nute full size in the serene hands of his
Rosamund.

"You too!" he said, looking down at the filmy white. "How good you are
to us, Beattie!"

He sat down.

"What's this in your lap?"

The filmy white had been lifted in the process of sewing, and a little
exquisitely bound white book was disclosed beneath it.

"May I look?"

"Yes, do."

Dion took the book up, and read the title, "The Kasidah of Haji Abdu
El-Yezdi."

"I never heard of this. Where did you get it?"

"Guy Daventry left it here by mistake yesterday. I must give it to him
to-night."

Dion opened the book, and saw on the title page: "Cynthia Clarke,
Constantinople, October 1896," written in a curiously powerful, very
upright caligraphy.

"It doesn't belong to Guy."

"No; it was lent to him by his client, Mrs. Clarke."

Dion turned some of the leaves of the book, began to read and was
immediately absorbed.

"By Jove, it's wonderful, it's simply splendid!" he said in a moment.
"Just listen to this:

"True to thy nature, to thyself,
Fame and disfame nor hope, nor fear;
Enough to thee the still small voice
Aye thundering in thine inner ear.

From self-approval seek applause:
What ken not men thou kennest thou!
Spurn every idol others raise:
Before thine own ideal bow."

He met the dark eyes of Beatrice.

"You care for that?"

"Yes, very much," she answered, in her soft and delicate voice.

"Beattie, I believe you live by that," he said, almost bruskly.

Suddenly he felt aware of a peculiar sort of strength in her, in her
softness, a strength not at all as of iron, mysterious and tenacious.

"Dear old Beattie!" he said.

Moisture had sprung into his eyes.

"How lonely our lives are," he continued, looking at her now with a sort
of deep curiosity. "The lives of all of us. I don't care who it is, man,
woman, child, he or she, every one's lonely. And yet----"

A doubt had surely struck him. He sat very still for a minute.

"When I think of Rosamund I can't think of her as lonely."

"Can't you?"

"No. Somehow it seems as if she always had a companion with her."

He turned a few more pages of Mrs. Clarke's book, glancing here and
there.

"Rosamund would hate this book," he said presently. "It seems thoroughly
anti-Christian. But it's very wonderful."

He put the book down.

"Dear Beattie! Guy cares very much for you."

"Yes, I know," said Beatrice, with a great simpli