mehow apart from it. Now she seemed, somehow,
apart from the world of religion, from the calm and laborious world in
which she had chosen to dwell. She looked indeed almost strangely
pure, but there was in her face an expression of acute restlessness,
perpetually seen among those who are grasping at passing pleasures,
scarcely ever seen among those who have deliberately resigned them.

This was surely a woman who had sought and who had not found, who was
uneasy in self-sacrifice, who had striven, who was striving still, to
draw near to the gates of heaven, but who had not come upon the path
which led up the mountain-side to them. Sorrow was stamped on the face,
and something else, too--the seal of that corrosive disease of the soul,
dissatisfaction with self.

This was not Rosamund; this was a woman with Rosamund's figure, face,
hair, eyes, voice, gestures, movements--one who would be Rosamund but
for some terrible flaw.

She was alone in the little study for a few minutes before Father
Robertson came. She did not sit down, but moved about, looking now at
this thing, now at that. In her white forehead there were two vertical
lines which were never smoothed out. An irreligious person, looking at
her just then, might have felt moved to say, with a horrible irony, "And
can God do no more than that for the woman who dedicates her life to His
service?"

The truth of the whole matter lay in this: that whereas once God had
seemed to stand between Rosamund and Dion, now Dion seemed to stand
between Rosamund and God.

But even Father Robertson did not know this.

Presently the door opened and the Father came in.

Instantly Rosamund noticed that he looked slightly ill at ease, almost,
indeed, embarrassed. He shook hands with her in his gentle way and made
a few ordinary remarks about little matters in which they were mutually
interested. Then he asked her to sit down, sat down near her and was
silent.

"What is it?" she said, at last.

He looked at her, and there was something almost piercing in his eyes
which she had never noticed in them before.

"Last night," he said, "when I came home I found here a note from a
stranger, asking me to visit her at the Adelphi Hotel where she was
staying. She wrote that she had come to Liverpool on purpose to see
me. I went to the hotel and had an interview with her. This interview
concerned you."

"Concerned me?" said Rosamund.

Her voice did not sound as if she were actively s