ghteous fury against literature he went back again
to knock at the door of Christina's empty room. Once his mother came up
also, but the girl, it appeared, was always out now, while the rejected
manuscript thickened each morning upon the threshold. Several times Mrs.
Trent arranged a little tray of luncheon and sent it up stairs by the
old negro servant, but the message brought back was always that
Christina was not at home. And then gradually, as the weeks went by, the
dignity and the pathos of her struggle were surrounded in Trent's mind
by a romantic halo. Her beauty borrowed from his poetic fancy the
peculiar touch of atmosphere it lacked, and his thoughts dwelt more and
more upon her slender, girlish figure, her smooth brown hair, and the
flower-like sweetness of her face.

Then just as he had grown almost hopeless of ever seeing her again, he
found her one evening in the elevator as he went up to his mother's
rooms. The touch of her cold little hand on his sent a sudden shock to
his heart, and while he looked anxiously into her face, he saw her go
deadly pale and bite her lip sharply as if to bring back her
consciousness by the sting of pain.

"You are ill," he said eagerly; "don't deny it, for haven't I eyes? Yes,
you must, you shall come with me in to mother."

Even then she would have turned proudly away, but with his impulsive,
lover's sympathy he led her from the elevator upon the landing on which
he lived. "She is waiting for you--she wants you," he urged with
passion; "and can't you see--oh, Christina, I want you, too!"

But his fervour only left her the more cold and shrinking, and she shook
her head with a refusal that was almost angry.

"How dare you? Why did you make me come out?" she asked. "I must go
back--I am not well--oh, I must go back!"

Over the angry tones of her voice he saw her entreating eyes shining
like wet flowers, and as he looked into them it came to him in a
revelation of knowledge that the meaning of everything that had been was
made clear at last. He knew now why he had succeeded where Christina had
failed--he knew why Laura had refused his love, and why, even in his
misery, her refusal had left his heart untouched. And beyond all these
things, he realised that now his boyhood was over and that from the
experience of this one moment he had become a man.

CHAPTER II

THE DEIFICATION OF CLAY

Not until a month after the announcement of Laura's engagement did she
come