harden her heart.

"Very, very strange that I should have run against you here," he went
on.

"Why?"

"I was at home when your old schoolmistress's letter came about you. I
remember she dragged in Ruskin."

"Poor Miss Mee!"

"I was always interested in you, and when I was in the South of France,
I was always asking my people to do their best for you."

Mavis's eyes grew hard as she asked:

"You've kept your promise to me?"

"That I shouldn't tell my people I'd met you?"

"I made it because---"

"Never mind why. You made it: that is enough for me."

Mavis's eyes softened. Then she and Harold fell to talking of
Melkbridge and Montague Devitt; presently of Victoria.

"I hope she was kind to you at Melkbridge," said Harold.

"Very," declared Mavis, saying what was untrue.

"Dear Vic is a little disappointing. I'm always reproaching myself I
don't love her more than I do. Have you ever met the man she married?"

"Mr. Perigal? I've met him," replied Mavis.

"Do you like him?"

"I scarcely remember."

"I don't overmuch. I'm sorry Vic married him, although my people were,
of course, delighted."

"Why?"

"We're quite new people, while the Perigals are a county family. But,
somehow, I don't think he'll make Vic happy."

"What makes you say that?"

"He's not happy himself. Everything he takes up he wearies of; he gets
pleasure out of nothing. And the pity of it is, he's no fool; if
anything, he's too many brains."

"How can anyone have too many?"

"Take Perigal's case. He's too analytical; he sees too clearly into
things. It's a sort of Rontgen ray intelligence, which I wouldn't have
for worlds. Isn't it old Solomon who says, 'In much wisdom there is
much sorrow'?"

"Solomon says a good many things," said Mavis gravely, as she
remembered how the recollection of certain passion-charged verses from
the "Song" had caused her to linger by the canal at Melkbridge on a
certain memorable evening of her life, with, as it proved, disastrous
consequences to herself.

"Have you ever read the 'Song'?" asked Harold.

"Yes."

"I love it, but I daren't read it now."

"Why?"

"More than most things, it brings home to me my--my helplessness."

The poison, begotten of hatred, made Mavis thankful that the Devitt
family had not had it all their own way in life.

When she next looked at Harold, he was intently regarding her. Mavis's
glance dropped.

"But now there's something more than reading the 'Song'