t of the afternoon: "Westmore must be foremost to
you both in time--I don't see how either of you can escape it."

She saw it, as he did, to be the special outlet offered for the
expression of what he was worth to the world; and with the knowledge
that one other person recognized his call, it sounded again loudly in
his heart. Yes, he would go on, patiently and persistently, conquering
obstacles, suffering delay, enduring criticism--hardest of all, bearing
with his wife's deepening indifference and distrust. Justine had said
"Westmore must be foremost to you both," and he would prove that she was
right--spite of the powers leagued against him he would win over Bessy
in the end!

Those observers who had been struck by the length and animation of Miss
Brent's talk with her host--and among whom Mrs. Ansell and Westy Gaines
were foremost--would hardly have believed how small a part her personal
charms had played in attracting him. Amherst was still under the power
of the other kind of beauty--the soft graces personifying the first
triumph of sex in his heart--and Justine's dark slenderness could not at
once dispel the milder image. He watched her with pleasure while she
talked, but her face interested him only as the vehicle of her
ideas--she looked as a girl must look who felt and thought as she did.
He was aware that everything about her was quick and fine and supple,
and that the muscles of character lay close to the surface of feeling;
but the interpenetration of spirit and flesh that made her body seem
like the bright projection of her mind left him unconscious of anything
but the oneness of their thoughts.

So these two, in their hour of doubt, poured strength into each other's
hearts, each unconscious of what they gave, and of its hidden power of
renewing their own purposes.

XVIII

IF Mr. Langhope had ever stooped to such facile triumphs as that summed
up in the convenient "I told you so," he would have loosed the phrase on
Mrs. Ansell in the course of a colloquy which these two, the next
afternoon, were at some pains to defend from the incursions of the
Lynbrook house-party.

Mrs. Ansell was the kind of woman who could encircle herself with
privacy on an excursion-boat and create a nook in an hotel drawing-room,
but it taxed even her ingenuity to segregate herself from the Telfers.
When the feat was accomplished, and it became evident that Mr. Langhope
could yield himself securely to the joys of conf