he soft, even
tread of feet upon the thick carpet. Then she said, almost sharply:--

"Dr. Knott is with Richard."

"Ah! I understand," Julius murmured.

But Lady Calmady took up his words with a certain heat.

"No, you do not understand. You none of you understand, and that is why
I am better by myself. Mary and Roger in their happiness, dear Marie in
her saintly resignation, and you"--Katherine turned her head, smiled at
him in lovely scorn--"you, my dear Julius, of all men, what should you
know of the bitter pains of motherhood, you who are too good to be
quite human, you who regard this world merely as the antichamber of
paradise, you, whose whole affection is set on your Church--your
God--how should you understand? Between my experience and yours there
is a very wide interval. How can you know what I suffer--you who have
never loved."

Under the stress of her excitement Katherine's pace quickened. The
whisper of her skirts grew to a soft rush. Julius kept beside her. His
head was bent reverently, even as over the sacred vessels he had so
lately carried.

"I too have loved," he said at last.

Katherine stopped short, and looked at him incredulously.

"Really, Julius?" she said.

Raising his head, he looked back at her. This avowal gave him a strange
sense of completeness and mastery. So he allowed his eyes to meet
Katherine's, he allowed himself to reckon with her grace and beauty.

"Very really," he answered.

"But when?"

"Long ago--and always."

"Ah!" she said. Her expression had changed. Brooding storm no longer
sat on her brow and lips. She was touched. For the moment the weight of
her personal distress was lifted. Dickie and Dr. Knott together in that
bedchamber, experimenting with unlovely, mechanical devices for aiding
locomotion and concealing the humiliation of deformity, were almost
forgotten. To those who have once loved, love must always supremely
appeal. Julius appeared to her in a new aspect. She felt she had done
him injustice. She placed her hand on his arm with a movement of
apology and tenderness. And the man grew faint, trembled, feeling her
hand; seeing it lie white and fair on the sleeve of his black cassock.
Since childhood it was the first, the solitary caress he had received.

"Pardon me, dear Julius," she said. "I must have pained you at times,
but I did not know this. I always supposed you coldly indifferent to
those histories of the heart which mean so much to some of us;