ip and married life to
have been most exemplary and orthodox. We will, however, postpone any
further remarks upon Mr. Cardew: a little later we shall hear something
about his early history, which may perhaps explain and partly exculpate
him. As to Catharine, she escaped. It is vexatious that a complicated
process in her should be represented by a single act which was transacted
in a second. It would have been much more intelligible if it could have
written itself in a dramatic conversation extending over two or three
pages, but, as the event happened, so it must be recorded. The
antagonistic and fiercely combatant forces did _so_ issue in that deed,
and the present historian has no intention to attempt an analysis. One
thing is clear to him, that the quick stride up the garden path was urged
not by any single, easily predominating impulse which had been enabled to
annihilate all others. Do not those of us, who have been mercifully
prevented from damming ourselves before the whole world, who have
succeeded and triumphed--do we not know, know as we know hardly anything
else, that our success and our triumph were due to superiority in
strength by just a grain, no more, of our better self over the raging
rebellion beneath it? It was just a tremble of the tongue of the
balance: it might have gone this way, or it might have gone the other,
but by God's grace it was this way settled--God's grace, as surely, in
some form of words, everybody must acknowledge it to have been. When she
reached her bedroom she sat down with her head on her hands, rose, walked
about, looked out of window in the hope that she might see him, thought
of Mrs. Cardew; forgot her; dwelt on what she had passed through till she
almost actually felt the pressure of his hand; cursed herself that she
had turned away from him; prayed for strength to resist temptation, and
longed for one more chance of yielding to it.

The next morning a little parcel was left for Miss Furze. It contained
the promised story, which is here presented to my readers:--

"Did he Believe?

"Charmides was born in Greece, but about the year 300 A.D. was living in
Rome. He had come there, like many of his countrymen, to pursue his
calling as sculptor in the imperial city, and he cherished a great love
for his art. He knew too well that it was not the art of the earlier
days of Athens, and that he could never catch the spirit of that golden
time, but he loved it none t