Via Sacra!" he commented, rising. "I
must go out and see whether he has a slave behind him to whisper in his
ear, _Memento te hominem esse_."

But it would appear that his curiosity concerning the procession was
short-lived, for when he reached the scene, he plunged contemptuously
between the straggling columns, and gained the further curb. Then he
turned down a side street, without one backward look, and took his way
forlornly toward St. George's Hall.

The bishop, not sorry to be left to his meditations, had made no effort
to detain his visitor. Now he extended his hand for another cigar,
changed his mind, and sat thinking. Genuinely indifferent to the
procession passing by with torches and transparencies and bands of
music, he remained with his back toward the windows, his head sunk upon
his breast. He was steept in a depressing consciousness of having
mismanaged the situation with his daughter, of having widened the
breach he had meant to close. His tact had failed him because his
affections and interests were too intimately concerned, much as a
surgeon's hand might falter in an operation upon one of his own family.

What was the meaning of this strange interest which Felicity had taken
in the career of a man normally beyond the radius of her acquaintance
and sympathy? At first it had seemed a jest, then a sentimental
charity maintained in foolish pride, but only recently had it created
anything approaching estrangement between them. And this situation was
the more difficult to bear because of their long intellectual and
artistic companionship. She was more to him than a son, for he had a
priestly appreciation of the subtlety of women. He had watched her
mind unfold in foreign travel, little dreaming that this experience
with him was sowing the seeds of discontent with her narrow environment
which were now beginning to bear such bitter fruit. Something of a
celibate by nature, he loved to think of her as an eternal priestess,
who would consecrate herself and her fortune to the work of the Church.

Going back in his mind, he could date the acute stage of the present
situation pretty accurately from the inception of her acquaintance with
the young professor of mathematics. Leigh had disclosed a certain
Western democracy that first evening, and had established immediately
some sort of understanding with his hostess. The bishop had seen them
together at Littleford's house, and had drawn his own conclusi