d joy, a fountain
of magic waters. Her arrival at the house in Avenue Road was one of the
most blissful moments she had ever known. The servant led her upstairs
to a small room, where the veiled sun made warmth on rich hangings, on
beautiful furniture, on books and pictures, on ferns and flowers. The
goddess of this sanctuary was alone; as the door opened the notes of
a zither trembled into silence, and Adela saw a light-robed loveliness
rise and stand before her. Stella took both her hands very gently, then
looked into her face with eyes which seemed to be new from some high
vision, then drew her within the paradise of an embrace. The kiss was
once more like that first touch of lips which had come to Adela on the
verge of sleep; she quivered through her frame.

Mr. Westlake shortly joined them, and spoke with an extreme kindness
which completed Adela's sense of being at home. No one disturbed them
through the evening; Adela went to bed early and slept without a dream.

Stella and her husband talked of her in the night. Mr. Westlake had, at
the time of the election, heard for the first time the story of Mutimer
and the obscure work-girl in Hoxton, and had taken some trouble to
investigate it. It had not reached his ears when the Hoxton Socialists
made it a subject of public discussion; Comrade Roodhouse had inserted
only a very general report of the proceedings in his paper the 'Tocsin,
and even this Mr. Westlake had not seen. But a copy of the pamphlet
which circulated in Belwick came into his hands, and when he began
to talk on the subject with an intimate friend, who, without being a
Socialist, amused himself with following the movement closely, he heard
more than he liked. To Stella he said nothing of all this. His own
ultimate judgment was that you cannot expect men to be perfect, and that
great causes have often been served by very indifferent characters.

'She looks shockingly ill,' he began to-night when alone with Stella.
'Wasn't there something said about consumption when she was at Exmouth?
Has she any cough?'

'No, I don't think it is that,' Stella answered.

'She seems glad to be with you.'

'Very glad, I think.'

'Did the loss of her child affect her deeply?'

'I cannot say. She has never spoken of it.'

'Poor child!'

Stella made no reply to the exclamation.

The next day Adela went to call on Mrs. Rodman. It was a house in
Bayswater, not large, but richly furnished. Adela chose a morning
ho