please me very much. Nor--which is more
to the point in this connection perhaps--did I please her. Would you
ring the bell, please, as you're there? I want Powell. Thanks so much.
Good-night."

Some ten minutes later Julius March, after kneeling in prayer, as his
custom was, before the divinely sorrowful and compassionate image of
the Virgin Mother and the Dead Christ, looked forth through the
many-paned study window into the clair-obscure of the windless autumn
night. He had been sensible of an unusual element in the domestic
atmosphere this evening, and had been vaguely disquieted concerning
both Katherine and Richard. It was impossible but that, as time went
on, life should become more complicated at Brockhurst, and Julius
feared his own inability to cope helpfully with such complication. He
entertained a mean opinion of himself. It appeared to him he was but an
unprofitable servant, unready, tongue-tied, lacking in resource. A
depression possessed him which he could not shake off. What had he to
show, after all, for these fifty-odd years of life granted to him? He
feared his religion had walked in silver slippers, and would so walk to
the end. Could it then, in any true and vital sense, be reckoned
religion at all? Gross sins had never exercised any attraction over
him. What virtue was there, then, in being innocent of gross sin? But
to those other sins--sins of defective moral courage in speech and
action, sins arising from over-fastidiousness--had he not yielded
freely? Was he not a spiritual valetudinarian? He feared so. Offered,
in the Eternal Mercy, endless precious opportunities of service, he had
been too weak, too timorous, too slothful, to lay hold on them. And so,
as it seemed to him very justly, to-night confession, prayer,
adoration, left him unconsoled.

Then, looking out of the many-paned window, while the shame of his
barrenness clothed him even as a garment, he beheld Lady Calmady pacing
slowly over the gray quarries of the terrace pavement. A dark,
fur-bordered mantle shrouded her tall figure from head to foot. Only
her face showed, and her hands folded stiffly high upon her bosom,
strangely pale against the blackness of her cloak. Ordinarily Julius
would have scrupled to intrude upon her lonely walk. But just now the
cry within him for human sympathy was urgent. Her near neighbourhood in
itself was very dear to him, and she might let fall some gracious word
testifying that, in her opinion at leas