orth wine to Belinda and Co.?"

The two women looked at each other; stared, silently.

Then Lady Dashwood began to turn the handle of the door.

"Why should he be sacrificed to--to--futilities?" Then she added very
softly: "I have had no son of my own, May, so Jim fills the vacant
place. I think I could, like Abraham, have sacrificed my son to the
Great God of my nation, but this sacrifice! Oh, May, it's so silly! He
might have married some nice, quiet Oxford girl any day. And he has
waited for this!"

She saw the pain in May's eyes and added: "I am wearing you out with my
talk. I am getting very selfish. I am thinking too much of my own
suffering. You, too, have suffered, dear, and you say nothing," and as
she spoke her voice softened to a whisper. "But, May, your sacrifice
_was_ to the Great God of your nation--the Great God of all nations."

"The sacrifice had nothing to do with me," said May, turning away. "It
was his."

"But you endure the loss, the vacant place," said Lady Dashwood.

"I know what a vacant place means," said May, quietly, "and my vacant
place will never be filled--except by the children of other women! Good
night, dear aunt," and she walked away quickly, without looking back.
Then she found the door of her room and went in.

Lady Dashwood's eyes followed her, till the door closed.

"I ought not to have said what I did," murmured Lady Dashwood. "Oh, dear
May, poor May," and she went back into her room.

Gwen was still sleeping peacefully.

CHAPTER XIV

DIFFERENT VIEWS

The Lodgings at King's were built at a period when the college demanded
that its Warden should be a bachelor and a divine, and it contained
neither morning-room nor boudoir. The Warden's breakfast-room was used
by Lady Dashwood for both purposes.

It was not such an inconvenient arrangement, because the Warden, as the
war advanced, had reduced his breakfast till it was now little more than
the continental "petit dejeuner," and it could be as rapidly removed as
it was brought in.

The breakfast-room was a small room and had no academic dignity, it was
what Mrs. Robinson called "cosy." It was badly lighted by one window,
and that barred, looking into the quadrangle. The walls were wainscoted.
One or two pictures brightened it, landscapes in water-colour that had
been bought by the Warden long ago for his rooms when he was a college
tutor.

At the breakfast table on the morning following Gwendolen's brief
int