Gloom fell on the house in Prior Street in the weeks that followed Christmas. The very servants went heavily in the shadow of it. Anne began to have her bad headaches again. Deep lines of worry showed on Majendie's face. And on her couch by the window, looking on the blackened winter garden, Edith fought day after day a losing battle with her spine.

The slow disease that held her captive there seemed to be quickening its pace. In January there came a whole procession of bad nights, without, as she pathetically said, "anything to show for it," for her hands could make nothing now. She lay flatter than ever; each day she seemed to sink deeper into her couch.

Anne, between her headaches, devoted herself to her sister with a kind of passion. Her keenest experience of passion came to her through the emotion wakened in her by the sight of Edith's suffering. She told herself that her love for Edith satisfied her heart completely; that she fulfilled herself in it as she never could have fulfilled herself in any other way. Nothing could degrade or spoil the spiritual beauty of this relation. It served as a standard by which she could better judge her relation to her husband. "I love her more than I ever loved him," she thought. "I cannot help it. If it had been possible to love him as I love her—but I have lowered myself by loving him. I will raise myself by loving her."

She was never tired of being with Edith, sewing silently by her fireside, or reading aloud to her (for Edith's hands were too tremulous now to hold a book), or sitting close up against her couch, nursing her hands in hers, as if she would have given them her own strength.

And thus her ardour spent and renewed itself, and left her colder than ever to her husband.

At times she mourned, obscurely, the destruction of the new soul that had been given her last year, on her birthday, when she had been born again to her sweet human destiny. At times she had glimpses of the perfect thing it might have been. There was no logical sequence in the events that had destroyed it, the return of Lady Cayley and the spectacle of her triumph. She could not say that her husband had deteriorated in consequence. The change was in herself, and not in him. He was what he always had been; only she seemed to see him more completely now. At times, when the high spiritual life died down in sleep, she slipped from her trouble, and turned, with her arms stretched towards him, where he lay. In her dreams he came to her with the low cry she had heard in the wood at Westleydale. And in her dreams she was tender; but her waking thoughts were sad and hard.

Majendie found it more than ever difficult to realise that she had ever shown him kindness, that her arms had opened to him and her pulses beaten with his own. Her face and her body were changing with this change of soul. Her health suffered. Her eyes became dull, her skin dry; her small, reticent mouth had taken on the tragic droop; she was growing austerely thin. She had abandoned the pleasing and worldly fashion of her dress, and arrayed herself now in straight-cut, sombre garments, very serviceable in the sick-room, but mournfully suggestive, to her husband's fancy, of her renunciation of the will to please.

On her first appearance in this garb he enquired whether she had embraced the religious life.

"I always have embraced it," said she in her ringing voice.

"I believe it's about the only thing you ever wanted to embrace."

"You need not say so," she returned.

"Then why, oh why, do you wear those awful clothes?"

"My clothes are suitable," said she.

"Suitable? My dear girl, they suggest a divorce-suit, Majendie versus Majendie, if you like. You're a walking prosecution. Your face, with that expression on it, is a decree nisi with costs. You don't want to be a libel on your husband, do you?"

"How can you say such things?"

"Well—look in the glass, dear, if you don't believe me."

She looked. The dress was certainly not becoming. She greeted the joyless apparition with her thin, unwilling smile.

He put his arm around her and drew her to him. He loved her dearly, for all her sadness and unsweetness.

"Poor Nancy," he said, "I am a brute. Forgive me."

"I do forgive you."

The words seemed the refrain of her life's sad song.

And as he kissed her he said to himself, "That's all very well; but if I only knew what I'm supposed to have done to her! Her friends must think me a perfect monster."

And, indeed, there was more truth than Majendie was aware of in his extravagant jests. His wife's face was so eloquent of misery that her friends were not slow in drawing their conclusions. Thurston Square prepared itself to rally round her. Mrs. Eliott was loyal in keeping what she supposed to be Anne's secret, but when she found that the Gardners also understood that young Mrs. Majendie wasn't very happy with her husband, discussion became free in Thurston Square, though it went no further.

