fter one look at Dexter's face and figure, no one ever spoke to him
about the weather. Anne had received a long letter from Jeanne-Armande;
she showed it to him. Also one from Pere Michaux. "I feel now," she
said, "almost as though you were my--"

"Please do not say father."

"Oh no."

"Brother, then?"

"Hardly that."

"Uncle?"

"Perhaps; I never had an uncle. But, after all, it is more like--" Here
she stopped again.

"Guardian?" suggested Dexter; "they are always remarkable persons, at
least in books. Never mind the name, Anne; I am content to be simply
your friend."

During the evening he made one allusion to the forbidden subject. "You
asked me to tell you nothing regarding the people who were at Caryl's,
but perhaps the prohibition was not eternal. I spent an hour with Mrs.
Heathcote this afternoon (never fear; I kept your secret). Would you not
like to hear something of her?"

Anne's face changed, but she did not swerve. "No; tell me nothing," she
answered. And he obeyed her wish. In a short time he took leave, and
returned to the city. During the remainder of the winter she did not see
him again.

CHAPTER XXIX.

"The fierce old fires of primitive ages are not dead yet, although
we pretend they are. Every now and then each man of us is
confronted by a gleam of the old wild light deep down in his own
startled heart."

In the middle of wild, snowy March there came a strange week of
beautiful days. On the Sunday of this week Anne was in her place in the
choir, as usual, some time before the service began.

It was a compromise choir. The dispute between the ideas of the rector
and those of the congregation had been ended by bringing the organ
forward to the corner near the chancel, and placing in front of it the
singers' seats, ornamented with the proper devices: so much was done for
the rector. To balance this, and in deference to the congregation, the
old quartette of voices was retained, and placed in these seats, which,
plainly intended for ten or twelve surpliced choristers, were all too
long and broad for the four persons who alone occupied them. The singers
sat in one, and kept their music-books in the other, and objecting to
the open publicity of their position facing the congregation, they had
demanded, and at last succeeded in obtaining (to the despair of the
rector), red curtains, which, hanging from the high railing above,
modestly concealed them when they wer