ers the thin rug that covered her,
and was angry with herself because, all of a sudden, she wanted to cry.

"And I am beginning to wonder," Maurice went on, "how much longer I can
bear it, just how long."

Lily cleared her throat. It struck her as odd that she did not feel
strange with this man who looked so old in the thin light from the lamp.
Indeed, now that the mask had entirely fallen from him, he seemed more
familiar to her than ever before.

"I suppose we must bear everything so long as God chooses," she said.

"No, so long as we choose."

"But how?"

"To live to bear it. I cannot be haunted after I am dead. That can't
be."

He lifted his head and looked at her with a sort of pale defiance, as
if he would dare her to contradict him. Lily confronted the horror of
his eyes, and a shudder ran over her. The thorns had pierced more deeply
even than she had believed as she lay awake in the night. Just then a
door banged and a footstep approached on the landing.

"Hush, it's father," Lily whispered.

And the Canon entered to ask the condition of the patient. Maurice
prescribed and went away. In the windy evening as he walked, he was
conscious of a large change dawning over his life. Either the spirit of
prophecy--which comes to many men even in modern days--was upon him, or
hope, which he believed quite dead in him, stirred faintly in his dream.
In either event he saw that on the black walk of his life there was the
irregular, and as yet paltry, line of some writing, some inscription. He
could not read the words. He only knew that there were some words to be
read. And one of them was surely Lily's name.

He did not meet her until the evening of the following Sunday when, as
usual, he went to supper at the Rectory. Lily was better and had been to
church. The Canon was delighted and thanked Maurice for his skill in
diagnosis and in treatment.

"You cure every one," he said.

Lily and Maurice exchanged a glance. He saw how well she understood that
he felt the words to be an irony though they were uttered so
innocently. After supper, just as the Canon, with his habitual Sunday
sigh of satisfaction, was beginning to light his pipe, Sarah, the
parlour maid, came in with a note. The Canon read it and his sigh moved
onwards to something not unlike a groan. He put his filled pipe down on
the mantelpiece.

"What is it, father?" asked Lily.

"Miss Bigelow," he replied laconically.

"On a Sunday. Oh, it's too ba