"The kindest thing we can do is to give her a refuge sometimes from his dreadful friends," said Mrs. Eliott. "I have to ask her here every time they're there."

Mrs. Gardner declared that she also would ask her gladly. Miss Proctor said that she would ask Mr. Majendie and Mr. Gorst, which would come to the same thing for Anne, but that she would not have Anne without her husband. Miss Proctor could be depended on to take a light view of any situation, a view entirely her own.

So the Gardners, as well as the Eliotts, rallied round Mrs. Majendie, and offered their house also as her refuge. And thus poor Anne, whose ideal was an indestructible loyalty, contrived to build up the most undesirable reputation for her husband in Thurston Square. Of this reputation she now became aware, and it reacted on her own estimate of him. She said to herself, "They don't approve of him. They seem to know something. They are sorry for me." And she was humbled in her pride.

The one who seemed to know most, and to be sorriest of all, was Canon Wharton. She was always meeting him now. It was positively as if he lay in wait for her. His eyes seemed more than ever to have penetrated her secret. They held it safe under the pent-house of his brows. They seemed to be always making allusions to it, while his tongue preserved a delicate reticence. At meeting they said to her, "It doesn't matter if I know your secret. Do you suppose it is so evident to everybody? Why, in all this town, there is no one—no one, dear lady—capable of discovering it but I. It is a spiritual secret." And at parting they said, "When you can bear it no longer you must come to me. Sooner or later you will come to me."

And the weeks went on towards Lent. Anne longed for the time of cleansing, and absolution and communion; for the peace of the week-day services; and for the sweet, sharp, grey light of the young Spring at evening, a light that recalled, piercingly, the long Lent of her girlhood, and the passing of its pure and consecrated days.

She had not yet completely forsaken St. Saviour's for All Souls. She loved the grey old church in the market-place. Set in the midst of that sordid scene of chaffering and grime, St. Saviour's perpetuated for her the ancient beauty and the majesty of her faith. When she desired to forget herself, to sink humbly back into the ages, passive to a superb tradition, she went to St. Saviour's. When she wished to be stirred and strengthened, to realise her spiritual value, to feel the grip of divine forces centring on her, she went to All Souls.

On the Sunday before Lent she was fairly possessed by this ardent personal mood. In obedience to it she attended Matins at the Canon's church.

She had had a scruple about going, for Edith had been worse that morning, and more evidently unhappy. She went alone. Majendie had admitted lately that he liked going to St. Saviour's, but he refused to accompany her to All Souls.

She went in a strange, premonitory mood, expectant of some great illumination. It came with the Collect for the day. Anne was deeply moved by the Collect. She prayed inaudibly, with parted lips thirsting for the sources of her spiritual help. Her light went up with the ascending, sentence by sentence, of the prayer.

"Oh, Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth;

"Send Thy Holy Ghost and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues;

"Without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before Thee;

"Grant this for thine only Son, Jesus Christ's sake." The ritual rang upon that note. The music of the hymns of charity was part of the light that penetrated her, poignant, but tender.

Poignant but tender, too, were the aspect and the mood of the Canon as he ascended the pulpit and looked upon his congregation.

There was a rustling, sliding sound as the congregation turned to listen to their vicar.

"Though I speak,'" said the Canon, "'with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or as a tinkling cymbal."

