sity of his feeling dismayed him. But he was enheartened
too, and courage to surmount a thousand failures welled up in him as
from an unimagined spring.

"I wonder who that is?" she said quietly and ordinarily, as if a
terrific event had not happened.

On the highest floor, at the other extremity of the cathedral, in front
of the apse, a figure had appeared in a frock-coat and a silk hat. The
figure stood solitary, gazing around in the dying light.

"By Jove! It's Bentley! It's the architect!"

George literally trembled. He literally gave a sob. The vision of
Bentley within his masterpiece, of Bentley whom Enwright himself
worshipped, was too much for him. Renewed ambition rushed through him in
electric currents. All was not wrong with the world of architecture.
Bentley had succeeded. Bentley, beginning life as an artisan, had
succeeded supremely. And here he stood on the throne of his triumph.
Genius would not be denied. Beauty would conquer despite everything.
What completed the unbearable grandeur of the scene was that Bentley had
cancer of the tongue, and was sentenced to death. Bentley's friends knew
it; the world of architecture knew it; Bentley knew it.... "Shall I tell
her?" George thought. He looked at her; he looked at the vessel which he
had filled with emotion. He could not speak. A highly sensitive decency,
an abhorrence of crudity, restrained him. "No," he decided, "I can't
tell her now. I'll tell her some other time."

III

With no clear plan as to his dinner he took her back to Alexandra Grove.
The dusk was far advanced. Mounting the steps quickly Marguerite rang
the bell. There was no answer. She pushed up the flap of the
letter-aperture and looked within.

"Have you got your latchkey?" she asked, turning round on George.
"Father's not come home--his hat's not hanging up. He promised me
certain that he would be here at six-thirty at the latest. Otherwise I
should have taken the big key."

She did not show resentment against her father; nor was there impatience
in her voice. But she seemed to be firmly and impassively judging her
father, as his equal, possibly even as somewhat his superior. And George
admired the force of her individuality. It flattered him that a being so
independent and so strong should have been so meltingly responsive to
him in the cathedral.

An adventurous idea occurred to him in a flash and he impulsively
adopted it. His latchkey was in his pocket, but if the house