was not quite
a shrug, had a relegating effect upon any complication between Alicia
and Lindsay. He sat for a moment without saying more, covering his eyes
with his hand.

"Why should you care so much?" Hilda asked gently. "You are at the very
antipodes of her sect. You can't endorse her methods--you don't trust
her results."

"Oh, all that! It's of the least consequence." He spoke with a curious,
governed impulse coming from beneath his shaded eyes. "It's seeing
another ideal pulled down, gone under, something that held, as best it
could, a ray from the source. It's another glimpse of the strength of
the tide--terrible. It's a cruel hint that one lives above it in the
heaven of one's own hopes, by some mere blind accident. To have set
one's feeble hand to the spiritualising of the world and to feel the
possibility of that--"

"I see," said Hilda, and perhaps she did. But his words oppressed her.
She got up with a movement which almost shook them off, and went to
a promiscuous looking-glass to remove her hat. She was refreshed
and vivified--she wanted to talk of the warm world. She let a decent
interval elapse, however; she waited till he took his hand from his
eyes. Even then, to make the transition easier, she said, "You ought to
be lifted up to-day, if you are going to baptize Kally Nath to-morrow."

"The Brother Superior will do it. And I don't know--I don't know. The
young woman he is to marry withdraws, I believe, if he comes over to
us--"

"The, young woman he is to marry! Oh my dear and reverend friend! Avec
ces gens la! I have had a most amusing afternoon," she went on quickly.
"I have taken off my hat, now let me remove your halo." She was safe
with her conceit; Arnold would always smile at any imputation of
saintship. He held himself a person of broad indulgences, and would
point openly to his consumption of tea-cakes. But this afternoon a
miasma hung over him. Hilda saw it, and bent herself, with her graphic
recital, to dispel it, perceived it thicken and settle down upon him,
and went bravely on to the end. Mr. Macandrew and Mr. Molyneux Sinclair
lived and spoke before him. It was comedy enough, in essence, to spread
over a matinee.

"And that is the sort of thing you store up and value," he said, when
she had finished. "These persons will add to your knowledge of life?"

"Extremely," she replied to all of it.

"I suppose they will in their measure. But personally I could wish you
had not gone.