hat dark night
of November when for her the whole world had changed. In another
intangible, mysterious guise he had attended her ever since. He had been
about her path and about her bed. Even when she knelt at the altar in
the Supreme Service he had been there. She had felt his presence as she
touched the water, as she lifted the cup. Through all these months she
had learnt to know that there are those whom, once we have taken them
in, we cannot cast out of our lives.

Since the death of Robin, in absence Dion had assumed a place in
her life which he had never occupied in the days of their happiness.
Sometimes she had bitterly resented this; sometimes she had tried to
ignore it; sometimes, like a cross, she had taken it up and tried to
bear it with patience or with bravery. She had even prayed against it.

Never were prayers more vain than those which she put up against this
strange and terrible possession of herself by the man she had tried
to cast out of her life. Sometimes even it seemed to her that when
she prayed thus Dion's power to affect her increased. It was as if
mysteriously he drew nearer to her, as if he enveloped her with an
influence from which she could not extricate herself. There were hours
in the night when she felt afraid of him. She knew that wherever he
was, however far off, his mind was concentrated upon her. She grew to
realize, as she had never realized before, what mental power is. She had
separated her body from Dion's, but his mind would not leave her alone.
Often she was conscious of hostility. When she strove to give herself
absolutely and entirely to the life of religion and of charity she
was aware of a force holding her back. This force--so it seemed to
her--would not permit her to enter into the calm and the peace of the
dedicated life. She was like some one looking in at a doorway, desirous
of entering a room. She saw the room clearly; she saw others enjoying
its warmth and its shelter and its serene and guarded tranquillity; but
she was unable to cross the threshold.

That warm and sheltered room was not for her. And it was Dion's force
which held her back from entering it and from dwelling in it.

She could not give herself wholly to God because of Dion.

Of her struggle, of her frustration, of her mental torment in this
connexion she had never spoken to Father Robertson. Even in confession
she had been silent. He knew of her mother-agony; he did not know of the
stranger, more s