nd there's really no time to lose." Every one took care not to see
too much of the parting between her and Falloden. Then she and Mrs.
Mulholland were put into their carriage. But Sorell preferred to walk
home, and Falloden went back to Otto.

Sorell descended the hill towards Oxford. The storm was dying away, and
the now waning moon, which had shone so brilliantly over the frozen
floods a day or two before, was venturing out again among the scudding
clouds. The lights in Christ Church Hall were out, but the beautiful
city shone vaguely luminous under the night.

Sorell's mind was full of mingled emotion--as torn and jagged as the
clouds rushing overhead. The talk and laughter in the cottage came back
to him. How hollow and vain it sounded in the spiritual ear! What could
ever make up to that poor boy, who could have no more, at the most, than
a year or two to live, for the spilt wine of his life?--the rifled
treasure of his genius? And was it not true to say that his loss had
made the profit of the two lovers--of whom one had been the author of
it? When Palloden and Constance believed themselves to be absorbed in
Otto, were they not really playing the great game of sex like any
ordinary pair?

It was the question that Otto himself had asked--that any cynic must
have asked. But Sorell's tender humanity passed beyond it. The injury
done, indeed, was beyond repair. But the mysterious impulse which had
brought Falloden to the help of Otto was as real in its sphere as the
anguish and the pain; aye, for the philosophic spirit, more real than
they, and fraught with a healing and disciplining power that none could
measure. Sorell admitted--half reluctantly--the changes in life and
character which had flowed from it. He was even ready to say that the
man who had proved capable of feeling it, in spite of all past
appearances, was "not far from the Kingdom of God."

Oxford drew nearer and nearer. Tom Tower loomed before him. Its great
bell rang out. And suddenly, as if he could repress it no longer, there
ran through Scroll's mind--his half melancholy mind, unaccustomed to the
claims of personal happiness--the vision that Connie had so sharply
evoked; of a girl's brown eyes, and honest look--the look of a child to
be cherished, of a woman to be loved.

Was it that morning that he had helped Nora to translate a few lines of
the "Antigone"?

"Love, all conquering love, that nestles in the fair cheeks of a
maiden--"

It is