He gripped his hearers with the stress he laid upon certain words, "angels," and "cymbal." He bade them mark that it was not by hazard that the great prayer for Charity was appointed for the Sunday before Lent. "The Church," he said, "has such care for her children that she does nothing by hazard. This call is made to us on the eve of the great battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Why, but that those among us who come off victors may have mercy upon those weakly ones who are worsted and fallen in the fight. The life of the spirit has its own unique temptations. It is against these that we pray to-day. We are all prepared to repent, to use abstinence, to mortify the body with its corrupt affections. Are we prepared to bear the burden of our brother's and our sister's unrepentance? Of their self-indulgence? Of their sin? To follow in all things the Divine Example? We are told that the Saviour of the world was the friend of publicans and sinners. We accept the statement, we have gone on accepting it, year after year, as the statement of a somewhat remote, but well-authenticated historical fact. Have we yet realised its significance? Have we pictured, are we able to picture to ourselves, what company He kept? Among what surroundings His divine figure was actually seen? In what purlieus of degenerate Jerusalem? In what iniquitous splendours? In what orgies of the Gentiles? And who are they to whom He showed most tenderness? Who but the rich young man? The woman taken in adultery? And Mary Magdalene with her seven devils? Which is the divinest of the divine parables? The parable of the prodigal son who devoured his father's living with harlots!"

The Canon's voice rose and fell, and rose again; thrilling, as his breast heaved with the immense pathos and burden of the world.

Anne had a vision of the Hannays and the Ransomes, and of the prodigal cast out from the house that loved him. And she said to herself for the first time: "Have I done right? Have I done what Christ would have me do?" The light that went up in her was a light by which her deeds looked doubtful. If she had failed in this, in charity? She pondered the problem, while the Canon approached, gloriously, his peroration.

"Therefore we pray for charity"—the Canon's voice rang tears—"for charity, oh, dear and tender Lord, lest, having known Thy love, we fall, ourselves, into the sins of unpity and of pride."

Tears came into Anne's eyes. She was overcome, bowed, shaken by the Canon's incomparable pleading. The Canon was shaken by it himself, his voice trembled in the benediction that followed. No one had a clearer vision of the spiritual city. It was his tragedy that he saw it, and could not enter in. Many, remembering that sermon, counted it, long afterwards, to him for righteousness. It had conquered Anne. The tongues of men and of angels, of all spiritual powers, human and divine, spoke to her in that vibrating, indomitable voice.

The problem it had raised remained with her, oppressed, tormented her. What she had done had seemed to her so good. But if, after all, she had done wrong? If she had failed in charity?

She had come to a turning in her way when she could no longer see for herself, or walk alone. She was prepared to surrender, meekly, her own judgment. She must ask help of the priest whose voice told her that he had suffered, and whose eyes told her that he knew.

She sent a note to All Souls Vicarage, requesting an interview, at Canon Wharton's house rather than her own. She did not want Edith or the servants to know that she had been closeted with the Canon. The answer came that night, making an appointment after early Evensong on the morrow.

After early Evensong, Anne found herself in the Canon's library. He did not keep her waiting, and, as he entered, he held out to her, literally, the hand of help. For the Canon never wasted a gesture. There was no detail of social observance to which he could not give some spiritual significance. This was partly the secret of his power. His face had lost the light that illuminated it in the pulpit, but his eyes gleamed with a lambent triumph. They said, "Sooner or later. But rather sooner than I had expected."

Anne presented her case in a veiled form, as a situation in the abstract. She scrupulously refrained from mentioning any names.

The Canon smiled at her precautions. "We are working in the dark," said he. "I think I can help you a little bit more if you'll allow me to come down to the concrete. You are speaking, I fancy, of our poor friend, Mr. Gorst?"

She looked at him helplessly, startled at his penetration and her own betrayal, but appeased by the pitying adjective which brought Gorst into the regions of pardonable discussion.

"You needn't be afraid," he said. "I had to be certain before I could advise you. I can now tell you with confidence that you are doing right. I—know—the—man."

He uttered the phrase with measured emphasis, and closed his teeth upon the last words with a snap. It was impossible to convey a stronger effect of moral reprobation. "But I see your difficulty," he continued. "I understand that he is a rather intimate friend of Miss Majendie."

