nity. Every
day one of the Fathers, as the villagers called them, made his rounds,
starting soon after sunrise and sometimes not getting back till after
dark, for Father Philip had no belief in the efficacy of fasting and
meditation and prayer unless they were supplemented by a literal
obedience to the commands of Him who went about doing good. When priest
or deacon entered the Retreat, no matter what he was, rich or poor,
wedded or single, he had to take the vows of poverty, obedience and
chastity. When he left to go back into the world he was absolved from
them, and was free to do what seemed best to his own soul.

Vane had just left a little farmhouse upon which a great shame and
sorrow had fallen. As too often happens in this district, the only
daughter of the house, discontented with the quiet monotony of the farm
life, had gone away to Kidderminster to work in a carpet factory. That
was nearly eighteen months ago, and the night before she had come back
ragged, hungry, and penniless, with a nameless baby in her arms.

As he was walking along the road which led from this farmhouse to the
next hamlet thinking of that vanished sister of his and of the poor
imbecile in the French asylum, he turned a bend and saw a figure such as
was very seldom seen among the villages approaching him about two
hundred yards away. He stopped, almost as though he had received a blow
on the chest. It was impossible for his eyes to mistake it, and with a
swift sense, half of anger and half of disgust, he felt his heart begin
to beat harder and quicker. It was Enid, Enid in the flesh.

He had read of her marriage, and of her return with her husband with
hardly an emotion. Day after day he had looked upon her future home, the
home in which she would live as the wife of another man and the mother
of his children, without a single pang of envy or regret--and now, at
the first sight of her, his heart was beating, his pulses throbbing, and
his nerves thrilling.

True, every heart-beat, every pulse-throb, was a sin now, for she was a
wedded wife--and meanwhile she was still coming towards him. In a few
minutes more, since it was impossible for him to pass her as a stranger,
her hand would be clasped in his, and he would be once more looking into
those eyes which had so often looked up into his, hearing words of
greeting from those lips which he had so often kissed, and whose kisses
were now vowed to another man.

There was a little lane, tur