the altar, and
more particularly from the image of the saint whom they had assembled
to honour, which stood, surrounded by candles and a thicket of flowering
plants, some way in advance of the foot-pace. A secondary radiance from
the same source was reflected upward into their faces by the polished
marble pavement, except when interrupted by the shady forms of the
officiating priests.

When it was over and the people were moving off, De Stancy and his
companion went towards the saint, now besieged by numbers of women
anxious to claim the respective flower-pots they had lent for the
decoration. As each struggled for her own, seized and marched off with
it, Paula remarked--'This rather spoils the solemn effect of what has
gone before.'

'I perceive you are a harsh Puritan.'

'No, Captain De Stancy! Why will you speak so? I am far too much
otherwise. I have grown to be so much of your way of thinking, that
I accuse myself, and am accused by others, of being worldly, and
half-and-half, and other dreadful things--though it isn't that at all.'

They were now walking down the nave, preceded by the sombre figures with
the pot flowers, who were just visible in the rays that reached them
through the distant choir screen at their back; while above the grey
night sky and stars looked in upon them through the high clerestory
windows.

'Do be a little MORE of my way of thinking!' rejoined De Stancy
passionately.

'Don't, don't speak,' she said rapidly. 'There are Milly and Champreau!'

Milly was one of the maids, and Champreau the courier and valet who had
been engaged by Abner Power. They had been sitting behind the other pair
throughout the service, and indeed knew rather more of the relations
between Paula and De Stancy than Paula knew herself.

Hastening on the two latter went out, and walked together silently up
the short street. The Place St. Denis was now lit up, lights shone
from the hotel windows, and the world without the cathedral had so far
advanced in nocturnal change that it seemed as if they had been gone
from it for hours. Within the hotel they found the change even greater
than without. Mrs. Goodman met them half-way on the stairs.

'Poor Charlotte is worse,' she said. 'Quite feverish, and almost
delirious.'

Paula reproached herself with 'Why did I go away!'

The common interest of De Stancy and Paula in the sufferer at once
reproduced an ease between them as nothing else could have done. The
physici