would have been
terrible to have told it to him."

"Let me think about it," said Phebe, "it has come too suddenly upon me.
There must be something we ought to do, but I cannot see it yet. I must
have time to recollect it all. And yet I am afraid to let you go, lest
you should disappear again, and all this should seem like a dreadful
dream."

"You care for me still, Phebe?" he answered mournfully. "No, I shall not
disappear from you; I shall hold fast by you, now you have seen me
again. If that poor wretch in hell who lifted up his eyes, being in
torments, had caught sight of some pitying angel, who would now and then
dip the tip of her finger in water and cool his tongue, would he have
disappeared from her vision? Wouldn't he rather have had a horrible
dread lest she should disappear? But you will not forsake me, Phebe?"

"Never!" replied Phebe, with an intense and mournful earnestness.

"Then I will go," he said, rising reluctantly to his feet. The deep
tones of the Abbey clock were striking for the second time since he had
entered Canon Pascal's study, and they had been left in uninterrupted
conversation. It was time for him to go; yet it seemed to him as if he
had still so much to pour into Phebe's ear, that many hours would not
give him time enough. Unconstrained speech had proved a source of
ineffable solace and strength to him. He had been dying of thirst, and
he had found a spring of living waters. To Phebe, and to her alone, he
was still a living man, unless sometimes Felicita thought of him.

"If you are still my friend, knowing all," he said, "I shall no longer
despair. When will you see me again?"

"I will come to morning service in the Abbey to-morrow," she answered.

CHAPTER XVIII.

WITHIN AND WITHOUT.

After speaking to Canon Pascal for a few minutes, with an agitation and
a reserve which he could not but observe, Phebe left the house to go
home. In one of the darkest corners of the cloisters she caught sight of
the figure of Jean Merle, watching for her to come out. For an instant
Phebe paused, as if to speak to him once more; but her heart was
over-fraught with conflicting emotions, whilst bewildering thoughts
oppressed her brain. She longed for a solitary walk homewards, along the
two or three miles of a crowded thoroughfare, where she could how feel
as much alone as she had ever done on the solitary uplands about her
birth-place. She had always delighted to ramble about the streets a