r and worse women go to her, and I,
who had struggled with them, could see that she had reached some remote
longing in their beings which I had never touched. In time the seed
would have stirred to life--it is beginning to stir even now. During
the months since she came back to the court--though they have laughed at
her--both men and women have begun to see her as a creature weirdly set
apart. Most of them feel something like awe of her; they half believe
her prayers to be bewitchments, but they want them on their side. They
have never wanted mine. That I have known--KNOWN. She believes that
her Deity is in Apple Blossom Court--in the dire holes its people live
in, on the broken stairway, in every nook and awful cranny of it--a
great Glory we will not see--only waiting to be called and to answer. Do
_I_ believe it--do you--do any of those anointed of us who preach each
day so glibly 'God is EVERYWHERE'? Who is the one who believes? If
there were such a man he would go about as Moses did when 'He wist not
that his face shone.'"

They had gone out together and were standing in the fog in the court.
The curate removed his hat and passed his handkerchief over his damp
forehead, his breath coming and going almost sobbingly, his eyes staring
straight before him into the yellowness of the haze.

"Who," he said after a moment of singular silence, "who are you?"

Antony Dart hesitated a few seconds, and at the end of his pause he put
his hand into his overcoat pocket.

"If you will come upstairs with me to the room where the girl Glad
lives, I will tell you," he said, "but before we go I want to hand
something over to you."

The curate turned an amazed gaze upon him.

"What is it?" he asked.

Dart withdrew his hand from his pocket, and the pistol was in it.

"I came out this morning to buy this," he said. "I intended--never mind
what I intended. A wrong turn taken in the fog brought me here. Take
this thing from me and keep it."

The curate took the pistol and put it into his own pocket without
comment. In the course of his labors he had seen desperate men and
desperate things many times. He had even been--at moments--a desperate
man thinking desperate things himself, though no human being had ever
suspected the fact. This man had faced some tragedy, he could see. Had
he been on the verge of a crime--had he looked murder in the eyes? What
had made him pause? Was it possible that the dream of Jinny Montaubyn