lour,
the visitor was standing near the fireplace, with his hands behind his
back. One wore a shabby dogskin riding-glove. The other, lean and brown
and knotty, held his riding-cane and the other glove, and a grey "smasher"
hat. He was looking up quietly and intently at a framed oil-painting that
hung above.

It represented a Syrian desert landscape, pale and ghastly, under the
light of a great white moon, with one lonely Figure standing like a
sentinel against a towering fang of rock. Lurking forms of fierce beasts
of prey were dimly to be distinguished amongst the shadows, and by the
side of the patient, lonely watcher brooded with outspread bat-wings, a
Shadow infinitely more terrible than any of these. It was rather a poor
copy of a modern picture, but the truth and force and inspiration of the
original had made of the copyist an artist for the time. The pure dignity
and lofty faith and patience of the Christ-eyes, haggard with bodily
sleeplessness and spiritual battle, the indomitable resistance breathing
in the lines of the Christ figure, wan and gaunt with physical famine as
with the nobler hunger of the soul, were rendered with fidelity and power.

The stranger's keen ear caught the Mother's long, swift step, and the
sweep of her woollen draperies over the shiny beeswaxed floor. He wheeled
sharply, brought his heels together, and bowed. She returned his
salutation with her inimitable dignity and grace. With his eyes on the
pure, still calmness of the face framed in the white close coif, the
Colonel commented mentally:

"What a noble-looking woman!"

The Mother-Superior thought, as her composed eyes swept over the tall,
spare, broad-shouldered figure and the strong, lean, tanned face, with its
alert, hazel eyes, nose of the falcon-beak order, and firm straight mouth
unconcealed by the short-clipped moustache:

"This is a brave man."

XI

The great of soul are not slow to find each other out. These two
recognised each other at meeting. Before he had explained his errand, she
had thanked him cordially, directly, and simply, for his timely
interference of the previous day.

"One of the lesser reasons of my visit, which I must explain is official
in character," he said, "was to advise you that your pupils and the ladies
in charge of them will not henceforth be safe from insult except in those
parts of the town most frequented by our countrymen, and rarely even
there. It would be wise of you under ex