amiliar objects from out of her animated meditation.

Coming to his desk, she snuggled affectionately into his chair and gazed
fondly over its litter of papers. With a little instinctive move to
bring somewhat of order to the chaos, she reached forward, but her elbow
brushed to the floor two or three letters that had lain at the edge of
the desk.

As she stooped to pick up the fallen papers the letter Bernal had left
lay open before her, a letter written in long, slanting but vividly
legible characters. And then, quite before she recognised what letter it
was, or could feel curious concerning it, the first illuminating line of
it had flashed irrevocably to her mind's centre.

When Allan appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, she was standing
by the desk. She held the letter in both hands and over it her eyes
flamed--blasted.

Divining what she had done, his mind ran with lightning quickness to
face this new emergency. But he was puzzled and helpless, for now her
hands fell and she laughed weakly, almost hysterically. He searched for
the key to this unnatural behaviour. He began, hesitatingly, expecting
some word from her to guide him along the proper line of defense.

"I am sure, my dear--if you had only--only trusted me--implicitly--your
opinion of this affair--"

At the sound of his voice she ceased to laugh, stiffening into a wild,
grim intensity.

"Now I can look that thing straight in the eyes and it can't hurt me."

"In the eyes?" he questioned, blankly.

"I can _go_ now."

"You will make me the laughing-stock of this town!"

For the first time in their life together there was the heat of real
anger in his voice. Yet she did not seem to hear.

"Yes--that last terrible Gratcher can't hurt me now."

He frowned, with a sulky assumption of that dignity which he felt was
demanded of him.

"I don't understand you!"

Still the unseeing eyes played about him, yet she heard at last.

"But _he_ will--_he_ will!" she cried exultingly, and her eyes were wet
with an unexplained gladness.

CHAPTER XIX

A MERE BIT OF GOSSIP

The Ministers' Meeting of the following Tuesday was pleasantly enlivened
with gossip--retained, of course, within seemly bounds. There was absent
the Reverend Dr. Linford, sometime rector of St. Antipas, said lately to
have emerged from a state of spiritual chrysalis into a world made new
with truths that were yet old. It was concerning this circumstance that
discreet e