ar me. What can I
answer you, my golden one? Only, in voice low as your own, breathe that
the world is barren but for you, that to the last drop of my heart's
blood I love and worship you! A poor girl, a worker with her hands,
untaught--you say that? A woman, pure of soul, with loveliness for your
heritage, with possibilities imaginable in every ray of your eyes, in
every note of the rare music of your voice!'

Even so. In the meantime, this happens to be Westminster Abbey, where a
working man, one Gilbert Grail, has often walked and sought solace from
the bitterness of his accursed lot, where he has thought of a young
girl who lives above him in the house, and who, as often as she passes
him, is like a gleam of southern sky somehow slipped into the blank
hideousness of a London winter. Hither he has doubtless come to try and
realise that fate has been so merciful to him that he longs to thank
some unknown deity and cry that all is good. Hither he will come again,
with one whom he calls his wife--

Walter rose and went forth, went home.

He had not been ten minutes in his room, when a servant appeared, to
tell him that a lady had called and desired to see him, her name Mrs.
Ormonde.

She came in, looking bright and noble as ever, giving him both her
hands.

'I am glad to see you. I did not expect you to-day. Will you sit down?'

He did not know what he said. Mrs. Ormonde examined him, and for a
moment kept silence.

'You have come up to-day?'

'Yes. I have come here direct from the station, because I wished to
make use of you. But it seems to me that the doctor would have been a
more fitting visitor. What has come to you, Walter?'

'It is true. I am not well. But always well enough to desire to serve
you.'

'Though not, seemingly, to bear in mind my first wish. Why have you not
answered my last letter, as I particularly asked you to? If you were
ill, why have you remained here alone? I am angry with you.'

He was reflecting, as absorbedly as if she had not been in the room.
She was his friend, if any man had one; she was of the priceless women
who own both heart and brain. Should he speak out and tell her
everything? If he did so, he was saved. He would leave town. Grail
should come back, after the wedding holiday, and get on with the
arrangement of the library under written directions. Illness would
explain such a step. In a month, all would be right again.

'Walter!'

Her eyes were searching him. Did