onfronted him, and would not be put away.

"And so, Evelina," he said aloud, "you have come back. And what do you
want? What can I do for you?"

The bell rang sharply, as if answering his question. He started from
his chair, having heard no approaching footsteps. He covered the
photograph of Evelina with Ralph's letters, but the sweet face of the
boy's mother still looked out at him from its gilt frame.

The old housekeeper went to the door with the utmost leisure. It
seemed to him an eternity before the door was opened. He stood there,
waiting, summoning his faculties of calmness and his powers of control,
to meet Evelina--to have out, at last, all the shame of the years.

But it was not Evelina. The Reverend Austin Thorpe was wiping his feet
carefully upon the door-mat, and asking in deep, vibrant tones: "Is the
Doctor in?"

Anthony Dexter could have cried out from relief. When the white-haired
old man came in, floundering helplessly among the furniture, as a
near-sighted person does, he greeted him with a cordiality that warmed
his heart.

"I am glad," said the minister, "to find you in. Sometimes I am not so
fortunate. I came late, for that reason."

"I've been busy," returned the Doctor. "Sit down."

The minister sank into an easy chair and leaned toward the light. "I
wish I could have a lamp like this in my room," he remarked. "It gives
a good light."

"You can have this one," returned Dexter, with an hysterical laugh,

"I was not begging," said Mr. Thorpe, with dignity. "Miss Mehitable's
lamps are all small. Some of them give no more light than a candle."

"'How far that little candle throws its beams,'" quoted Dexter. "'So
shines a good deed in a naughty world.'"

There was a long interval of silence. Sometimes Thorpe and Doctor
Dexter would sit for an entire evening with less than a dozen words
spoken on either side, yet feeling the comfort of human companionship.

"I was thinking," said, Thorpe, finally, "of the supreme isolation of
the human soul. You and I sit here, talking or not, as the mood
strikes us, and yet, what does speech matter? You know no more of me
than I choose to give you, nor I of you."

"No," responded Dexter, "that is quite true." He did not realise what
Thorpe had just said, but he felt that it was safe to agree.

"One grows morbid in thinking of it," pursued Thorpe, screening his
blue eyes from the light with his hand. "We are like a vast plain of
mo