said to
herself, "They don't approve of him. They seem to know something. They
are sorry for me." And she was humbled in her pride.

The one who seemed to know most, and to be sorriest of all, was Canon
Wharton. She was always meeting him now. It was positively as if he lay
in wait for her. His eyes seemed more than ever to have penetrated her
secret. They held it safe under the pent-house of his brows. They seemed
to be always making allusions to it, while his tongue preserved a
delicate reticence. At meeting they said to her, "It doesn't matter if I
know your secret. Do you suppose it is so evident to everybody? Why, in
all this town, there is no one--no one, dear lady--capable of discovering
it but I. It is a spiritual secret." And at parting they said, "When you
can bear it no longer you must come to me. Sooner or later you will come
to me."

And the weeks went on towards Lent. Anne longed for the time of
cleansing, and absolution and communion; for the peace of the week-day
services; and for the sweet, sharp, grey light of the young Spring at
evening, a light that recalled, piercingly, the long Lent of her
girlhood, and the passing of its pure and consecrated days.

She had not yet completely forsaken St. Saviour's for All Souls. She
loved the grey old church in the market-place. Set in the midst of that
sordid scene of chaffering and grime, St. Saviour's perpetuated for her
the ancient beauty and the majesty of her faith. When she desired to
forget herself, to sink humbly back into the ages, passive to a superb
tradition, she went to St. Saviour's. When she wished to be stirred and
strengthened, to realise her spiritual value, to feel the grip of divine
forces centring on her, she went to All Souls.

On the Sunday before Lent she was fairly possessed by this ardent
personal mood. In obedience to it she attended Matins at the Canon's
church.

She had had a scruple about going, for Edith had been worse that morning,
and more evidently unhappy. She went alone. Majendie had admitted lately
that he liked going to St. Saviour's, but he refused to accompany her to
All Souls.

She went in a strange, premonitory mood, expectant of some great
illumination. It came with the Collect for the day. Anne was deeply moved
by the Collect. She prayed inaudibly, with parted lips thirsting for the
sources of her spiritual help. Her light went up with the ascending,
sentence by sentence, of the prayer.

"Oh, Lord, who hast ta