ead a pure life--and _then_--accept him--welcome
him--"(the Canon opened his arms, as if he were that moment receiving a
repentant sinner) "rejoice over him"--(the Canon's face became fairly
illuminated) "as--as much as you like."

The peroration was rapid, valedictory, complete. He thrust out his hand,
displaying the whole palm of it as a sign of openness, honesty, and
good-will.

"God bless you."

The solemn benediction atoned for any little momentary brusquerie.

Anne went away with a conscience wholly satisfied, in an exalted mood,
fortified by all the ramparts of the spiritual life.

She was very gentle with Edith that evening. She said to herself that her
love must make up to Edie for the loss her conscience had been compelled
to inflict. "After all," she said to herself, "it's not as if she hadn't
me." Measuring her services with those of the disreputable Mr. Gorst, it
seemed to her that she was amply making up. She had a hatred of moral
indebtedness, as of any other, and she loved to spend. In reckoning the
love she had spent so lavishly on Edie, she had not allowed for the
amount of forgiveness that Edie had spent on her. Forgiveness is a gift
we have to take, whether we will or no, and Anne was blissfully unaware
of what she took.

Majendie watched her ministrations curiously. Her tenderness was the
subtlest lure to the love in him that still watched and waited for its
hour. That night, in the study, he was silent, nervous, and unhappy. She
shrank from the unrest and misery in his eyes. They followed or were
fixed on her, rousing in her an obscure resentment and discomfort. She
was beginning to be afraid of him. It had come to that.

She left him earlier than usual, and went very miserably to bed. She
prayed, to-night, with her eyes fixed on the crucifix. It had become for
her the symbol of her life, and of her marriage, which was nothing to her
now but a sacrifice, a martyrdom, a vicarious expiation of her husband's
sin.

As she lay down, the beating of her pulses told her that she was not to
sleep. She longed for sleep, and tried to win it to her by repeating the
Psalm which had been her comfort in all times of her depression. "I will
lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my help. My help cometh
from the Lord, which made heaven and earth."

She closed her eyes under the peace of the beloved words. And as she
closed them she felt herself once more in the arms of the green hills,
the foldin