erful fire had been lit. The ordinary table had been dispensed with
in favor of a small round one just large enough for them, and now, with
dessert on the table, they had turned their chairs round to the fire in
very homelike fashion.

"Do you know, I like this," Helen said softly. "I think it is so much
better than a dinner party, or going out anywhere."

"See what a difference the presence of a distinguished man of letters
makes," laughed Lady Thurwell. "Now, only a few hours ago, we were
dreading a very dull evening--Helen as well as myself. How nice it was
of you to take pity on us, Mr. Maddison!"

"Especially considering your aversion to our society," put in Helen.
"Are not you really thinking it a shocking waste of time to be here
talking to two very unlearned women instead of seeking inspiration in
your study?"

He looked at her reproachfully.

"I know nothing of Lady Thurwell's tastes," he said; "but you can
scarcely call yourself unlearned. You have read much, and you have
thought."

"A pure accident--I mean the thinking," she answered lightly. "If I had
not been a country girl, with a mind above my station, intellectually,
there's no telling what might have happened. Town life is very
distracting, if you once get into the groove. Isn't it, aunt?"

Lady Thurwell, who was a thorough little _dame de societe_, rose with a
pout and shrugged her shoulders.

"I'm not going to be hauled over the coals by you superior people any
longer," she answered. "I shall leave you to form a mutual improvement
society, and go and write some letters. When you want me, come into the
drawing room, but don't come yet. Thank you, Mr. Maddison," she added,
as he held the door open for her; "be merciful to the absent, won't
you?"

And so they were alone! As he closed the door and walked across the room
to his seat, there came back to him, with a faint bewildering sweetness,
something of the passionate emotion of their farewell in the pine grove
on the cliff. He felt his pulses quicken, and his heart beat fast. It
was in vain that the dying tenets of his old life, a life of
renunciation and solitude, feebly reasserted themselves. At that moment,
if never before, he knew the truth. The warm fresh sunlight lay across
his barren life, brightening with a marvelous glow its gloomiest
corners. The old passionless serenity, in which the human had been
crushed out by the intellectual, was gone forever. He loved this woman.

And she w