r thought reminded her that this
glorious being whose eyes blazed with serenity as other people's eyes
blaze only with rage, was susceptible to pain and would some day be
subject to death.

"Good-night," he said. He did not know why her breath had failed and why
she had raised her hand to her throat, but he knew that his presence was
doing marvellous things to her, and he was sure that they were
beautiful things, for everything that passed between them from now on
till the end of time would be flawlessly beautiful. "Good-night," he
said again, and stopped when he had gone a yard or two down the path
simply that they might speak to each other again. "You must shut the
door. You're letting in the rain and cold."

"No," she said dreamily, sleepily, and slowly closed the door.

He went on in the impatient mood of a man who has been secretly married
and must leave his wife in a poor lodging until he can disclose his
marriage.

CHAPTER III

I

When she opened the door with her latchkey on Monday evening, late from
a class in Advanced Commercial Spanish at Skerry's College, and sat down
in the hall to take her boots off, her mother cried out from the
kitchen, "Ellen, I've got the grandest surprise for you!"

These fanciful women! "And what's that?" she cried back tolerantly,
though the dark thoughts buzzed about her head like bees. She thought
she could feel better if she could only tell someone how Mr. Philip had
sat by her fire like a nasty wee black imp and said that awful thing.
But she must not tell her mother, who would only be fretted by it and
ask like a little anxious mouse, "You're sure you've not said anything,
dear? You're sure you've been a careful girl with your work, dear?" and
would brace herself with heartrending bravery to meet this culminating
misfortune. "Ah, well, dear, if you do have to look round for a new post
we must just manage." So she must keep silent and seem cheerful, though
that memory was rolling round and round in her brain like a hot marble.

"Away into the dining-room and see what it is," said Mrs. Melville,
coming out with the cocoa-jug in her hand. She had put on her brighter
shawl, the tartan one.

"You look as we'd been left a fortune," said Ellen.

"No fear of that. If your grand-aunt Watson remembers you with a hundred
pounds that's all we can expect. But there's something fine waiting for
you. Finish taking off that muddy boot before you come. Now!"

She flung ope