t made me smile, even in that bitter
moment, to remember how indistinctly, how churlishly almost, Atherley
accepted the gift, in his eager haste to get me out of sight and thought
of it.

It was long before the last fluttering rags had vanished, transmuted
into fiery dust. The clock on the landing had many times chanted its
dirge since I had heard below the footsteps of the servants carrying
away the lamps from the sitting-rooms and the hall. Later still came the
far-off sound of Atherley's door closing behind him, like the final
good-night of the waking day. Over all the unconscious household had
stolen that silence which is more than silence, that hush which seems to
wait for something, that stillness of the night-watch which is kept
alone. It was familiar enough to me, but to-night it had a new meaning;
like the sunlight that shines when we are happy, or the rain that falls
when we are weeping, it seemed, as if in sympathy, to be repeating and
accenting what I could not so vividly have told in words. In my life,
and for the second time, there was the same desolate pause, as if the
dreary tale were finished and only the drearier epilogue remained to
live through--the same sense of sad separation from the happy and the
healthful.

I made a great effort to read, holding the book before me and compelling
myself to follow the sentences, but that power of abstraction which can
conquer pain does not belong to temperaments like mine. If only I could
have slept, as men have been able to do even upon the rack; but every
hour that passed left me more awake, more alive, more supersensitive to
suffering.

Early in the morning, long before the dawn, I must have been feverish, I
think. My head and hands burned, the air of the room stifled me, I was
losing my self-control.

I opened the window and leant out. The cool air revived me bodily, but
to the fever of the spirit it brought no relief. To my heart, if not to
my lips, sprang the old old cry for help which anguish has wrung from
generation after generation. The agony of mine, I felt wildly, must
pierce through sense, time, space, everything--even to the Living Heart
of all, and bring thence some token of pity! For one instant my passion
seemed to beat against the silent heavens, then to fall back bruised and
bleeding.

Out of the darkness came not so much as a wind whisper or the twinkle of
a star.

Was Atherley right after all?

CHAPTER II

THE STRANGER'S GOSP