Jimmy did not attempt to go back to the cottage. Instead, he walked very slowly up the street towards the hotel, the door of which he was just entering when the Grimmer motor-car dashed past with the Canon sitting very erect in the tonneau. As a matter of fact, that grave personage had eventually entered the refreshment-room, feeling he needed something to steady his nerves after such a trying interview. True, the brandy did restore him a little, but the memory of Jimmy's words remained. He never forgot them, and, as his wrath subsided, they began to affect him in another way, making him ask himself whether, after all, he had read some of his Master's words aright. As time went by, the matter troubled him more and more—it is always a serious thing when a man past middle age, and a dignitary of the Church at that, begins to think—and when, a year later, Vera became engaged to the son of one of his own church-wardens, a young City man of exemplary life and undoubted wealth, he was conscious of a distinct sense of disappointment. He would have liked a son-in-law who would have understood his new point of view. He married them himself, in the blatantly new church with the sprawling texts round the chancel arch; and the world, his world, congratulated him. But on the following Sunday he preached a sermon which shocked his congregation beyond measure, and really cost him that bishopric; for he took Jimmy's suggested text, and argued, with an eloquent fire, quite alien to his nature, that if the Master was ready to forgive, His followers must do the same.

Ida voiced the opinion of a good part of the congregation, when she said, on the way home after the service, "Poor Canon Farlow! It is too terrible. The excitement of the wedding must have unhinged his mind."

But her new husband, Mr. Tugnell, himself a candidate for orders, the owner of the living having promised that he should succeed the canon, expressed the more general view, when he said sharply, "Nonsense, my dear, the man had been drinking. Anyone could see that."

And Ida agreed, as she did to everything Mr. Tugnell said. Even when he had suggested that she should settle half of Joseph Fenton's hard-earned money on himself she had consented, knowing that he was a philanthropist, and therefore would use it well.

May Farlow, on the other hand, grieved honestly for the canon, and still retained sittings in the parish church, though she usually took the children to the chapel-of-ease, "where is an old friend of ours," she said, "and I'm not going to turn my back on him. There are always two sides to a question after all, and I want to hear both. Perhaps we've been wrong in some things, Ida. At any rate, now that my children are growing up, I want more than ever to be right, so that I can guide them, and prevent them from making mistakes. Sometimes I think we were too severe in the past."

* * * * *

Jimmy hardly noticed the canon passing him. His mind was too full of other things. Vera was lost to him, he knew that, and, somehow, the fact troubled him little. With her, also, he had lost all present chance of going back to the Grierson world, of becoming a true and complete Grierson again, and curiously enough, that troubled him equally little. He had ceased to have the slightest desire for such a thing. A black sheep himself, he preferred to herd with his kind.

His first feeling had been one of bitter wrath against his sisters. They had betrayed him; they had thrust him back again when he was trying to pull himself up; they were keeping him down, keeping him at a distance for fear he should damage their position. And then his anger seemed to pass away, and he laughed, first at them, then at himself. What did he care about position, what did he care about Vera Farlow, what did he care about anything—except Lalage?

He knew it now. He knew why his engagement had made him so utterly miserable, knew why he had been unable to write that final letter to Lalage. There was only one place in the world he wanted to be—where Lalage was; only one object in life for him—to make Lalage happy, and by so doing wipe out all memory of his intended unfaithfulness to her.

But would she have him back now, would she forgive his coldness and his neglect, above all his repudiation of her in the London days? Did she still love him, as he knew she had done once, love him enough to forgive and forget, love him as he loved her? The thought drove everything else out of his mind. Vera, her father, his sisters, all seemed to belong to some distant past with which he now had no connection. His bitterness against Ida and May, his anger against the canon, his first feeling of grief, or rather of wounded pride, when he learnt that Vera was lost to him—these were as nothing compared to the fear that Lalage would refuse him. He was like a man who had awakened from a long sleep full of dreams to find that, whilst he had slumbered, a deadly peril had come down on him, a peril which could be averted only by immediate action.

Jimmy had ordered a drink, more or less mechanically, as a tribute levied by the house; but he pushed it away untasted.

"I'm going to be absolutely sober when I do this," he muttered, then went back into the hall, where he spent five minutes poring over a timetable, following the trains down the lines of figures with a finger which trembled slightly. Every hour seemed of supreme importance now. Had he not been in dreamland for over a year? At last he found his trains. He had three hours to wait in the town, two hours in London; but he would finally arrive in the little Yorkshire town about half-past seven in the morning, before Lalage had started work in that hateful little shop.

There was no need for him to write the trains down. Their times of departure were already graven on his memory; all he had to do now was cross the road to the post-office and wire to Lalage. He was cool again, a perfectly normal man. All his anger and his excitement had gone; but, none the less, he did not hesitate a moment over taking what might be, what he hoped would be, an irrevocable step.

