y, when she and Eglington had talked of Hamley, he should not
have said his own father had once been a Quaker; yet she had dwelt so
upon the fact that she herself had Quaker blood, and he had laughed
so much over it, with the amusement of the superior person, that his
silence on this one point struck her now with a sense of confusion.

"You are going to Hamley--we shall meet there?" she continued.

"To-day I should have gone, but I have business at the Foreign Office
to-morrow. One needs time to learn that all 'private interests and
partial affections' must be sacrificed to public duty."

"But you are going soon? You will be there on Sunday?"

"I shall be there to-morrow night, and Sunday, and for one long week at
least. Hamley is the centre of the world, the axle of the universe--you
shall see. You doubt it?" he added, with a whimsical smile.

"I shall dispute most of what you say, and all that you think, if you do
not continue to use the Quaker 'thee' and 'thou'--ungrammatical as you
are so often."

"Thee is now the only person in London, or in England, with whom I use
'thee' and 'thou.' I am no longer my own master, I am a public servant,
and so I must follow custom."

"It is destructive of personality. The 'thee' and 'thou' belong to you.
I wonder if the people of Hamley will say 'thee' and 'thou' to me. I
hope, I do hope they will."

"Thee may be sure they will. They are no respecters of persons there.
They called your husband's father Robert--his name was Robert. Friend
Robert they called him, and afterwards they called him Robert Denton
till he died."

"Will they call me Hylda?" she asked, with a smile. "More like they will
call thee Friend Hylda; it sounds simple and strong," he replied.

"As they call Claridge Pasha Friend David," she answered, with a smile.
"David is a good name for a strong man."

"That David threw a stone from a sling and smote a giant in the
forehead. The stone from this David's sling falls into the ocean and is
lost beneath the surface."

His voice had taken on a somewhat sombre tone, his eyes looked away
into the distance; yet he smiled too, and a hand upon his knee suddenly
closed in sympathy with an inward determination.

A light of understanding came into her face. They had been keeping
things upon the surface, and, while it lasted, he seemed a lesser man
than she had thought him these past years. But now--now there was the
old unschooled simplicity, the unique and lonel