him, and then stood talking loudly of sick
fathers till the last moment. "I trust you will find the _Herr Papa_
better than you expect," he shouted after the moving train. "Don't give
way--don't give way. That is our vicar," he exclaimed to an acquaintance
who was standing near; "an only son, and he has just heard that his
father is dying. He is overwhelmed, poor devil, with grief."

To his wife on his arrival home he said, "My dear Theresa,"--a mode of
address only used on the rare occasions of supremest satisfaction--"my
dear Theresa, you may set your mind at rest about our friend Lohm. The
Miss will never marry him, and he himself will not trouble us much
longer." And they had a short conversation in private, and later on at
dinner they opened a bottle of champagne, and explaining to the servant
that it was an aunt's birthday, drank the aunt's health over and over
again, and were merrier than they had been for years.

CHAPTER XXVII

It was an odd and a nearly invariable consequence of Anna's cold morning
bath that she made resolutions in great numbers. The morning after the
fire there were more of them than ever. In a glow she assured herself
that she was not going to allow dejection and discouragement to take
possession of her so easily, that she would not, in future, be so much
the slave of her bodily condition, growing selfish, indifferent, unkind,
in proportion as she grew tired. What, she asked, tying her waist-ribbon
with great vigour, was the use of having a soul and its longings after
perfection if it was so absolutely the slave of its encasing body, if it
only received permission from the body to flutter its wings a little in
those rare moments when its master was completely comfortable and
completely satisfied? She was ashamed of herself for being so easily
affected by the heat and stress of the days with the Chosen. How was it
that her ideals were crushed out of sight continually by the mere weight
of the details of everyday existence? She would keep them more carefully
in view, pursue them with a more unfaltering patience--in a word, she
was going to be wise. Life was such a little thing, she reflected, so
very quickly done; how foolish, then, to forget so constantly that
everything that vexed her and made her sorry was flying past and away
even while it grieved her, dwindling in the distance with every hour,
and never coming back. What she had done and suffered last year, how
indifferent, of wh