g hills of Westleydale.

She shook off the obsession and prayed another prayer. She longed to be
alone; but, to her grief, she heard the opening and shutting of a door
and her husband's feet moving in the room beyond.

A few blessed moments of solitude were left her during Majendie's
undressing. She devoted them to the final expulsion of all lingering
illusions. She had long ago lost the illusion of her husband's immaculate
goodness; and now she cast off, once for all, the dear and pitiful belief
that had revived in her under her brief enchantment in the wood at
Westleydale. She told herself that she had married a man who had, not
only a lower standard than her own, but an entirely different code of
morals, a man irremediably contaminated, destitute of all perception of
spiritual values. And she had got to make the best of him, that was all.
Not quite all; for she had still to make the best of herself; and the two
things seemed, at moments, incompatible. To guard herself from all
contact with the invading evil; to take her stand bravely, to raise the
spiritual ramparts and retire behind them, that was no more than her bare
duty to herself and him. She must create a standard for him by keeping
herself for ever high and pure. He loved her still, in his fashion; he
must also respect her, and, in respecting her, respect goodness--the
highest goodness--in her.

Accustomed to move in a region of spiritual certainty, Anne was
untroubled by any misgivings as to the soundness of her attitude. It
was open to no criticism except the despicable wisdom of the world.

Her chief difficulty was poor Majendie's imperishable affection. She
tried to protect herself from it to-night by feigning drowsiness. She lay
still as a stone, stiff with her fear. Once, at midnight, she felt him
stir, and turn, and raise himself on his elbow. She was conscious through
all her unhappy being of the adoring tenderness with which he watched her
sleep.

At last she slept, and sleeping, she dreamed a strange dream. She found
herself again in Westleydale, walking in green aisles of the holy,
mystic, cathedral woods. The tall beech-stems were the pillars of the
temple. A still light came through them, guiding her to the beech-tree
that she knew. And she saw an angel lying under the beech-tree. It lay on
its side, with its wings stretched out so that the right wing covered the
left. As she approached, it raised the covering wing, and in the warm
hollow of