e.

"Why did you come with me?"

"Why?" he repeated, taken aback.

"Yes. I'm sure you have something you wish to do, something which
particularly worries you."

"No," he answered, appraising her intuition of him, "there is nothing I
can do, to-night. A young woman in whom Mr. Bentley is interested, in
whom I am interested, has disappeared. But we have taken all the steps
possible towards finding her."

"It was nothing--more serious, then? That, of course, is serious enough.
Nothing, I mean, directly affecting your prospects of remaining--where
you are?"

"No," he answered. He rejoiced fiercely that she should have asked him.
The question was not bold, but a natural resumption of the old footing
"Not that I mean to imply," he added, returning her smile, "that those
prospects' are in any way improved."

"Are they any worse?" she said.

"I see the bishop to-morrow. I have no idea what position he will take.
But even if he should decide not to recommend me for trial many difficult
problems still remain to be solved."

"I know. It's fine," she continued, after a moment, "the way you are
going ahead as if there were no question of your not remaining; and
getting all those people into the church and influencing them as you did
when they had come for all sorts of reasons. Do you remember, the first
time I met you, I told you I could not think of you as a clergyman. I
cannot now--less than ever."

"What do you think of me as?" he asked.

"I don't know," she considered. "You are unlike any person I have ever
known. It is curious that I cannot now even think of St. John's as a
church. You have transformed it into something that seems new. I'm
afraid I can't describe what I mean, but you have opened it up, let in
the fresh air, rid it of the musty and deadening atmosphere which I have
always associated with churches. I wanted to see you, before I went
away," she went on steadily, "and when Eleanor mentioned that you were
coming to her house to-night, I asked her to invite me. Do you think me
shameless?"

The emphasis of his gesture was sufficient. He could not trust himself
to speak.

"Writing seemed so unsatisfactory, after what you had done for me, and I
never can express myself in writing. I seem to congeal."

"After what I have done for you!" he exclaimed: "What can I have done?"

"You have done more than you know," she answered, in a low voice.
"More, I think, than I know. How are such things to be measured