused a long time. His thoughts made no progress. After a time they took a new form, and a wilder fervour of entreaty burst from him. 'Bowed down, body and soul, will I remain all day, beseeching Thee not to visit this sin upon her, beseeching Thee not to punish me through her happiness.' He felt a flush dash through him, and he raised up his head in abject entreaty. 'No, no, no! Judge me not, O Lord! I am not moved by mixed motives. I do not place an earthly being between Thee and me. But if it be Thy will, spare her and smite me; spare her and smite me. If she must suffer, Thy will be done. Thy will be done. Thy will be done.' He felt calmer. 'Thy will be done' had solaced him. So long as he pleaded his own cause or her cause he was overwhelmed by a sense of his unworthiness. Having confessed his sin and expressed his sorrow, and thrown himself upon the mercy of God, he felt more easy with the words of absolute submission on his lips than with the most passionate entreaty. He rose, went to the window, and looked out. It was now busy morning. Sounds of traffic filled the air. From the window he could see no street, but he could hear the rattle and the din. A vast plain of houses stretched before him. From a thousand chimneys he saw arise a thousand shafts of smoke. The simple people who lived in these modest homes were stirring. The smoke showed breakfast was in course of preparation. These simple people had gone to bed and slept peacefully, had risen and said a few fervent prayers, and were now preparing for the morning meal. Here and there above the houses rose spires and towers of churches in the sober morning light, like sentinels guarding the people from spiritual harm. Happy, busy folk! Happy people who had no leisure for speculations or fears! Happy you who are not open places for the four winds of love to beat into tumult! You cannot sit late reading forbidden words, for you must be up and away to business betimes. The idle man's faith is open to continual assault. The idle man's heart is ever exposed to the arrows of outrageous love. And yet neither his own faith nor his heart had been assailed until now. Did that fact result from the nature of life led by him, or from qualities inherent in himself? Most likely from the kind of life. Happy you busy people down there who have no time for the luxury of such soul-abandoned love! Your dull lives are mere routines of commonplaces. Your love-making is no more exciting than your going to a new school or taking a new house. You settle most of your worldly affairs by the rule of three, and leave your spiritual concerns in the hands of a methodical rector you know to be well-informed and blameless. Who could live among the immutable, the unemotional Chinese? De Quincey says he should go mad in the Flowery Land. He could not endure their immortal traditions, their immemorial customs. After all, perhaps it was better to be more finely strung than these honest dull traders below. The man was a coward who would not risk the higher pain for the higher pleasure. What was the sum of happiness in the life of one dull plodding man of method compared with the rapture which came to him at the touch of Marie's hand?' Ah well, honest folk of method, go your way; I will go mine. If life shall give me nothing else great, it shall give me love. I will fling all other ambitions to the wind now. I will think of nothing else on earth. I shall look for my earthly and heavenly happiness in being with her here all my life, and in death to be with her in the land of the faithful.' For the first time he became sensible he was cold. He had slept more than an hour without coat, waistcoat, or boots, and the raw chilliness of winter dawn had entered his blood and stiffened his joints. He did not know the hour; he felt no curiosity to know. He put on his coat, waistcoat, and boots. He was low and wretched. 'I shall never be so foolish as to sit up another night. She sat up last night, and I this. After all, there are some things to be approved of in the life of those people down there.' He was standing at the window once again. 'If they have natures too practical, vitalities too low to experience the highest privileges of pleasure, they are obliged to keep regular hours. They cannot, after the wear and tear of the day, sit up until winter daylight surprises them. If I had not sat up, I should not have had that dream. If I had not sat up, I should not feel so weak and depressed now. If I had not sat up, I should not have got that revolting shock. It is against nature to sit up. All living things retire with the sun except man. Of course there are exceptions; but all creatures that come out after dusk are unclean and loathsome. 'And yet some men must sit up all night, for the good of others: lighthouse-keepers, and policemen, and watchmen, and sailors at sea, and astronomers. 'Astronomers and, no doubt, other men of science. Other men of science! Other men of science! How chill and dismal the morning! Other men of science no doubt. Astronomy is a loyal science. If difficulties arose in reconciling it now and then with Revelation, the difficulties disappeared. But other sciences were ruthless, impious; they respected nothing, they would reconcile with nothing. They were arrogant autocrats, absolute iconoclasts. 'Out there, down beneath, were the honest hardworking men of London rising and going forth from their homes to their blameless work. While they had slept the policemen had watched over their lives and their properties; while they had slept these sentinel churches had watched over their spirits. Their lives were spent in daily toil and nightly sleep to fit them for the morrow's labour. When the day of rest came, they flocked to those, churches from which rose those towers and spires, and there gave thanks for benefits received, begged continuance of grace and favours, and humbly prayed that in the end, when the shadow of death fell upon them, they might be permitted to join the pious hosts around the Eternal Throne. 