g almost into a shout of assent, ran through the
little assembly. Robert bent forward, his eye glistening, a moved
acknowledgment in his look and gesture. But in reality a pang ran
through the fiery soul. It was 'the personal estimate,' after all, that
was shaping their future and his, and the idealist was up in arms for
his idea, sublimely jealous lest any mere personal fancy should usurp
its power and place.

A certain amount of desultory debate followed as to the possible
outlines of a possible organization, and as to the observances which
might be devised to mark its religious character. As it flowed on the
atmosphere grew more and more electric. A new passion, though still
timid and awe-struck, seemed to shine from the looks of the men,
standing or sitting round the central figure. Even Lestrange lost his
smile under the pressure of that strange subdued expectancy about him;
and when Robert walked homeward, about midnight, there weighed upon him
an almost awful sense of crisis, of an expanding future.

He let himself in softly and went into his study. There he sank into a
chair and fainted. He was probably not unconscious very long, but after
he had struggled back to his senses, and was lying stretched on the sofa
among the books with which it was littered, the solitary candle in the
big room throwing weird shadows about him, a moment of black depression
overtook him. It was desolate and terrible, like a prescience of death.
How was it he had come to feel so ill? Suddenly, as he looked back over
the preceding weeks, the physical weakness and disturbance which had
marked them, and which he had struggled through, paying as little heed
as possible, took shape, spectre-like, in his mind.

And at the same moment a passionate rebellion against weakness and
disablement arose in him. He sat up dizzily, his head in his hands.

'Rest--strength,' he said to himself, with strong inner resolve, 'for
the work's sake!'

He dragged himself up to bed and said nothing to Catherine till the
morning. Then, with boyish brightness, he asked her to take him and the
babe off without delay to the Norman coast, vowing that he would lounge
and idle for six whole weeks if she would let him. Shocked by his looks,
she gradually got from him the story of the night before. As he told
it, his swoon was a mere untoward incident and hindrance in a spiritual
drama, the thrill of which, while he described it, passed even to her.
The contrast, how