been his friend, her new
attitude was charged with invisible electricity.

So far as Mrs. Wilder was concerned, Hartley was to her what a sitting
hen would be to a sporting man. You couldn't shoot the confiding thing;
but you might wring its neck if necessary, or push it out of the way
with an impatient foot. She knew her power over him to a nicety, and she
knew of his secret desire for "situations," because her instinct was
never at fault; but she felt nothing more than contempt, slightly
charged with pity towards him. Hartley was a good-natured, idiotic man,
and Hartley had principles; Clarice Wilder had none herself, though she
felt that they were definite factors in any game, but she also believed
that principles were things that could be got over, or got at, by any
woman who knew enough about life to manage such as Hartley.

All the same, it was not of Hartley that she thought. She had been quite
truthful when she said that he had suggested Heath to her mind, and
that she would have to consider his gaunt face and hollow cheeks during
her drive.

If he had sat on the vacant seat beside her, the Rev. Francis Heath
could hardly have been more clearly before her eyes, and could hardly
have drawn her mind more strongly, and it was because of her thought of
him that she preserved her steady look and strange eyes.

A strong woman, a woman with character, a woman who once she saw her
way, was able to follow it faithfully, wherever it twisted, wherever it
wound, and wherever it eventually brought her. No one could picture her
flinching or turning back along a road she had set out to follow; if it
had run in blood, she would have gone on in bare feet, not picking her
steps, and yet Hartley dreamed of apple orchards and an Eve in a white
muslin dress.

VII

FINDS THE REV. FRANCIS HEATH READING GEORGE HERBERT'S POEMS, AND LEAVES
HIM PLEDGED TO A POSSIBLY COMPROMISING SILENCE

The Reverend Francis Heath was sitting in his upstairs room, for of late
he had avoided the veranda. It was the leisure hour of the day, the slow
hour when the light wanes and it is too early to call for a lamp; the
hour when memory or fear can both be poignant in tropical climates.

The house was very still, Atkins had gone to the Club and the servants
had all returned to their own quarters. Outside, noises were many.
Birds, with ugly, tuneless notes that were not songs but cries, flitted
in the trees, and the rumble of traffic on the r