flowers were fragrant still. And far away, softened by the
distance, the Whortley band, performing publicly outside the vicarage
for the first time that year, was playing with unctuous slowness a
sentimental air. I don't know if the reader remembers it that,
favourite melody of the early eighties:--

"Sweet dreamland faces, passing to and fro, (pum, pum)
Bring back to Mem'ry days of long ago-o-o-oh,"

was the essence of it, very slow and tender and with an accompaniment
of pum, pum. Pathetically cheerful that pum, pum, hopelessly cheerful
indeed against the dirge of the air, a dirge accentuated by sporadic
vocalisation. But to young people things come differently.

"I _love_ music," she said.

"So do I," said he.

They came on down the steepness of West Street. They walked athwart
the metallic and leathery tumult of sound into the light cast by the
little circle of yellow lamps. Several people saw them and wondered
what the boys and girls were coming to nowadays, and one eye-witness
even subsequently described their carriage as "brazen." Mr. Lewisham
was wearing his mortarboard cap of office--there was no mistaking
him. They passed the Proprietary School and saw a yellow picture
framed and glazed, of Mr. Bonover taking duty for his aberrant
assistant master. And outside the Frobisher house at last they parted
perforce.

"Good-bye," he said for the third time. "Good-bye, Ethel."

She hesitated. Then suddenly she darted towards him. He felt her hands
upon his shoulders, her lips soft and warm upon his cheek, and before
he could take hold of her she had eluded him, and had flitted into the
shadow of the house. "Good-bye," came her sweet, clear voice out of
the shadow, and while he yet hesitated an answer, the door opened.

He saw her, black in the doorway, heard some indistinct words, and
then the door closed and he was alone in the moonlight, his cheek
still glowing from her lips....

So ended Mr. Lewisham's first day with Love.

CHAPTER VII.

THE RECKONING.

And after the day of Love came the days of Reckoning.
Mr. Lewisham. was astonished--overwhelmed almost--by that Reckoning,
as it slowly and steadily unfolded itself. The wonderful emotions of
Saturday carried him through Sunday, and he made it up with the
neglected Schema by assuring it that She was his Inspiration, and that
he would work for Her a thousand times better than he could possibly
work for himself. That was certainly not tr