tep.

"Good-night, Dal," she said. "And do you know that you are missing the
curate?"

He looked up at her. His eyes shone in the light of her candle.

"No," he said. "I am neither missing nor missed. I was only waiting in
there until you went up. I shall not go back. I am going out into the
park now to breathe in the refreshing coolness of the night breeze. And
I am going to stand under the oaks and tell my beads. I did not know I
had a rosary, until to-night, but I have--I have!"

"I should say you have a dozen," remarked Jane, dryly.

"Then you would be wrong," replied Garth. "I have just one. But it has
many hours. I shall be able to call them all to mind when I get out
there alone. I am going to 'count each pearl.'"

"How about the cross?" asked Jane.

"I have not reached that yet," answered Garth. "There is no cross to my
rosary."

"I fear there is a cross to every true rosary, Dal," said Jane gently,
"and I also fear it will go hard with you when you find yours."

But Garth was confident and unafraid.

"When I find mine," he said, "I hope I shall be able to"--
Involuntarily Jane looked at her hands. He saw the look and smiled,
though he had the grace to colour beneath his tan,--"to FACE the
cross," he said.

Jane turned and began to mount the stairs; but Garth arrested her with
an eager question.

"Just one moment, Miss Champion! There is something I want to ask you.
May I? Will you think me impertinent, presuming, inquisitive?"

"I have no doubt I shall," said Jane. "But I am thinking you all sorts
of unusual things to-night; so three adjectives more or less will not
matter much. You may ask."

"Miss Champion, have YOU a rosary?"

Jane looked at him blankly; then suddenly understood the drift of his
question.

"My dear boy, NO!" she said. "Thank goodness, I have kept clear of
'memories that bless and burn.' None of these things enter into my
rational and well-ordered life, and I have no wish that they should."

"Then," deliberated Garth, "how came you to sing THE ROSARY as if each
line were your own experience; each joy or pain a thing--long passed,
perhaps--but your own?"

"Because," explained Jane, "I always live in a song when I sing it. Did
I not tell you the lesson I learned over the CHANT HINDOU? Therefore I
had a rosary undoubtedly when I was singing that song to-night. But,
apart from that, in the sense you mean, no, thank goodness, I have
none."

Garth mounted two steps, bringi