h half a dozen
others, the long drive to St. George's. The three carriage-loads set off
in a pleasant hubbub from the white-paved courtyard of the hotel, and as
Katherine settled her mother with much care and many rugs, her camera
dropped under the wheels. Everybody was busy, nobody was looking, and
she stooped and reached for it in vain. Then out of a blue sky a voice
said:

"I'll get it for you," She was pushed firmly aside and a figure in a
blue coat was grovelling adventurously beneath the trap. It came out,
straightened; she had her camera; she was staring up into a face which
contemplated her, which startled her, so radiant, so everything
desirable it seemed to her to be. The man's eyes considered her a moment
as she thanked him, and then he had lifted his hat and was gone,
running, like a boy in a hurry for a holiday, toward the white stone
landing. An empty sail flopped big at the landing, and the girl stood
and looked as he sprang in under it and took the rudder. Joe, the head
porter, the familiar friend of every one, was stowing in a rug.

"That gen'l'man's the Reverend Norman North,--he come by the _Trinidad_
last Wednesday; he's sailin' to St. George's," Joe volunteered. "Don't
look much like a reverend, do he?" And with that the carriage had
started.

Seeing the sights at St. George's, they came to the small old church,
on its western side a huge flight of steps, capped with a meek doorway;
on its eastern end a stone tower guarding statelily a flowery graveyard.
The moment the girl stepped inside, the spell of the bright peace which
filled the place caught her. The Sunday decorations were still there,
and hundreds of lilies bloomed from the pillars; sunshine slanted
through the simple stained glass and lay in colored patches on the
floor; there were square pews of a bygone day; there was a pulpit with a
winding stair; there were tablets on the walls to shipwrecked sailors,
to governors and officers dead here in harness. The clumsy woodwork, the
cheap carpets, the modest brasses, were in perfect order; there were
marks everywhere of reverent care.

"Let me stay," the girl begged. "I don't want to drive about. I want to
stay in this place. I'll meet you at the hotel for lunch, if you'll
leave me." And they left her.

The verger had gone, and she was quite alone. Deep in the shadow of a
gallery she slid to her knees and hid her face. "O God!" she
whispered,--"O God, forgive me!" And again the words seeme