hinking how terrible it is that we who have
everything are so heedless of all that misery. The thought of it took
away all my pleasure.

"I'd do something more, something personal, if I could. Perhaps I shall
be able to, next winter. Why is it so difficult for all of us to know
what to do?"

"We have taken a step forward, at any rate, when we know that it is
difficult," he said.

She gazed up at him fixedly, her attention caught by an indefinable
something in his voice, in his smile, that thrilled and vaguely
disturbed her. She remembered it long afterwards. It suddenly made her
shy again; as if, in faring forth into the darkness, she had come to the
threshold of a mystery, of a revelation withheld; and it brought back
the sense of adventure, of the palpitating fear and daring with which
she had come to meet him.

"It is something to know," she repeated, half comprehending. The
scraping of chairs within alarmed her, and she stood ready to fly.

"But I haven't thanked you for this," he said, holding up the envelope.
"It may be that I shall find some one in Dalton Street--"

"Oh, I hope so," she faltered, breathlessly, hesitating a moment. And
then she was gone, into the house.

Volume 3.

CHAPTER IX. THE DIVINE DISCONTENT

I

It was the last Sunday in May, and in another week the annual flight
to the seashore and the mountains would have begun again. The breezes
stealing into the church through the open casements wafted hither
and thither the odours of the chancel flowers, and mingled with those
fainter and subtler perfumes set free by the rustling of summer gowns.

As on this day he surveyed his decorous and fashionable congregation,
Hodder had something of that sense of extremity which the great apostle
to the Gentiles himself must have felt when he stood in the midst of the
Areopagus and made his vain yet sublime appeal to Athenian indifference
and luxury. "And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now
commandeth all men everywhere to repent.".. Some, indeed, stirred
uneasily as the rector paused, lowering their eyes before the intensity
of his glance, vaguely realizing that the man had flung the whole
passion of his being into the appeal.

Heedlessness--that was God's accusation against them, against the age.
Materialism, individualism! So absorbed were they in the pursuit of
wealth, of distraction, so satisfied with the current philosophy, so
intent on surrounding themselves with