nt on was more or less tempered by the
knowledge that in his own queer way he had brought up and educated two
young sisters almost from infancy, and that his sweetheart had been
killed before his eyes a year before in a railway accident.

'I dun know,' he said in a high treble voice, 'I dun know whether I
speak for anybody but myself--very likely not; but what I _do_ know,'
and he raised his right hand and shook it with a gesture of curious
felicity, 'is this--what Mr. Elsmere starts I'll join; where he goes
I'll go; what's good enough for him's good enough for me. He's put a new
heart and a new stomach into me, and what I've got he shall have,
whenever it pleases 'im to call for it! So if he wants to run a new
thing against or alongside the old uns, and he wants me to help him with
it--I don't know as I'm very clear what he's driving at, nor what good I
can do 'im--but when Tom Wheeler's asked for he'll be there!'

A deep murmur, rising almost into a shout of assent ran through the
little assembly. Robert bent forward, his eye glistening, a moved
acknowledgment in his look and gesture. But in reality a pang ran
through the fiery soul. It was 'the personal estimate,' after all, that
was shaping their future and his and the idealist was up in arms for his
idea, sublimely jealous lest any mere personal fancy should usurp its
power and place.

A certain amount of desultory debate followed as to the possible
outlines of a possible organisation, and as to the observances which
might be devised to mark its religious character. As it flowed on the
atmosphere grew more and more electric. A new passion, though still
timid and awestruck, seemed to shine from the looks of the men standing
or sitting round the central figure. Even Lestrange lost his smile under
the pressure of that strange subdued expectancy about him; and when
Robert walked homeward, about midnight, there weighed upon him an almost
awful sense of crisis, of an expanding future.

He let himself in softly and went into his study. There he sank into a
chair and fainted. He was probably not unconscious very long, but after
he had struggled back to his senses, and was lying stretched on the sofa
among the books with which it was littered, the solitary candle in the
big room throwing weird shadows about him, a moment of black depression
overtook him. It was desolate and terrible, like a prescience of death.
How was it he had come to feel so ill? Suddenly, as he looke