ation of holiness.

It was as if she had been kneeling to pray, alone, in a dark, devastated
church, trembling, and fearing the darkness, not daring to approach the
unseen altar; and that then her husband's hand had lighted all the high
tapers one by one, so that the church was filled with radiance and the
divine made manifest to her again.

Light and quietness were to go with her, but they were not to banish
fear. They could only help her to live with fear and to find life
beautiful in spite of it.

For if her husband stood for the joy of life, her child stood for its
sorrow. He was the dark past and the unknown future. What she should
find in him was unrevealed; and though she steadied her soul to the
acceptance of whatever the future might bring of pain for her, the sense
of trembling was with her always in the thought of what it might bring
of pain for Augustine.

IV

Lady Channice woke on the morning after her long retrospect bringing
from her dreams a heavy heart.

She lay for some moments after the maid had drawn her curtains, looking
out at the fields as she had so often looked, and wondering why her
heart was heavy. Throb by throb, like a leaden shuttle, it seemed to
weave together the old and new memories, so that she saw the pattern of
yesterday and of today, Lady Elliston's coming, the pain that Augustine
had given her in his strange questionings, the meeting of her husband
and her son. And the ominous rhythm of the shuttle was like the footfall
of the past creeping upon her.

It was more difficult than it had been for years, this morning, to quiet
the throb, to stay her thoughts on strength. She could not pray, for her
thoughts, like her heart, were leaden; the whispered words carried no
message as they left her lips; she could not lift her thought to follow
them. It was upon a lesser, a merely human strength, that she found
herself dwelling. She was too weak, too troubled, to find the swiftness
of soul that could soar with its appeal, the stillness of soul where the
divine response could enter; and weakness turned to human help. The
thought of her husband's coming was like a glow of firelight seen at
evening on a misty moor. She could hasten towards it, quelling fear.
There she would be safe. By his mere presence he would help and sustain
her. He would be kind and tactful with Augustine, as he had always been;
he would make a shield between her and Lady Elliston. She could see no
sky above