away there was a
single tear upon it.

'I had rather get the wrench over,' she said, 'and have done with it.
It will seem quite natural that I should go home and join my family in
London, and I shall explain nothing beyond that.' She rose and opened
the door and called her daughter by name. 'It is all over,' she said,
when Madge returned. 'I have but one hope, and that is that you may
never live to blame your mother's weakness. I should have done for
your father what you are doing if there had been any need for it, and I
should have done it in the face of all the world. And now I want to
be alone a little to--to'--her voice faltered suddenly, and her eyes
brimmed with tears--'to say my prayers, and, if I have done wrong, to
beg God's forgiveness. Go out into the garden, children, and leave me
here.'

So into the wide garden, cooled with the shade of English
fruit-trees--peach and pear and plum and apple--the two wandered, far
too disturbed by happiness as yet to be content But in Paul's heart
a new well of tenderness began to open--a spring of tenderness and
yearning which seemed to overflow every cranny of his nature. To pay for
this, to scrape up from the bankrupt remnants of life something by way
of thanks-offering, to devote himself heart and soul and mind and body
to that one aim, to discipline himself to a lofty and unresting ambition
for that one aim's sake, to win a fortune, to win a solid renown in
which his love should shine reflected and sit enshrined--all this was
with him in one confused conglomerate of gratitude and hope and love.

'No woman,' he said, 'ever showed a greater trust I shall never be
worthy of it, but it shall be the one endless study of my life to be
less unworthy.'

He took her, unresisting, to his arms. Their lips met for the first
time, and two souls seemed to tremble into one.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Paul knew that Madge and he were to have a travelling companion on the
voyage, and that the companion was to be Madge's sister, but he did not
meet her until he stepped aboard the steamer bound for Tilbury Docks
from Adelaide. Her name was Phyllis, but for some reason or no reason
her own small world had elected to call her Bill, and to that name only
she gave willing answer, unless she were flattered from the memory of
short frocks by being addressed as Miss Hampton. She was a child of
astonishing beauty, with eyes like stars and the face of a young angel,
and people who did not kno