thletic gentlemen who bewitched her in the
pages of the modern novel--but she recognised, for the first time, as
she stood gravely regarding him, that there could be a love founded upon
other attributes than these. To be loved as he loved Connie seemed to
her at the instant a very beautiful and perfect thing.

"I think you have suffered more from it than your wife has," she
observed, as she replaced the cup upon the tray.

Adams broke into his whimsical laugh. "You don't judge fair," he
retorted, "wait until I'm washed and in my right clothes again. If
there's anything on earth that turns a man into a corpse, it is an
evening suit by daylight."

Then, as she went out with the tray, he endeavoured, while he changed
his clothes, to pull himself, by an effort of will, into proper shape to
meet the day's work before him.

An hour afterward, as he walked through the morning sunlight to his
office, he found that his unusual melancholy had vanished before the
first breath of fresh air. A sense of detachment--of world-loneliness
came over him as he looked at the passing crowd of strangers, but there
was no sadness in the feeling, for he felt within himself the source as
well as the renewal of his peace. He had never regarded himself as what
is called a religious man--it was more than ten years since he had
entered a church or heard a sermon--yet in this very relinquishment of
self, was there not something of the vital principle, of the quickening
germ of all great religions? Though he had never said in his thoughts "I
believe this" or "I hold by this creed or that commandment," his nature
was essentially one in which the intellect must be supreme either for
good or for evil; and in his soul, which had been for so long the
battlefield of a spiritual warfare, there had dawned at last that
cloudless sunrise of faith in which all lesser creeds are swallowed up
and lost. If he had ever attempted to put his religious belief into
words, he would probably have said with his unfailing humour that it
"sufficed to love his neighbour and to let his God alone."

Now, as he passed rapidly through the humming streets, his thoughts were
so anxiously engrossed by Connie's condition that, when his name was
uttered presently at his elbow, he started and looked up like one
awakening uneasily from a dream. The next moment the air swam before him
and he felt his blood rush in a torrent from his heart, for the voice
was Laura's, and he discovere