ing to volcanic force and height when the true love was found at
last.

The doctor shivered at that anticlimax, as if the chill of an empty
church were in his bones. He knew how far worse it had been than Garth
had told. He knew of the cruel, humiliating question: "How old are
you?" Jane had confessed to it. He knew how the outward glow of adoring
love had faded as the mind was suddenly turned inward to
self-contemplation. He had known it all as abstract fact. Now he saw it
actually before him. He saw Jane's stricken lover, bowed beside him in
his blindness, living again through those sights and sounds which no
merciful curtain of oblivion could ever hide or veil.

The doctor had his faults, but they were not Peter's. He never, under
any circumstances, spoke BECAUSE he wist not what to say.

He leaned forward and laid a hand very tenderly on Garth's shoulder.
"Poor chap," he said. "Ah, poor old chap."

And for a long while they sat thus in silence.

CHAPTER XXV

THE DOCTOR'S DIAGNOSIS

"So you expressed no opinion? explained nothing? let him go on
believing that? Oh, Dicky! And you might have said so much!"

In the quiet of the Scotch Sabbath morning, Jane and the doctor had
climbed the winding path from the end of the terrace, which zigzagged
up to a clearing amongst the pines. Two fallen trees at a short
distance from each other provided convenient seats in full sunshine,
facing a glorious view,--down into the glen, across the valley, and
away to the purple hills beyond. The doctor had guided Jane to the
sunnier of the two trunks, and seated himself beside her. Then he had
quietly recounted practically the whole of the conversation of the
previous evening.

"I expressed no opinion. I explained nothing. I let him continue to
believe what he believes; because it is the only way to keep you on the
pinnacle where he has placed you. Let any other reason for your conduct
than an almost infantine ignorance of men and things be suggested and
accepted, and down you will come, my poor Jane, and great will be the
fall. Mine shall not be the hand thus to hurl you headlong. As you say,
I might have said so much, but I might also have lived to regret it."

"I should fall into his arms," said Jane recklessly, "and I would
sooner be there than on a pinnacle."

"Excuse me, my good girl," replied the doctor. "It is more likely you
would fall into the first express going south. In fact, I am not
certain you would w