ve found her a congenial companion. I suppose that
you talked a good deal of these things?"

"Sometimes we did."

"And discovered that your views were curiously alike? For when one
mystic meets another mystic, and the other mystic has beautiful eyes and
sings divinely, the spiritual marriage will follow almost as a matter
of course. What else is to be expected? But I am glad that you were
faithful to your principles, both of you, and clung fast to the ethereal
side of things."

Morris writhed beneath this satire, but finding no convenient answer to
it, made none.

"Do you remember, my dear?" went on Mary, "the conversation we had one
day in your workshop before we were engaged--that's years ago, isn't
it--about star-gazing considered as a fine art?"

"I remember something," he said.

"That I told you, for instance, that it might be better if you paid a
little more attention to matters physical, lest otherwise you should go
on praying for vision till you could see, and for power until you could
create?"

Morris nodded.

"Well, and I think I said--didn't I? that if you insisted upon following
these spiritual exercises, the result might be that they would return
upon you in some concrete shape, and take possession of you, and lead
you into company and surroundings which most of us think it wholesome to
avoid."

"Yes, you said something like that."

"It wasn't a bad bit of prophecy, was it?" went on Mary, rubbing her
chin reflectively, "and you see his Satanic Majesty knew very well
how to bring about its fulfilment. Mystical, lovely, and a wonderful
mistress of music, which you adore; really, one would think that the
bait must have been specially selected."

Crushed though he was, Morris's temper began to rise beneath the lash
of Mary's sarcasm. He knew, however, that it was her method of showing
jealousy and displeasure, both of them perfectly natural, and did his
best to restrain himself.

"I do not quite understand you," he said. "Also, you are unjust to her."

"Not at all. I daresay that in herself she was what you think her, a
perfect angel; indeed, the descriptions that I have heard from your
father and yourself leave no doubt of it in my mind. But even angels
have been put to bad purposes; perhaps their innocence makes it possible
to take advantage of them----"

He opened his lips to speak, but she held up her hand and went on:

"You mustn't think me unsympathetic because I put things as they app