w?"

"Pooh! They say a dark man is a jewel in a fair woman's eye, and I'll
warrant it's as true the other way about. But what's her name?"

John's face suddenly straightened and he pretended not to hear.

"What's her name?" stamping with both feet.

"Dear me, auntie, what an ugly old cap you're wearing!"

"Ugly?" reaching up to the glass. "Who says it's ugly?"

"I do."

"Tut! you're only a bit boy, born yesterday. But, man, what's all this
botherment about telling a lassie's name?"

"I'll bring her to see you, auntie."

"I should think you will, indeed! and michty quick, too!"

This was on Sunday, and by the first post on Monday John Storm received
Glory's letter. It fell on him like a blast out of a cloud in the black
northeast, and cut him to the heart's core. He read it again, and being
alone he burst into laughter. He took it up a third time, and when he had
finished there was something at his throat that seemed to choke him. His
first impulse was fury. He wanted to rush off to Glory and insult her, to
ask her if she was mad or believed him to be so. Because she was a coward
herself, being slave-bound to the world and afraid to fight it face to
face, did she wish to make a coward of him also--to see him sneak away
from the London that had kicked him, like a cur with its tail between its
legs?

After this there came an icy chill and an awful consciousness that
mightier forces were at work than any mere human weakness. It was the
world itself, the great pitiless world, that was dividing them again as
it had divided them before, but irrevocably now-not as a playful nurse
that puts petted children apart, but as a torrent that tears the cliffs
asunder. "Leave the world, my son, and return to your unfinished vows."
Could it be true that this was only another reminder of his broken
obedience?

Then came pity. If Glory was slave-bound to the world, which of us was
not in chains to something? And the worst slavery of all was slavery to
self. But that was an abyss he dared not look into; and he began to think
tenderly of Glory, to tell himself how much she had to sacrifice, to
remember his anger and to be ashamed.

A week passed, and he went about his work in a helpless way, like a
derelict without rudder or sail and with the sea roaring about it. Every
afternoon when he came home from Soho Mrs. Callender would trip into the
hall wearing a new cap with a smart bow, and finding that he was alone
she would say,