aking you? Oh, how could I know--how could I know.'

But it was impossible to him to sink himself wholly in the past.
Inevitably such a nature as Elsmere's turns very quickly from despair to
hope; from the sense of failure to the passionate planning of new
effort. In time will he not be able to comfort her, and, after a
miserable moment of transition, to repair her trust in him and make
their common life once more rich towards God and man? There must be
painful readjustment and friction, no doubt. He tries to see the facts
as they truly are, fighting against his own optimist tendencies, and
realising as best he can all the changes which his great change must
introduce into their most intimate relations. But after all can love and
honesty and a clear conscience do nothing to bridge over, nay, to
efface, such differences as theirs will be?

Oh to bring her to understand him! At this moment he shrinks painfully
from the thought of touching her faith--his own sense of loss is too
heavy, too terrible. But if she will only be still open with him!--still
give him her deepest heart, any lasting difference between them will
surely be impossible. Each will complete the other, and love knit up the
ravelled strands again into a stronger unity.

Gradually he lost himself in half-articulate prayer, in the solemn
girding of the will to this future task of a recreating love. And by the
time the morning light had well established itself sleep had fallen on
him. When he became sensible of the longed-for drowsiness, he merely
stretched out a tired hand and drew over him a shawl hanging at the foot
of the bed. He was too utterly worn out to think of moving.

When he woke the sun was streaming into the room, and behind him sat the
tiny Mary on the edge of the bed, the rounded apple cheeks and wild-bird
eyes aglow with mischief and delight. She had climbed out of her cot,
and, finding no check to her progress, had crept on, till now she sat
triumphantly, with one diminutive leg and rosy foot doubled under her,
and her father's thick hair at the mercy of her invading fingers, which,
however, were as yet touching him half timidly, as though something in
his sleep had awed the baby sense.

But Catherine was gone.

He sprang up with a start. Mary was frightened by the abrupt movement,
perhaps disappointed by the escape of her prey, and raised a sudden
wail.

He carried her to her nurse, even forgetting to kiss the little wet
cheek, ascer