ought to have encouraged you to mix in the world and fill the
position to which both your powers and your birth entitle you. I was
wrong--I lament my folly. But there is ample time in which to rectify
my mistake."

Richard's face relaxed.

"I wonder--I wonder," he said.

"I am sure," she replied.

"You are too sanguine," he said. "Your love for me blinds you to fact."

"No, no," she replied again. "Love is the only medium in which vision gains
perfect clearness, becomes trustworthy and undistorted."--Instinctively
Katherine folded her hands as in prayer, while the brightness of a pure
enthusiasm shone in her sweet eyes. "That I have learned beyond all
possibility of dispute. It has been given me, through much tribulation,
to arrive at that."

Richard smiled upon her tenderly, then, turning his head, remained
silent for a while. The sullen roar of the great city invaded the quiet
room through the open windows, the heavy regular tread of a policeman
on his beat, a shrill whistle hailing a hansom from a house some few
doors distant up the square, and then an answering rumble of wheels and
clatter of hoofs. Richard's face had grown fierce again, and his breath
came quick. He turned on his side, and once more the dwarfed
proportions of his person became perceptible. Lady Calmady averted her
eyes, fixing them upon his. But even there she found sad lack of
comfort, for in them she read the inalienable distress and desolation
of one unhandsomely treated by Nature, maimed and incomplete. Even the
Divine Light, resident within her, failed to reconcile her to that
reading. She shrank back in protest, once again, against the dealing of
Almighty God with this only child of hers. And yet--such is the
adorable paradox of a living faith--even while shrinking, while
protesting, she flung herself for support, for help, upon the very
Being who had permitted, in a sense caused, her misery.

"Mother can I say something to you?" Richard asked, rather hoarsely, at
last.

"Anything--in heaven or earth."

"But it is a thing not usually spoken of as I want to speak of it. It
may seem indecent. You won't be disgusted, or think me wanting in
respect or in modesty?"

"Surely not," Lady Calmady answered quietly, yet a certain trembling
took her, a nervousness as in face of the unknown. This strong, young
creature developed forces, presented aspects, in his present feverish
mood, with which she felt hardly equal to cope.

"Mother, I--I