id, speaking almost to herself, with a kind of
impatience. "He ought to marry, for everybody's sake."

"I see no sign of his marrying--at present," said Hallin, drily.

He began to put some papers under his hand in order. There was a cold
dignity in his manner which she perfectly understood. Ever since that
day--that never-forgotten day--when he had come to her the morning after
her last interview with Aldous Raeburn--come with reluctance and
dislike, because Aldous had asked it of him--and had gone away her
friend, more drawn to her, more touched by her than he had ever been in
the days of the engagement, their relation on this subject had been the
same. His sweetness and kindness to her, his influence over her life
during the past eighteen months, had been very great. In that first
interview, the object of which had been to convey to her a warning on
the subject of the man it was thought she might allow herself to marry,
something in the manner with which he had attempted his incredibly
difficult task--its simplicity, its delicate respect for her
personality, its suggestion of a character richer and saintlier than
anything she had yet known, and unconsciously revealing itself under the
stress of emotion--this something had suddenly broken down his pale,
proud companion, had to his own great dismay brought her to tears, and
to such confidences, such indirect askings for help and understanding as
amazed them both.

Experiences of this kind were not new to him. His life consecrated to
ideas, devoted to the wresting of the maximum of human service from a
crippling physical weakness; the precarious health itself which cut him
off from a hundred ordinary amusements and occupations, and especially
cut him off from marriage--together with the ardent temperament, the
charm, the imaginative insight which had been his cradle-gifts--these
things ever since he was a lad had made him again and again the guide
and prop of natures stronger and stormier than his own. Often the
unwilling guide; for he had the half-impatient breathless instincts of
the man who has set himself a task, and painfully doubts whether he will
have power and time to finish it. The claims made upon him seemed to him
often to cost him physical and brain energy he could ill spare.

But his quick tremulous sympathy rendered him really a defenceless prey
in such matters. Marcella threw herself upon him as others had done; and
there was no help for it. Since thei