Anne noticed that he deliberately avoided all mention of her husband.

"She has known him for a very long time."

"Ah yes. And it is your affection, your pity for your sister that makes you hesitate. You do not wish to be hard, and at the same time you wish to do right. Is it not so?"

She murmured her assent. (How well he understood her!)

"Ah, my dear Mrs. Majendie, we have sometimes to be a little hard, in order that we may not be harder. You have thought, perhaps, that you should be tender to this friendship? Now, I am an old man, and I have had a pretty large experience of men and women, and I tell you that such friendships are unwholesome. Unwholesome. Both for the woman and the man."

"If I thought that—"

"You may think it. Look at the man—What has it done for him? Has it made him any better, any stronger, any purer? Has it made her any happier?"

"I think so. It is all she has—"

"How can you say that, my dear Mrs. Majendie, when she has you?"

"And her brother."

The Canon gave her a keen glance. He seemed to be turning a little extra light on to her secret, to see it the better by. And under that light her mind conceived again a miserable suspicion.

"He knows something," she thought. "What is it that he knows? They all seem to know."

She turned the subject back again to her sister-in-law and Mr. Gorst. "She thinks she can save him."

"Her brother?"

It was another turn of the searchlight, but this time the Canon veiled his eyes, as if in mercy. He really knew nothing, nothing at all; but, as a man of the world, he felt that there was a great deal more than Mr. Gorst and Miss Majendie at the back of this discussion, and he was very curious to know what it might be.

Anne recoiled from the veiled condemnation of his face more than she had from its open intimations. She was not clever enough to see that the clever Canon had simply laid a trap for her.

She was now convinced that there was something that he knew. She lifted her head in loyal defiance of his knowledge. "No," said she proudly, "Mr. Gorst. It was of him I was speaking."

"Ah," said the Canon, as if his mind had come down with difficulty from the contemplation of another and more interesting personality; and again the significance of his manner was not lost upon Anne.

"I do not know Miss Majendie," he went on, still with the air of forcing himself to deal equitably with a subject of minor interest; "but if I am not much mistaken, she is, is she not, a little morbid?"

"She is a hopeless invalid."

"I know she is" (his voice dropped pity). "Poor thing—poor thing! And she thinks that she can save him? Mark me, I put no limit to the saving grace of God, and I would not like to say whom He may not choose as His instrument. But before we presume to act for Him, we should be very sure about the choice. Judging by the fruits—the fruits of this friendship"—he paused, as if seeking for a perfect justice—"Yes. That is what we must look at. I imagine Miss Majendie has been morbid on this subject. Morbid; and, perhaps, a little weak?"

Anne flushed. She was distressed to think she had given such an impression. "Indeed, indeed she isn't. You wouldn't say that if you knew her."

"I do not know her. But the strongest of us may be sometimes weak. You must be strong for her. And I"—he smiled—"must be strong for you. And I tell you that you have been—so far—wise and right. As long as this man continues in his evil courses, go on as you are doing. Do not encourage him by admitting him to your house and to your friendship. But"—(the Canon stood up, both for the better emphasis of his point, and as a gentle reminder to Mrs. Majendie that his dinner-hour was now approaching)—"but let him repent; let him give up his most objectionable companions; let him lead a pure life—and then—accept him—welcome him—"(the Canon opened his arms, as if he were that moment receiving a repentant sinner) "rejoice over him"—(the Canon's face became fairly illuminated) "as—as much as you like."

The peroration was rapid, valedictory, complete. He thrust out his hand, displaying the whole palm of it as a sign of openness, honesty, and good-will.

"God bless you."

The solemn benediction atoned for any little momentary brusquerie.

Anne went away with a conscience wholly satisfied, in an exalted mood, fortified by all the ramparts of the spiritual life.

