correct. "I understand power."

"Beauty always does," was the young minister's reply.

"Besides," he presently resumed, "we are glad to have been
Nonconformists--once. A Puritan training is a good thing--to look back
upon. You are all the more thorough in your pleasures, the truer
humanist, for something of it still lurking in your blood."

"Yes, of course you're right. I don't like the word 'pagan'; but for
want of a better, we might say that the best pagans have come of Puritan
stock. Besides, it is half the romance of life to have something to
escape from, isn't it?"

"And someone to escape with the other half," responded Theophil, nimble
as a real town wit.

O it was a wonderful night. Let us build five tabernacles!

"Good-night, dear Jenny."

"Good-night, dear wonderful Isabel."

So at last the two girls bade each other good-night at the door of
Jenny's bedroom, where Isabel was to sleep.

Masterful youth! So wild to take, so eager to surrender, the Christian
name. Strange, what passion sometimes can be put into a
_Christian_ name!

When the door was shut on Isabel, she made no haste to undress. Indeed,
she sat down on the side of the bed as though she had been waiting to
sit down for ever so long, sat very still as in a dream, and an hour
went by and she was still sitting and gazing in front of her.

And downstairs in the study, where the lamps were still burning,
Theophil was sitting by the fire in just the same curiously wrought and
withdrawn way, with just the same eyes.

Isabel's room was over his. Presently she heard him moving about; then
she heard him coming upstairs. For a moment the air seemed to grow warm,
as she heard him softly pass her room; then she heard him close
his door.

She shook her reverie from her, as though it had been a black veil full
of stars, and began to undress. Presently her eyes fell on a little pile
of handkerchiefs, with needle and cotton, and little letters printed on
dainty tapes, beside it. Jenny had forgotten to put away her sewing.

Isabel took up one of the handkerchiefs, to which the needle and thread
were still attached, and read "Jenny Lond ..." (Don't you know that's
bad luck, Jenny?)

"So soon as that! Is it so soon as that?" she sighed.

Happy Jenny!

CHAPTER XIII

IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE

Isabel was leaving very early next morning for London, so good-byes must
be brief. Jenny and Theophil saw her off at the station, but be