bursting buds, like so many green lights turned low. The beds
and borders were gay with crocuses and hyacinths, and the open spaces
were beginning to look green again. Audrey cared little for these
things, but to-day she was somehow aware of them; she felt in her the
new life of the spring, as she had felt it a year ago. She walked
rapidly from sheer excitement, till she had tired herself out; then she
sat down on one of the benches, overlooking the waste ground where the
children played. Except for a bright fringe under the iron railings, it
was still untouched by spring, and the sallow grass had long been
trodden into the dust. Some ragged little cricketers were shouting not
far off, and near her, by the railings, was a family group--a young
father and mother, with their children, from two years old and upwards,
crawling around them. They were enjoying a picnic tea in the sunshine,
with the voluptuous carelessness of outward show that marks the children
of the people. Audrey looked at it all with a faint disgust, but she was
too tired to move on to a more cheerful spot. She turned her back on the
picnic party, and began to think about Wyndham. He had been away ten
days; he said he was going for a fortnight; in another week at the
longest she would see him. She was roused by a tug at her petticoats.
The two-year-old, attracted like some wild animal by her stillness, had
scrambled through the railings, and was trying to pull its fat little
body up by one hand on to the bench beside her. Its other hand grasped
firmly a sheaf of fresh grass. It was clean and pretty, and something in
its baby face sent a pang to Audrey's heart. She loosened its chubby
fingers, hoping it would toddle away; but it gave a wilful chuckle, and
stood still, staring at her, reproaching, accusing, in the unconscious
cruelty of its innocence. And yet surely the Divine Charity had chosen
the tenderest and most delicate means of stirring into life her unborn
conscience. Moved by who knows what better impulse, she stooped suddenly
down and touched its face with the tips of her gloved fingers. Startled
at the strange caress, like some animal stroked too lightly, the little
thing made its face swell, and asserted its humanity by a howl. Then it
fled from her with a passionate waddle, scattering blades of grass
behind it as it went.

Even so do we chase away from us the ministers of grace.

She leaned back, overcome by a sort of moral exhaustion. Her se