me all unnerved to
this interview which he dreaded yet desired. He listened quietly to the
story of her failure; it was not only what he had expected, but what he
had wished.

"It's no good my trying any more," she urged in the pleading voice that
she could make so sweet. "I can't do anything. The sight of those poor
wretches' misery only makes me miserable too. I dream of it at night. I
assure you it's been the most awful three days I ever spent in my
life."

"Has it?"

"Yes. I feel things so terribly, you know; and it's not as if I could do
anything--I simply can't. What _must_ you think of me?"

"I think nothing. I knew that you would tell me this, and I am glad."

"Are you? Glad that I failed?"

"Yes; glad and thankful." He paused; his thin sensitive lips trembled,
and when he spoke again it was in a low constrained voice, as if he were
struggling with some powerful feeling.

"I wanted you to learn by failure that it is not what we know, nor what
we do, but what we are that matters in the sight of God."

"Yes, I know that." She sat looking up, with her head a little on one
side, holding her chin in one hand: it had been her attitude in her
student days at Oxford when trying to follow a difficult lecture, and
she reverted to it now. For Mr. Flaxman Reed was very difficult. His
style fascinated and yet repelled her, and in this case the style was
the man.

"What am I?" said Audrey, presently. It was a curious question, and none
of her friends had answered it to her satisfaction. She was eager to
know Mr. Reed's opinion. He turned and looked at her, and his eyes were
two clear lights under the shadow of the sharp eyebone.

"What are you? With all your faults and all your failures, you are
something infinitely more valuable than you know."

"What makes you say so?"

"I say so because I think that God cares more for those that hunger and
thirst after righteousness than for those who are filled at his table.
Believe me, nothing in all our intercourse has touched me so much as
this confession of your failure."

"Has it really? Can you--can you trust me again in spite of it?"

"Yes; you have trusted me. I take it as one of the greatest pleasures,
the greatest privileges of my life, that you should have come to me as
you have done--not when you were bright and happy, but in your weakness
and distress, in what I imagine to have been the darkest hour of all,
when refuge failed you, and no man cared for your s