'But in the darkness of the night-time, in silence and in secrecy, came forth an impious band of men, who, unsweetened by any faith, devoted all their time to undermining the faith of others. They came forth disguised as benefactors of mankind, philanthropists, progressionists; and when good simple people slept they went to work down there. Down there, where the churches stood, the churches which watched over the spirits of sleeping man by night, under which his fervent thanks and dearest aspirations were uttered on the Lord's Day, they stole, and, hidden in their cloaks, strove to sap the walls! Sought to sap the walls of the churches and bring down the towers and spires, and leave man with no thought above this gross earth and its gross pains and pleasures! 'Of all other crimes, what could equal this? It was not like the enthusiasm of creed against creed, or sect against sect, which sought, even in the worst days of religious persecution, only to impose what it believed to be a better upon people supposed to have a less perfect faith. Men do now, in the name of civilisation, what they did formerly in the name of faith. But there was a principle of humanity to be found in the forcible obtrusion of faith or civilisation upon a people; it was believed to be for the benefit of the people upon whom it was forced. But upon what humane principle do those stand who go out by night and undermine the temples of our fathers, and desecrate, with the blasphemous gabble of man, the consecrated walls of God, and the sacred clay of those who sleep in the faith of Christ? 'The breakfast-bell! I had no notion it was so late. I must run down at once; Marie will be there. Now that I want to call her Mary I can't. That is strange. What is the reason for it? I do not know. I feel dull and heavy; I wish I had slept.' He left the room and went downstairs. They were all sitting at breakfast when he entered the room. His eyes sought and found her. She had never looked so beautiful before. He paused a moment, smiling at her. He did not notice that all eyes were fixed on him in surprise; he did not notice that people at the table exchanged peculiar looks when they took their eyes off him; he did not notice that, the moment he entered, Nevill rose, and was now approaching him from the opposite side of the table. Without saying a word, Nevill caught Osborne, and pushed him back through the doorway into the passage. When they were in the passage, and the door had been closed, Nevill surveyed him and said,-- 'What on earth is the matter with you?' Osborne looked at him with amazement. 'The matter with me--the matter with me? Nothing.' 'Do you know you have not brushed your hair, your shirt and collar are all rumpled, and you are looking as if you had stepped out of a coffin?' Osborne started. 'I had quite forgotten that. Do you think they,' pointing to the breakfast-room door, 'noticed me?' 'Of course they did. What have you been doing with yourself? You don't drink?' 'No, no. I merely sat up reading those books you lent me.' 'You fool! Run upstairs, and put yourself right. Be down as quickly as you can--before they get up from table, if possible. Eat an enormous breakfast, and hold a full cup of tea out at arm's length, to show your hand is steady, and that you have not been to an orgy.' Nevill pushed Osborne up the stairs, and then returned to the breakfast table. 'I hope Mr Osborne is not ill?' said Mrs Barclay, from the top of the table. 'Not a bit of it, not a bit of it,' answered Nevill briskly, looking first at Mrs Barclay, then at Miss Osborne, and finally at Miss Gordon. 'Not a bit of it. He sat up reading, and got frost-bitten all over. He was so much interested he never knew the hour until the bell rang; and then he felt so outrageously hungry he charged down just as he sat, never thinking of putting on his back hair or his goloshes--I beg your pardon, I mean his umbrella and carpet bag. The same kind of thing, and even still more extraordinary, has happened to me over and over again. Once I remember sitting down on a balk of wood at the mouth of the Chesapeake river. I had a favourite author with me--' 'Munchausen?' interrupted the solid-looking man. 'No, sir; the book was "Grotesque Animals," by E. W. Cooke. Well, I began reading, and never noticed anything but the book for a whole day. I had begun to read at six o'clock of a summer morning, and never took my eyes off the book until I could read no more. Well, judge of my surprise at finding myself out of sight of land, away in the Atlantic! I had not minded the rising of the tide, and the balk had been floated and carried out to sea. The most wonderful thing about the affair was that my legs had not been eaten off by sharks; for there were thousands of sharks about, and my legs were about nine inches in the water. How was it I had escaped, you will reasonably ask--' 'To be unreasonably answered,' interrupted the solid-looking man, with a smile. 'Sir,' said Nevill, 'I am a practical man--a man of business. If I have fiction on hand, I go to a publisher and sell it. If I have truth on hand, I give it away to my friends. Truth fetches nothing in the market. Look at science. You can't make money out of science; and yet science is the only branch of human knowledge you can be sure of, for you can prove your work day by day. History is the greatest liar of all.' 'We are most anxious, sir,' said the solid man, 'to hear the remaining scientific facts of your remarkable voyage.' 'Oh, certainly. I immediately sang out! "All hands to let go sail! Let go all sail! Hard a-port, and let go the anchor!" There was nothing else for it. She might run over her anchor and drag and foul it; but what could one do? Now, sir, what would you have done in this case?' 'I should have drawn my feet out of the water at once, and taken off my boots and stockings.' 