n affectionately.

"I know it is--I am contented with it," said Ethel; "but oh! Norman,
after all our talks about races and gifts, you have found the more
excellent way."

"Hush! Charity finds room at home, and mine are not such unmixed motives
as yours."

She made a sound of inquiry.

"I cannot tell you all. Some you shall hear. I am weary of this feverish
life of competition and controversy--"

"I thought you were so happy with your fellowship. I thought Oxford was
your delight."

"She will always be nearer my heart than any place, save this. It is not
her fault that I am not like the simple and dutiful, who are not fretted
or perplexed."

"Perplexed?" repeated Ethel.

"It is not so now," he replied. "God forbid! But where better men have
been led astray, I have been bewildered; till, Ethel, I have felt as if
the ground were slipping from beneath my feet, and I have only been able
to hide my eyes, and entreat that I might know the truth."

"You knew it!" said Ethel, looking pale, and gazing searchingly at him.

"I did, I do; but it was a time of misery when, for my presumption, I
suppose, I was allowed to doubt whether it were the truth."

Ethel recoiled, but came nearer, saying, very low, "It is past."

"Yes, thank Him who is Truth. You all saved me, though you did not know
it."

"When was this?" she asked timidly.

"The worst time was before the Long Vacation. They told me I ought
to read this book and that. Harvey Anderson used to come primed with
arguments. I could always overthrow them, but when I came to glory in
doing so, perhaps I prayed less. Anyway, they left a sting. It might be
that I doubted my own sincerity, from knowing that I had got to argue,
chiefly because I liked to be looked on as a champion."

Ethel saw the truth of what her friend had said of the morbid habit of
self-contemplation.

"I read, and I mystified myself. The better I talked, the more my own
convictions failed me; and, by the time you came up to Oxford, I knew
how you would have shrunk from him who was your pride, if you could have
seen into the secrets beneath."

Ethel took hold of his hand. "You seemed bright," she said.

"It melted like a bad dream before--before the humming-bird, and with my
father. It was weeks ere I dared to face the subject again."

"How could you? Was it safe?"

"I could not have gone on as I was. Sometimes the sight of my father, or
the mountains and lakes in Scotland, or--or--things