om it is impossible to approach. If he notices anything it will only
be that, for some reasons of your own, you are making a disagreeable
noise.

As Mr. Alwynn looked back at Dare his anger died away within him, and a
dull pain of deep disappointment and sense of sudden loneliness took its
place. Dare and he seemed many miles apart. He felt that it would be of
no use to say anything; and so, being a man, he held his peace.

Dare continued talking volubly of how he would get a lawyer's opinion at
once in London; of his certainty that the American wife had no claim
upon him; of how he would go over to America, if necessary, to establish
the validity of his divorce; but Mr. Alwynn heard little or nothing of
what he said. He was thinking of Ruth with distress and
self-upbraiding. He had been much to blame, of course.

Dare's mention of her name recalled his attention.

"She is all goodness," he was saying. "She believes in me. She has
promised again that she will marry me--since yesterday. I trust her as
myself; but it is a grief which as little as possible must trouble her.
You will not say anything to her till I come back, till I return with
proof that I am free, as I told her? You will say nothing?"

Dare had pulled up at the bottom of the drive to the rectory.

"Very well," said Mr. Alwynn, absently, getting slowly out. He seemed
much shaken.

"I will be back perhaps to-night, perhaps to-morrow morning," called
Dare after him.

But Mr. Alwynn did not answer.

* * * * *

Dare's business took him a shorter time than he expected, and the same
night found him hurrying back by the last train to Slumberleigh. It was
a wild night. He had watched the evening close in lurid and stormy
across the chimneyed wastes of the black country, until the darkness
covered all the land, and wiped out even the last memory of the dead day
from the western sky.

Who, travelling alone at night, has not watched the glimmer of light
through cottage windows as he hurries past; has not followed with
keenest interest for one brief second the shadow of one who moves
within, and imagination picturing a mysterious universal happiness
gathered round these twinkling points of light, has not experienced a
strange feeling of homelessness and loneliness?

Dare sat very still in the solitude of the empty railway carriage, and
watched the little fleeting, mocking lights with a heavy heart. They
meant _homes_, and h