rp. His
curtness, his roughness, his harshness had been unfavourably commented
upon many and many a time. Yet when he left them, how the people cheered!
What volumes of roaring sound from lusty throats had bidden him good-bye
and God-speed!

"Hurrah for the Doctor! Three cheers for Saxham! Don't forget us, Doc!
Come back again! God bless you, Saxham! Bravo, Saxham! Saxham! Saxham!
Hurrah!"

A woman who had loved him would have wept for joy. A pity his wife did
not!

How strangely Owen had looked at her just now, when she had brushed his
sleeve lightly with her finger-tip! How curious it was that he never
touched her if he could help it! She had quite forgotten having told him
that, while she liked to know him near, she could not endure the thought
of being taken by him, caressed by him, held in his embrace.... That had
been the frank, truthful expression of her feelings at the time. She did
not recoil so from his contact now. She had not realised how deeply her
words had wounded the man's great, suffering, patient heart. Spoken, they
had passed from her memory. It is so natural for a fair, sweet woman to
forget! It is so impossible for a man who has been stabbed to help
remembering, with the deep, bleeding wound unclosed!

There was another thing that Saxham did not know. Although, as time went
on, the beloved image of the Mother, cherished in the innermost shrine of
her adopted daughter's heart, suffered no change in the clear, firm beauty
of its outlines or deterioration in the richness of its tender and austere
and gracious colouring; and each new day supplied some fresher garland of
old imperishable memories to grace it with;--that Shape with the
grey-green jewel-eyes and the gay mouth that laughed had faded--faded! She
would not own it even to herself, but the keen edge of her grief for
Beauvayse was blunted. The anniversary of his death, occurring in the
coming month of February, was to be a solemn retreat of sacred prayer for
her. But it was the Mother's death-day also, when to the palm of martyrdom
had been added the Saint's crown. She was going to spend three days at the
Kensington Convent, where the dead nun had taken the vows. She told Saxham
now of the arrangement she had made through Lady Castleclare, who was
intimate with the Superior.

"It will be a little like old times," she said to Saxham, "living in a
Convent again. And there are many Sisters there who knew Mother, and loved
her----"

Her eyes