'But when you interrupted me I was about to explain to you that I owed my legs to my shoes and stockings. Common gratitude, sir, would not allow me to treat my shoes and stockings in that way. You must know that on the coast just there you find an extraordinary quick growth of all kinds of marine creatures. Well, while I was occupied reading my book, barnacles and mussels began to settle on my boots and stockings, and when I tried to raise my feet out of the water they felt as heavy as lead; and when I succeeded, in getting them into view, they looked exactly like two spars which had been floating about the Mediterranean for a couple of years!' The door opened once more, and Osborne entered. By this time the first breakfast was over. Osborne had dressed, and now looked much brighter than he had half-an-hour before. His manner was more subdued than ever, and he spoke little during the meal. Breakfast was a long irregular meal. Some guests came down punctually at the hour appointed; some were an hour late. A few lingered at the table, and now and then there was a fresh arrival from upstairs. Osborne and his sister sat at the left-hand side of the table; Nevill and Miss Gordon at the right. Opposite Nevill sat Miss Osborne; opposite Osborne Miss Gordon. Her eyes rested in wonder upon him. What had happened to him? Look at his eyes; they were changed. They did not look at her in the old way. Their old way had been constant and tender. Now his glances were sharp, quick, abrupt. And this, too, when he had sat up all night over those wretched books. Her king, her noble lord. Her simple-hearted, great-minded master. Her lord. Strangest of all, there was in his eyes a look of question, if not reproach. What could that look mean? She had done nothing which could give cause for such a look. When they parted last night they had been most cordial. He had, in fact, been compassionately affectionate. What could have happened to him since? One would think sitting up all night would make a man dull and languid; and now, for the first time, she saw him quick, excited. Could it be he was troubled in his mind about anything? Could it be he had had an unpleasant letter that morning--some bad news? She hoped not. He had too good and noble a nature to be troubled with petty trials. It would be her pleasure and her pride to save him all worry and trouble by-and-by. What could his sister see in that Mr Nevill's talk to smile at? Kate had told her no man ever frightened her more than Mr Nevill. She was now smiling at his talk. How uncertain of their own minds women were! How could Kate Osborne smile so and enjoy the flippant gabble of that man, while her brother wore such a look? He was pale. Nevill had said he was not ill. But then Nevill may have drawn on his imagination for that as for many of his other statements. No, no, he was not ill of any ailment of the body. His eyes were bright and clear. He may have been faint and exhausted by his long, lonely watch, but he was not ill. What could it be? How could he sit there and show no resentment against the wearisome chatter of this other man? He seemed to take no notice of the talk, not to hear it. He did not speak to her beyond almost formal words of greeting. Yesterday she should have spoken to him, but matters were changed now. So long as he had been her unaccepted suitor she had felt free and untrammelled. Now she was shy and diffident with him. Surely he might speak to her. She had wittingly done nothing to make him act thus towards her. Could it be she had been too hasty, and that he considered, upon a night's reflection, she had not acted with propriety? Or could it be that he, having obtained the assurance he sought, had lost one of the principal sources of interest in her? All through breakfast he did not address a word to her. When he had finished they all rose, and passed into the drawing-room. Nevill called Miss Osborne's attention to something at one end of the room. Osborne, by a glance, conveyed to Miss Gordon that he wished to speak with her at the other. When they reached the window he turned, and, casting another of those quick, unquiet glances at her, said,-- 'I have had a terrible night.' He spoke so low those at the other end of the room could not hear him. 'What made it terrible?' she asked, trying to force a smile. 'You.' 'I?' She uttered a startled laugh. 'What have I done? Tell me at once. You may tell me.' 'You have done nothing. I was not disturbed by the past, but by the future.' Involuntarily she placed a hand on his arm, and looked up into his eyes with a swift, pleading glance. 'You did not think I could do anything unworthy of you, George?' He started. He took her hand spasmodically and pressed it. He looked into her eyes with a terrible tenderness. She had never called him by his Christian name before. This was their betrothal. From this moment all reserve between them was broken down--their joint lives dated. He answered hurriedly,-- 'No, child. But I had a dreadful dream, a dream in which I thought I lost you.' She pressed his hand, and looked into his eyes with profound constant glance, and whispered,-- 'Never, George, until you wish me to go.' 'Child, child, child!' he whispered passionately, 'I must speak to you privately--at once. Let us get out of this place for awhile. Oh, Marie, I do not know why, I feel as if you were already drifting away from me for ever!' 'Do I look as if I wanted to go?' She glanced at the other end of the room. She then looked up at him with an arch, joyous smile. 'Their backs are to us.' They were bent over some engravings in the portfolio. 'Say good morning to me.' He stooped, kissed her, and sighed. 'You do not want me to go away from you?' she asked slyly, tenderly. 'My God!' he whispered, 'take all other earthly things from me if You will, but leave me this!' 'I do not want to go away from you. You do not want me to go away. Why are you uneasy? What caused you anxiety last night?' 'Wait until we are out of this. Let us go at once.' 'Without telling them?' She nodded towards where Nevill and Miss Osborne stood. 'Yes.' 'That will be our first little romance.' 'Run off now. Don't be long.' 'What!' she pouted. 'You are sending me away, although you said you did not want me to go.' He glanced in the direction of the other group, and then stooped and kissed her again. She broke from him and glided out of the room, giving him a smile of tender sauciness as she went.