to guide and guard her,
what evils might not befall? She was sunk already in shame and
degradation, and he had put it out of his power to save her. Whatever had
happened in the past, whatever might happen in the future, he was lost to
her forever. The captured eagle with the broken wing was now chained to
the wall as well. But prayer! Prayer was the bulwark of chastity, and God
was in need of no man's efforts.

John fell on his knees before the crucifix. With the broken logic of
reverie he was thinking of Glory, and Brother Paul, and Polly and Drake.
They crossed his brain and weighed upon it and went out and returned. The
night was cold, but the sweat stood on his brow in beads. In the depths
of his soul something was speaking to him, and he was trying not to
listen. He was like a blind man who had stumbled to the edge of a
precipice, and could hear the waves breaking on the rocks beneath.

When he said his last prayer that night he omitted the petition for Glory
(as duty seemed to require of him), and then found that all life and soul
and strength had gone out of it. In the middle of the night he awoke with
a sense of fright. Was it only a dream that he was dead and buried? He
raised his head in the darkness and stretched out his hand. No, it was
true. Little by little he pieced together the incidents of the previous
day. Yes, it had really happened.

"After all, I am not like Paul--I am not bound for life," he told
himself, and then he lay back like a child and was comforted.

He was ashamed, but he could not help it; he was feeling already as if he
were a prisoner in a dungeon looking forward to his release.

III.

"5a Little Turnstile, High Holborn, London, W. C., November 9, 18--.

"Oh yiz, oh yiz, oh yiz! This is to announce to you with due pomp and
circumstance that I, Glory Quayle, am no longer at the hospital--for the
present. Did I never tell you? Have you never noticed it in the
regulations? Every half-year a nurse is entitled to a week's holiday, and
as I have been exactly six months to-day at Martha's Vineyard, and as a
week is too short a time for a trip to the 'oilan,' [* Island.] and as a
good lady whose acquaintance I have made here had given me a pressing
invitation to visit her---- See?

"Being the first day since I came up to London that I have been sole
mistress of my will and pleasure, I have been letting myself loose, like
Caesar does the moment his mad hoofies touch the grass. I m