n was steadily,
and perhaps unconsciously, becoming master of the situation, the
indispensable and protecting power of Otto's life.

How he did it remained obscure. But Mrs. Mulholland at least--out of a
rich moral history--guessed that what they saw in the Boar's Hill
cottage was simply the working out of the old spiritual paradox--that
there is a yielding which is victory, and a surrender which is power. It
seemed to her often that Radowitz was living in a constant state of
half-subdued excitement, produced by the strange realisation that he and
his life had become so important to Falloden that the differences of
training and temperament between them, and all the little daily rubs, no
longer counted; that he existed, so to speak, that Falloden
might--through him--escape the burden of his own remorse. The hard,
strong, able man, so much older than himself in character, if not in
years, the man who had bullied and despised him, was now becoming his
servant, in the sense in which Christ was the "servant" of his brethren.
Not with any conscious Christian intention--far from it; but still under
a kind of mysterious compulsion. The humblest duties, the most trivial
anxieties, where Radowitz was concerned, fell, week by week,
increasingly to Falloden's portion. A bad or a good night--appetite or
no appetite--a book that Otto liked--a visit that amused him--anything
that for the moment contented the starved musical sense in Otto, that
brought out his gift, and his joy in it--anything that, for the moment,
enabled him to forget and evade his injuries--these became, for Falloden
also, the leading events of his own day. He was reading hard for his
fellowship, and satisfying various obscure needs by taking as much
violent exercise as possible; but there was going on in him, all the
time, an intense spiritual ferment, connected with Constance Bledlow on
the one side, and Otto Radowitz on the other.

Meanwhile--what was not so evident to this large-hearted observer--Otto
was more than willing--he burned--to play his part. All that is mystical
and passionate in the soul of a Polish Catholic, had been stirred in him
by his accident, his growing premonition of short life, the bitterness
of his calamity, the suddenness of his change of heart towards Falloden.

"My future is wrecked. I shall never live to be old. I shall never be a
great musician. But I mean to live long enough to make Constance happy!
She shall talk of me to her chil