nd race formed
itself silently upon his lips.

"_Comprehenderunt me iniquitates meae, et non potui ut viderem.
Multiplicatae sunt super capillos capitis mei; et cor meum dereliquit
me_," he quoted, in the plenitude of his existing discouragement.

At his time of life, he told himself, earth held no future; and in
heaven--as the Churches figure it--namely, an adjustment of the balance
on the other side death, his belief was of the smallest. A sea of
uncertainty, vast, limitless, laps the shores of the meagre island of the
present--which is all we actually have to our count. Faith is a
gift.--You possess it, or you possess it not; yet without it--

But here his attention was caught, and brought home to that very present,
by a movement upon the bed and Damaris' voice, asking tremulously:

"Commissioner Sahib are you angry, too angry to speak to me?"

Whereupon Charles Verity got up, gathered back the curtain stuffing it in
between the head board and the wall, and stood, tall, spare, yet
graceful, looking down at her. Whether from fatigue or from emotion, his
expression was softer, his face less keen than usual, and the likeness
between him and Darcy Faircloth proportionately and notably great.

"No, my dear," he said, "why should I be angry? What conceivable right
have I to be angry? As a man sows so does he reap. I only reap to-day
what I sowed eight or nine-and-twenty years ago--a crop largely composed
of tares, though among those tares I do find some modicum of wheat. Upon
that modest provision of wheat I must make shift to subsist with the best
grace I may. No, don't cry, my darling. It is useless. Tears never yet
altered facts. You will only do yourself harm, and put a crown to my
self-reproach."

He sat down on the side of the bed, taking her hand, holding and
coaxing it.

"Only let there be no doubt or suspicion on your part, my dear," he went
on. "As you have travelled so far along this dolorous way, take courage
and travel a little farther. To stop, to turn back, is only to leave your
mind open to all manner of imaginations worse very likely than the truth.
I will be quite plain with you. This episode--which I do not attempt to
explain or excuse--took place, and ended, several years before I first
met your mother. And it ended absolutely. Never, by either written or
spoken word, have I held any communication with Lesbia Faircloth since.
Never have I attempted to see her--this in the interests of her
reput