elf. Even in the very fulfillment of his desire he was
obliged to stand aside, obliged even yet to be patient. Never surely had
an impulsive, impetuous man a longer training.

When he had gone Raeburn talked for some time of Erica's future, talked
for so long, indeed, that she grew impatient. How trifling now seemed
the sacrifice she had made at Fiesole to which he kept on referring.

"Oh, why do you waste the time in talking of me?" she said at last.

"Why?" he said smiling. "Because you are my bairn of what else should
I speak or think? For myself, I am very content, dear, though I should
have liked a few more years of work. It was not to be, you see; and, in
the end, no doubt this will work good to the cause of--" he broke off,
unwilling to pain her.

"Ah, child!" he said after a pause, "How miserable you and I might have
been for these two years if we had not loved each other. You are not to
think, little one, that I have not known what your wishes have been for
me. You, and Brian, and Osmond, and of late that noble fellow Farrant,
have often made me see that Christianity need not necessarily warp the
intellect and cripple the life. I believe that for you, and such as
you, the system is not rooted in selfishness. But, dear, you are but the
exceptions, the rare exceptions. I know that you have wished with all
your heart that I should come to think as you do, while I have been
wishing you back into the ranks of secularism. Well! It wasn't to be. We
each of us lost our wish. But there is this left, that we each know the
other to be honest; each deem it a case of honest mistake. I've felt
that all along. We've a common love of truth and a common love of
humanity. Oh, my child! Spite of all the creeds, we are very near to
each other!"

"Very near," she whispered. And words which Charles Osmond had spoken
years ago returned to her memory. "I think death will be your gate of
life. You will wake up and exclaim: 'Who'd have thought it?'"

After all, death would in a sense make them yet nearer! But human nature
is weak, and it is hard for us to realize the Unseen. She could not
then feel that it was anything but hard, bitter, heart-breaking that he
should be leaving her in this way.

The pain had now almost entirely ceased, and Raeburn, though very
restless, was better able to talk than on the previous day. He asked for
the first time what was passing in the world, showed special interest in
the accounts of the late co