he temples, thus manifesting her ordered
sense of the harmonious. She confessed, too, that she was
frightened--jane who, for any other reason than the mere saving of her
own skin, would have stolidly faced Hyrcanean tigers--at the stern eyes
beneath the contracted brows. He was a different Paul altogether. And
here we have the divergence between the masculine and the feminine
point of view. Jane saw a new avatar; Barney Bill the ragged urchin of
the Bludston brick-fields. She shifted her glance to the old man. He,
standing crookedly, cocked his head and nodded.

"He knows all about it."

"Yes, yes," said Paul. "How is my father?"

Jane threw out her hands in the Englishwoman's insignificant gesture.
"He's unconscious--has been for hours--the nurse is up with him--the
end may come any moment. I hid it from you till the last for your own
sake. Would you care to go upstairs?"

She moved to the door. Paul threw off his overcoat and, followed by
Barney Bill, accompanied her. On the landing they were met by the nurse.

"It is all over," she said.

"I will go in for a moment," said Paul. "I should like to be alone."

In a room hung like the rest of the house with gaudy pictures he stood
for a short while looking at the marble face of the strange-souled,
passionate being that had been his father. The lids had closed for ever
over the burning, sorrowful eyes; the mobile lips were for ever mute.
In his close sympathy with the man Paul knew what had struck him down.
It was not the blow of the nameless enemy, but the stunning realization
that he was not, after all, the irresistible nominee of the Almighty.
His great faith had not suffered; for the rigid face was serene, as
though he had accepted this final chastisement and purification before
entrance into the Eternal Kingdom; but his high pride, the mainspring
of his fanatical life, had been broken and the workings of the physical
organism had been arrested. In those few moments of intense feeling, in
the presence of death, it was given to Paul to tread across the
threshold of the mystery of his birth. Here lay stiff and cold no base
clay such as that of which Polly Kegworthy had been formed. It had been
the tenement of a spirit beautiful and swift. No matter to what things
he himself had been born--he had put that foolishness behind him--at
all events his dream bad come partly true. His father had been one of
the great ones, one of the conquerors, one of the high princes o