smile;
his eyes, darker and more wistful than mortal eyes should be, seemed to
beseech and mock the white-clad girl, who, all unconscious, knelt without
movement, like a carved figure of devotion. The words seemed coming from
his lips: "Pray for us! Bravo! Yes! Pray for us!" And suddenly Keith
saw her stretch out her arms, and lift her face with a look of ecstasy,
and Laurence starting forward. What had she seen beyond the candle
flames? It is the unexpected which invests visions with poignancy.
Nothing more strange could Keith have seen in this nest of the murky and
illicit. But in sheer panic lest he might be caught thus spying he drew
back and hurried on. So Larry was living there with her! When the moment
came he could still find him.

Before going in, he stood full five minutes leaning on the terrace
parapet before his house, gazing at the star-frosted sky, and the river
cut by the trees into black pools, oiled over by gleams from the
Embankment lamps. And, deep down, behind his mere thoughts, he
ached-somehow, somewhere ached. Beyond the cage of all that he saw and
heard and thought, he had perceived something he could not reach. But the
night was cold, the bells silent, for it had struck twelve. Entering his
house, he stole upstairs.

VII

If for Keith those six weeks before the Glove Lane murder trial came on
were fraught with uneasiness and gloom, they were for Laurence almost the
happiest since his youth. From the moment when he left his rooms and
went to the girl's to live, a kind of peace and exaltation took
possession of him. Not by any effort of will did he throw off the
nightmare hanging over him. Nor was he drugged by love. He was in a
sort of spiritual catalepsy. In face of fate too powerful for his will,
his turmoil, anxiety, and even restlessness had ceased; his life floated
in the ether of "what must come, will." Out of this catalepsy, his spirit
sometimes fell headlong into black waters. In one such whirlpool he was
struggling on the night of Christmas Eve. When the girl rose from her
knees he asked her:

"What did you see?"

Pressing close to him, she drew him down on to the floor before the fire;
and they sat, knees drawn up, hands clasped, like two children trying to
see over the edge of the world.

"It was the Virgin I saw. She stood against the wall and smiled. We
shall be happy soon."

"When we die, Wanda," he said, suddenly, "let it be together. We shall
k