look for it. It was just--there!"

"It's always there; only, as in the case of the two disciples on the
Emmaus road, our eyes are holden so that we don't see it."

"I should have seen it easily enough; but if you hadn't told me, I
shouldn't have known what it was. I didn't suppose that we got that kind
of guidance nowadays."

"The light is always shining in darkness, dearie; only the darkness
comprehendeth it not. That's all there is to it."

He sat at his desk, overlooking the embankment and the curves of the
Charles. It was a wide desk littered with papers, but with space, too,
for some of the favorite small possessions that served him as
paper-weights--a Chinese dragon in blue-green enamel, a quaintly
decorated cow in polychrome Delft, a dancing satyr in biscuit de Sevres.
On the side remote from where he sat was a life-size bust of Christ in
fifteenth-century Italian terra-cotta--the face noble, dignified,
strongly sympathetic--once painted, but now worn to its natural tint,
except where gleams of scarlet or azure showed in the folds of the
vesture. While the old man talked, and chiefly while he listened, the
fingers of his large, delicately articulated hand stroked mechanically
the surfaces of a grotesque Chinese figure carved in apple-green jade.
It was some minutes before Olivia made any response to his last words.
"Things _are_ very dark to me," she confessed, "and yet this light seems
to me absolutely positive. I've had to make a decision that would be too
frightful if something didn't seem to be leading me into the Street
called Straight, as papa says. Did you know Mr. Davenant had offered to
pay our debts?"

He shook his head.

"Of course I couldn't let him do it."

"Couldn't you?"

"Do you think I could?"

"Not if you think differently. You're the only judge."

"But if I don't, you know, papa will have to go--" She hesitated. "You
know what would happen, don't you?"

"I suppose I do."

"And I could prevent it, you see, if I let papa take this money. I have
to assume the responsibility of its refusal. It puts me in a position
that I'm beginning to feel--well, rather terrible."

"Does it?"

"You don't seem very much interested, Cousin Rodney. I hoped you'd give
me some advice."

"Oh, I never give advice. Besides, if you've got into the Street called
Straight, I don't see why you need advice from any one."

"I do. The Street called Straight is all very well, but--"

"Then you're not so s