shall belong sometime.
But I think that is something everyone must do for themselves." He
looked a little alarmed at the note of severity in her voice, and she
explained. "I mean that if you try to be religious for anything besides
religion, it isn't being religious;--and no one else has any right to
ask you to be."

"Oh, that's what I believe, too," he said, with comic relief. "I didn't
know but I'd been trying to convert you without knowing it." They both
laughed, and were then rather seriously silent.

He asked, after a moment, in a fresh beginning, "Have you heard from
Miss Milray since you left Florence?"

"Oh, yes, didn't I tell you? She's coming here in June."

"Well, she won't have the pleasure of seeing me, then. I'm going the
last of May."

"I thought you were going to stay a month!" she protested.

"That will be a month; and more, too."

"So it will," she owned.

"I'm glad it doesn't seem any longer-say a year--Miss Clementina!"

"Oh, not at all," she returned. "Miss Milray's brother and his wife are
coming with her. They've been in Egypt."

"I never saw them," said Hinkle. He paused, before he added, "Well,
it would seem rather crowded after they get here, I suppose," and he
laughed, while Clementina said nothing.

XXX.

Hinkle came every morning now, to smoothe out the doubts and
difficulties that had accumulated in Mrs. Lander's mind over night, and
incidentally to propose some pleasure for Clementina, who could feel
that he was pitying her in her slavery to the sick woman's whims, and
yet somehow entreating her to bear them. He saw them together in what
Mrs. Lander called her well days; but there were other days when he saw
Clementina alone, and then she brought him word from Mrs. Lander, and
reported his talk to her after he went away. On one of these she sent
him a cheerfuller message than usual, and charged the girl to explain
that she was ever so much better, but had not got up because she felt
that every minute in bed was doing her good. Clementina carried back his
regrets and congratulation, and then told Mrs. Lander that he had asked
her to go out with him to see a church, which he was sorry Mrs.
Lander could not see too. He professed to be very particular about his
churches, for he said he had noticed that they neither of them had any
great gift for sights, and he had it on his conscience to get the best
for them. He told Clementina that the church he had for them now could