nd practice?"

Honoria shook her head.

"It is based on a higher law than any of modern organised
philanthropy," she said, and her voice had a queer unsteadiness in it.
"It goes back to the Gospels--to the matter of giving your life for
your friend."

As she spoke, Honoria rose. She went across and stood at the window.
Furtively she dabbed her pocket handkerchief against her eyes.

"Well, after all, one must give one's life for something or other, you
know," Dickie remarked, "or the days would become a little too
intolerably dull, and then one might be tempted to make short work of
life altogether."

Honoria returned to her chair and sat down--this time not on the arm of
it but in ordinary conventional fashion. She faced Richard. He observed
that her eyelids were slightly swollen, slightly red. This gave an
extraordinary effect of gentleness to her expression.

"How do you find them--the members of your sad family?" she asked.

"Oh, in all sorts of ways and of places! Knott swears it is contrary to
reason, an interfering with the beneficent tendency of nature to kill
off the unfit. Yet he works like a horse to help me--even talks of
giving up his practice and moving to Farley Row, so as to be near the
headquarters of my establishment. The lease of a rather charming, old
house there fell in this year. Fortunately the tenant did not want to
renew, so I am having that made comfortable for them."

Richard smiled. A greater sense of well-being animated him. Out of the
world she had come, back into the world she would go again. Meanwhile
she was nobly fair to look upon, she was pure of heart, intercourse
with her made for the justification of high purposes and unselfish
experiment--so he thought.

"I am growing as keen on bagging a fine cripple as another man might on
bagging a fine tiger," he said. "The whole matter at bottom, I suspect,
turns on the instinct of sport.--Only the week before last I acquired a
rather terribly superior specimen. A lad of eighteen, a factory hand in
Westchurch. He was caught by some loose gearing and swept into the
machinery. What is left of him--if it survives, which it had much
better not, and I can't help hoping it will, he is such a plucky,
sweet-natured fellow--will require a nurse for the rest of its life. So
I am pushing on the work at Farley, that the home may be ready when we
get him out of hospital.--By the way, I must go to-morrow and stir up
the workmen. Do you care to com