of their acceptance
by all who were about him, he had the grace to perceive the utter
falsity and absurdity of the whole position. He was fortunate in his
entire ignorance of sixpenny 'science,' but if the whole library had
been projected into his brain it would not have moved him to 'deny in
the darkness that which he had known in the light.' Darnell knew by
experience that man is made a mystery for mysteries and visions, for the
realization in his consciousness of ineffable bliss, for a great joy
that transmutes the whole world, for a joy that surpasses all joys and
overcomes all sorrows. He knew this certainly, though he knew it dimly;
and he was apart from other men, preparing himself for a great
experiment.

With such thoughts as these for his secret and concealed treasure, he
was able to bear the threatened invasion of Mrs. Nixon with something
approaching indifference. He knew, indeed, that her presence between
his wife and himself would be unwelcome to him, and he was not without
grave doubts as to the woman's sanity; but after all, what did it
matter? Besides, already a faint glimmering light had risen within him
that showed the profit of self-negation, and in this matter he had
preferred his wife's will to his own. _Et non sua poma_; to his
astonishment he found a delight in denying himself his own wish, a
process that he had always regarded as thoroughly detestable. This was a
state of things which he could not in the least understand; but, again,
though a member of a most hopeless class, living in the most hopeless
surroundings that the world has ever seen, though he knew as much of the
_askesis_ as of Chinese metaphysics; again, he had the grace not to deny
the light that had begun to glimmer in his soul.

And he found a present reward in the eyes of Mary, when she welcomed him
home after his foolish labours in the cool of the evening. They sat
together, hand in hand, under the mulberry tree, at the coming of the
dusk, and as the ugly walls about them became obscure and vanished into
the formless world of shadows, they seemed to be freed from the bondage
of Shepherd's Bush, freed to wander in that undisfigured, undefiled
world that lies beyond the walls. Of this region Mary knew little or
nothing by experience, since her relations had always been of one mind
with the modern world, which has for the true country an instinctive and
most significant horror and dread. Mr. Reynolds had also shared in
another o