lingered in the well-remembered hall . . . . And when at last she
came down again her eyes shone bravely through her tears, her look
answered the question of his own. There was no need for speech. With
not so much as a look behind she left, with him, her father's house.

Outside, the mist had become a drizzle, and as they went down the walk
together beside the driveway she slipped her arm into his, pressing close
to his side. Her intuition was perfect, the courage of her love sublime.

"I have you, dear," she whispered, "never in my life before have I been
rich."

"Alison!"

It was all he could say, but the intensity of his mingled feeling went
into the syllables of her name. An impulse made them pause and turn,
and they stood looking back together at the great house which loomed the
greater in the thickening darkness, its windows edged with glow. Never,
as in this moment when the cold rain wet their faces, had the thought of
its comfort and warmth and luxury struck him so vividly; yes, and of its
terror and loneliness now, of the tortured spirit in it that found no
rest.

"Oh, John," she cried, "if we only could!"

He understood her. Such was the perfect quality of their sympathy that
she had voiced his thought. What were rain and cold, the inclemency of
the elements to them? What the beauty and the warmth of those great,
empty rooms to Eldon Parr? Out of the heaven of their happiness they
looked down, helpless, into the horrors of the luxury of hell.

"It must be," he answered her, "in God's good time."

"Life is terrible!" she said. "Think of what he must have done to
suffer so, to be condemned to this! And when I went to him, just now,
he wouldn't even kiss me good-by. Oh, my dear, if I hadn't had you to
take me, what should I have done? . . . It never was a home to me--to any
of us. And as I look back now, all the troubles began when we moved into
it. I can only think of it as a huge prison, all the more sinister for
its costliness."

A prison! It had once been his own conceit. He drew her gently away,
and they walked together along Park Street towards the distant arc-light
at the corner which flung a gleaming band along the wet pavement.

"Perhaps it was because I was too young to know what trouble was when
we lived in Ransome Street," she continued. "But I can remember now
how sad my mother was at times--it almost seemed as though she had a
premonition." Alison's voice caught . . . .

The car which c