'er off."

At the next moment John Storm in his surplice was alone with the dead,
and had opened his book to read the burial service which no other human
ear was to hear.

He read "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes," and then the bitter loneliness of
the pauper's doom came down on his soul and silenced him.

But his imprisoned passion had to find a vent, and that night he wrote to
the Prime Minister: "I begin to understand what you meant when you said I
was in the wrong place. Oh, this London, with its society, its worldly
clergy, its art, its literature, its luxury, its idle life, all built on
the toil of the country and compounded of the sweat of the nameless poor!
Oh, this 'Circe of cities,' drawing good people to it, decoying them,
seducing them, and then turning them into swine! It seems impossible to
live in the world and to be spiritually-minded. When I try to do so I am
torn in two."

X.

On the following Tuesday evening two young men were dining in their
chambers in St. James's Street. One of them was Lord Robert Ure; the
other was his friend and housemate, Horatio Drake. Drake was younger than
Lord Robert by some seven or eight years, and also beyond comparison more
attractive. His face was manly and handsome, its expression was open and
breezy; he was broad-shouldered and splendidly built, and he had the fair
hair and blue eyes of a boy.

Their room was a large one, and it was full of beautiful and valuable
things, but the furniture was huddled about in disorder. A large
chamber-organ, a grand piano, a mandolin, and two violins, pictures on
the floor as well as on the walls, many photographs scattered about
everywhere, and the mirror over the mantelpiece fringed with
invitation-cards, which were stuck between the glass and the frame.

Their man had brought in the coffee and cigarettes. Lord Robert was
speaking in his weary drawl, which had the worn-out tone of a man who had
made a long journey and was very sleepy.

"Come, dear boy, make up your mind, and let us be off."

"But I'm tired to death of these fashionable routs."

"So am I."

"They're so unnatural--so unnecessary."

"My dear fellow, of course they're unnatural--of course they're
unnecessary; but what would you have?"

"Anything human and natural," said Drake. "I don't care a ha'p'orth about
the morality of these things--not I--but I am dead sick of their
stupidity."

Lord Robert made languid puffs of his cigarette, and said, in