directions.
She saw that the question was momentous to him. She also saw how
curiously the sun sallowed him, and how many more hollows he had in his
face than most people. She had a pathetic impression of the figure he
made in his coarse gown and shoes. "God's wayfarer," she murmured. There
was pity in her mind, infinite pity. Her thought had no other tinge. It
was a curiously simple feeling, and seemed to bring her an inconsistent
lightness of heart.

"Come too," she said aloud, "come and be a Clarke Brother where the
climatic conditions suit you better. The world wants Clarke Brothers
everywhere."

He looked at her and tried to smile, but his lips quivered. He opened
them in an effort to speak, gave it up, and turned away silently,
lifting his hat. Hilda watched him for an instant as he went. His figure
took strange proportions through the tears that sprang to her eyes,
and she marvelled at the gaiety with which she had touched, had almost
revealed, her heart's desire.

CHAPTER XXIX

"I knew it would happen in the end," Hilda said, "and it has happened.
The Archdeacon has asked me to tea."

She was speaking to Alicia Livingstone in the dormitory, changing at
the same time for a "turn" at the hospital. It was six o'clock in the
afternoon. Alicia's landau stood at the door of the Baker Institution.
She had come to find that Miss Howe was just going on duty and could not
be taken for a drive.

"When?" asked Alicia, staring out of the window at the crows in a
tamarind tree.

"Last Saturday. He said he had promised some friends of his the pleasure
of meeting me. They had besieged him, he said, and they were his best
friends, on all his committees."

"Only ladies?" The crows, with a shriek of defiance at nothing in
particular, having flown away, Miss Livingstone transferred her
attention.

"Bless me, yes. What Archdeacon has dear men friends! And lesquelles
pense-tu, mon Dieu!"

"Lesquelles?"

"Mrs. Jack Forrester, Mrs. Fitz--what you may call him up on the
frontier, the Brigadier gentleman--Lady Dolly!"

"You were well chaperoned."

"And--my dear--he didn't ask a single Sister!" Hilda turned upon her a
face which appeared still to glow with the stimulus of the archidiaconal
function. "And--it was wicked considering the occasion--I dropped the
character. I let myself out!"

"You didn't shock the Archdeacon?"

"Not in the least. But, my dear love, did you ever permit yourself the
reflection that