fight in their courses for those lovers who are
also poets fought for Ferrier.

The day after they had quarrelled and he had written her his piteous
letter of remorse, Gerald Ferrier fell ill. But he was not too ill to
write. And after he had been ill four days, and when Agnes was feeling
very, very miserable, he wrote and told her of a wonderful vision which
had been vouchsafed to him.

In this vision Ferrier had seen Agnes knocking at the narrow front door
of the lonely flat where he lived solitary; and through the door had
slipped in his angelic visitant, by her mere presence bringing him
peace, health, and the happiness he was schooling himself to believe
must never come to him through her.

The post which brought her the letter in which Ferrier told his vision
brought also to Agnes Barlow a little registered parcel containing a
pearl-and-diamond pendant from Frank.

For a few moments the two lay on her knee. Then she took up the jewel
and looked at it curiously. Was it with such a thing as this that her
husband thought to purchase her forgiveness?

If Ferrier's letter had never been written, if Frank's gift had never
been despatched, it may be doubted whether Agnes would have done what we
now find her doing--hastening, that is, on her way to make Ferrier's
dream come true.

* * * * *

At last she reached the little suburban station of Summerfield.

One of her father's many kindnesses to her each year was the gift of a
season ticket to town; but to-day some queer instinct made her buy a
ticket at the booking-office instead.

The booking-clerk peered out at her, surprised; then made up his mind
that pretty Mrs. Barlow--she wore to-day a curiously thick veil--had a
friend with her. But his long, ruminating stare made her shrink and
flush. Was it possible that what she was about to do was written on her
face?

She was glad indeed when the train steamed into the station. She got
into an empty carriage, for the rush that goes on each evening
Londonward from the suburbs had not yet begun.

And then, to her surprise, she found that it was the thought of her
husband, not of the man to whom she was going to give herself, that
filled her sad, embittered heart.

Old memories--memories connected with Frank, his love for her, her love
for him--became insistent. She lived again, while tears forced
themselves into her closed eyes, through the culminating moment of her
marriage day, th