th her whole soul,
accompanied by a pendulous movement of the body:

"Cover my defenceless 'ead,
Wiz ze sadow of Zy wing."

Mr. Gresley, after baying like a blood-hound through the opening verses,
ascended the pulpit and engaged in prayer. The congregation amened and
settled itself. Mary leaned her blond head against her mother, Regie
against Hester.

The supreme moment of the week had come for Mr. Gresley.

He gave out the text:

"Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?"

* * * * *

All of us who are Churchmen are aware that the sermon is a period
admirably suited for quiet reflection.

"A good woman loves but once," said Mr. Tristram to himself, in an
attitude of attention, his fine eyes fixed decorously on a pillar in
front of him. Some of us would be as helpless without a Bowdlerized
generality or a platitude to sustain our minds as the invalid would be
without his peptonized beef-tea.

"Rachel is a good woman, a saint. Such a woman does not love in a hurry,
but when she does she loves forever." What was that poem he and she had
so often read together? Tennyson, wasn't it? About love not altering
"when it alteration finds," but bears it out even to the crack of doom.
Fine poet, Tennyson; he knew the human heart. She had certainly adored
him four years ago, just in the devoted way in which he needed to be
loved. And how he had worshipped her! Of course he had behaved badly. He
saw that now. But if he had it was not from want of love. She had been
unable to see that at the time. Good women were narrow, and they were
hard, and they did not understand men. Those were their faults. Had she
learned better by now? Did she realize that she had far better marry a
man who had loved her for herself, and who still loved her, rather than
some fortune-hunter, like that weedy fellow Scarlett. (Mr. Tristram
called all slender men weedy.) He would frankly own his fault and ask
for forgiveness. He glanced for a moment at the gentle, familiar face
beside him.

"She will forgive me," he said, reassuring himself, in spite of an
inward qualm of misgiving. "I am glad I arranged to stay on. I will
speak to her this afternoon. She has become much softened, and we will
bury the past and make a fresh start together."

* * * * *

"I will walk up to Beaumere this afternoon," said Doll, stretching a leg
outside the open end of t