ve recalled a word or a glance. She was sorry to see his pain, but for
all its harshness, she felt that he would emerge better for the
treatment. The mind needs an occasional physic, no less than the body.
She had rocked the ponderous bulk of the Reverend Arnold Imrie on its
foundations. If it settled back into its original place, none the worse
for the rocking, so much the better for the foundations. If it did
not, ... well, the new position could not be less satisfying than the
old. And there was a possibility that it might be better.

She smiled back at his frigid bow with the feeling of a mother who has
spanked an obstreperous child.

"For the good of your soul, Arnold," she whispered under her breath,
"and the greater honour and glory of God."

For a long time after Imrie had left, she pondered, trying to put in a
phrase the exact idea she had meant to give him. Finally it came to her,
in a single word--honesty. And then, as an inevitable corollary, came
the thought of the man who exemplified honesty as did no one else she
knew. She thought of that deprecating little lift of his hands--so
characteristic, so significant. With a smile that was not without tears,
she picked up a book and made an effort to read.

The next day was Sunday. As she dressed she tried to decide whether she
would go to church or not, and concluded that she would not. There were
a number of books, she thought rebelliously, which would prove more
profitable than Arnold's sermon. So, after breakfast, she made herself
comfortable by the window in the library, and began one--one of the
many, incidentally, which Good had sent to her. She saw him
infrequently, but his books came constantly, and she often wondered if
he appreciated the subtle compliment he paid her with each one of what
she knew must be a slender treasure. They came spasmodically, as if he
rushed them to her when some fancy was hot in his mind. There would be a
poem, with characteristic comment all around the margins of the page,
and an injunction on the fly leaf to "skip the rest"; or a ponderous
volume of economics, with the information that it was poppycock, save
for a paragraph on page 266. Sometimes it would be only a pencilled
scrap of paper, with an amusing anecdote thereon, or just an
illuminating epigram. He seemed to wish to share with her the pleasures
of his mind. No one had ever shown that wish to her before.

The volume in her hand had come from him only a day or tw