An hour later, the kindly, grey-bearded old draper beckoned Lalage into his private office. "There's a wire for you, Miss Penrose," he said.

Lalage opened the envelope with trembling fingers—only one person in the world would wire to her—then she swayed a little and gripped the table for support, as she read, "Meet me at the station half-past seven to-morrow morning. Jimmy."

The draper was watching her anxiously. "No bad news, I hope," he said.

She looked at him with a smile which reassured him instantly. "No, it's good news, the best of good news," she answered.

When she had gone out the old man shook his head sadly. His own wife had died thirty years before, and he had passed nearly half of his life in waiting for the meeting on the other side; so he knew what that smile meant. Only a man, and the right man, can bring it to a woman's lips.

When Jimmy left the post-office he went straight back to the cottage. The fear of meeting any of the Drylands people did not worry him in the least. They all belonged to the dream, even Ethel, and now he had got back to the reality. Yet, when he opened the door and found a note from Mrs. Grimmer lying on the floor, he did not feel a twinge of uneasiness, dreading reproaches from her, as his hostess.

But Ethel wrote kindly. "Don't take it to heart too much, dear old boy. It was a nasty trick for Ida to play you, although just what I should have expected from her or May. As for the canon, I am afraid I have offended him mortally by sticking up for you. Vera is hopelessly weak. I was never more disappointed in anyone in my life. Still, after all, it was a mistake, and you would have never been happy. Take comfort from that, and don't do anything rash."

Jimmy read it through a second time, then tore it up. Ethel was a good sort, but if he did what he hoped to do, she would probably say he had disregarded her advice and acted rashly. So she, too, had better become part of the dream and be forgotten, which is the proper fate of dreams and dream-people.

It did not take him long to pack his bag and shut up the cottage; consequently, he had plenty of time to catch his train; but on this occasion he did not go into the refreshment-room. He needed no stimulant to keep him going now. If she refused to hear him it might be different; but until he saw her he was going to touch nothing. He would speak deliberately, in cold blood.

For a moment, when he came out of the terminus, London affected him as it had done on the night of his home-coming; but the feeling passed immediately, and the town became simply one stage on his journey to Lalage. Moreover, as he drove across to the other terminus, he felt none of that sickness at heart which he had dreaded so greatly, which had made him avoid the place as a plague spot. All the old memories seemed to have lost their bitterness. The women in the streets had not the slightest kinship with Lalage. His jealousy of the past had vanished, the hateful thoughts which had once gone nigh to driving him mad had lost all their power, and now the only thing in his mind was the fear that the new Lalage, which was the real Lalage, would not risk joining her life to his again.

As the train came into the station he saw her standing there, tall, very pale, and, as he thought, looking even more beautiful than ever in her plain black dress. She was the only person on the platform, just as he was the only passenger to alight; but, seeing the look in her eyes, it would have been the same had there been a crowd.

"Lalage," he said, and took her in his arms.

When she disengaged herself, blushing, for the ticket collector had just come out, she scanned his face eagerly, and then the colour left her cheek again.

"Jimmy, oh, Jimmy, dear, you look so ill. Hasn't anyone taken care of you all these months?"

He laughed happily, knowing now that everything was well. "I will tell you all about it by and by." Then he stopped, regardless of the indignant glances of the ticket collector, who was thinking of his cooling breakfast. "Shall I send my bag to the hotel, or shall I leave it here?"

She understood his meaning. "Send it to the hotel," she answered in a low voice.

Nothing more was said until they were clear of the station yard, then, "Where can we go and have a quiet talk?" he asked.

For answer she led him into a little public park near by. It was deserted at that hour, and he got the chance to speak at once.

"Lalage," he said in a tone she hardly recognised, "I've broken my promise to you. I've been ruining my health with liquor, trying to forget you; and I've been engaged to another woman. I know you're infinitely too good for me in every way; but I've come to ask you to marry me, not in the distant future, but now, at once, as soon as I can get a licence."

She stood very still, and, for a few seconds, he feared he had come too late, then she spoke haltingly. "Jimmy, I'm afraid ... after the past ... that you wouldn't trust me. And that would be even worse than this."

He took her hand. "Lalage, dearest, there's no question of that now, there can be no question of it when we're married. You say no one has taken care of me. Won't you do it, sweetheart, and save me from myself?"

She looked at him with shining eyes. "You haven't said yet why you want to marry me, Jimmy."

Once more he took her in his arms unresisting. "Because I love you, dearest, because you're everything in this wide world to me, because I honour you and trust you above all women, and because life would not be worth living unless I had you as my wife."

THE END