She was very gentle with Edith that evening. She said to herself that her love must make up to Edie for the loss her conscience had been compelled to inflict. "After all," she said to herself, "it's not as if she hadn't me." Measuring her services with those of the disreputable Mr. Gorst, it seemed to her that she was amply making up. She had a hatred of moral indebtedness, as of any other, and she loved to spend. In reckoning the love she had spent so lavishly on Edie, she had not allowed for the amount of forgiveness that Edie had spent on her. Forgiveness is a gift we have to take, whether we will or no, and Anne was blissfully unaware of what she took.

Majendie watched her ministrations curiously. Her tenderness was the subtlest lure to the love in him that still watched and waited for its hour. That night, in the study, he was silent, nervous, and unhappy. She shrank from the unrest and misery in his eyes. They followed or were fixed on her, rousing in her an obscure resentment and discomfort. She was beginning to be afraid of him. It had come to that.

She left him earlier than usual, and went very miserably to bed. She prayed, to-night, with her eyes fixed on the crucifix. It had become for her the symbol of her life, and of her marriage, which was nothing to her now but a sacrifice, a martyrdom, a vicarious expiation of her husband's sin.

As she lay down, the beating of her pulses told her that she was not to sleep. She longed for sleep, and tried to win it to her by repeating the Psalm which had been her comfort in all times of her depression. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth."

She closed her eyes under the peace of the beloved words. And as she closed them she felt herself once more in the arms of the green hills, the folding hills of Westleydale.

She shook off the obsession and prayed another prayer. She longed to be alone; but, to her grief, she heard the opening and shutting of a door and her husband's feet moving in the room beyond.

A few blessed moments of solitude were left her during Majendie's undressing. She devoted them to the final expulsion of all lingering illusions. She had long ago lost the illusion of her husband's immaculate goodness; and now she cast off, once for all, the dear and pitiful belief that had revived in her under her brief enchantment in the wood at Westleydale. She told herself that she had married a man who had, not only a lower standard than her own, but an entirely different code of morals, a man irremediably contaminated, destitute of all perception of spiritual values. And she had got to make the best of him, that was all. Not quite all; for she had still to make the best of herself; and the two things seemed, at moments, incompatible. To guard herself from all contact with the invading evil; to take her stand bravely, to raise the spiritual ramparts and retire behind them, that was no more than her bare duty to herself and him. She must create a standard for him by keeping herself for ever high and pure. He loved her still, in his fashion; he must also respect her, and, in respecting her, respect goodness—the highest goodness—in her.

Accustomed to move in a region of spiritual certainty, Anne was untroubled by any misgivings as to the soundness of her attitude. It was open to no criticism except the despicable wisdom of the world.

Her chief difficulty was poor Majendie's imperishable affection. She tried to protect herself from it to-night by feigning drowsiness. She lay still as a stone, stiff with her fear. Once, at midnight, she felt him stir, and turn, and raise himself on his elbow. She was conscious through all her unhappy being of the adoring tenderness with which he watched her sleep.

At last she slept, and sleeping, she dreamed a strange dream. She found herself again in Westleydale, walking in green aisles of the holy, mystic, cathedral woods. The tall beech-stems were the pillars of the temple. A still light came through them, guiding her to the beech-tree that she knew. And she saw an angel lying under the beech-tree. It lay on its side, with its wings stretched out so that the right wing covered the left. As she approached, it raised the covering wing, and in the warm hollow of the other she saw that it cradled a little naked child. And at the sight there came a thorn in her breast that pricked her. The child stirred in its sleep, and crawled to the place of the angel's breast, and it fondled it with searching lips and hands. Then it wailed, and as she heard its cry the thorn pressed sharper into Anne's breast; and the angel's eyes turned to her with an immortal anguish, and pity, and despair. She looked, and saw that its breast was as the breast of the little child. And she was moved to compassion at the helplessness of them both, of the heavenly and of the earthly thing; and she stooped and lifted the child, and laid it to her own breast, and nourished it; and had peace from her pain.