ter gate. It contained an
amethyst necklace, an emerald pendant, and a diamond ring. In the little
grey street that led to this garden with its poplars, old fountain, and
green gate, the jewels glowed and sparkled as though all light and life
had settled there. Mrs. Pendyce, who loved colour and glowing things,
saw that they were beautiful.

That woman had taken them, used their light and colour, and then flung
them back! She wrapped them again in the paper, tied the string, and
went towards the river. She did not hurry, but walked with her eyes
steadily before her. She crossed the Embankment, and stood leaning on
the parapet with her hands over the grey water. Her thumb and fingers
unclosed; the white parcel dropped, floated a second, and then
disappeared.

Mrs. Pendyce looked round her with a start.

A young man with a beard, whose face was familiar, was raising his hat.

"So your son was in," he said. "I'm very glad. I must thank you again
for standing to me just that minute; it made all the difference. It
was the relation between the figure and the door that I wanted to get.
Good-morning!"

Mrs. Pendyce murmured "Good-morning," following him with startled eyes,
as though he had caught her in the commission of a crime. She had a
vision of those jewels, buried, poor things! in the grey slime, a prey
to gloom, and robbed for ever of their light and colour. And, as though
she had sinned, wronged the gentle essence of her nature, she hurried
away.

CHAPTER VI

GREGORY LOOKS AT THE SKY

Gregory Vigil called Mr. Paramor a pessimist it was because, like other
people, he did not know the meaning of, the term; for with a confusion
common to the minds of many persons who have been conceived in misty
moments, he thought that, to see things as they were, meant, to try and
make them worse. Gregory had his own way of seeing things that was very
dear to him--so dear that he would shut his eyes sooner than see them
any other way. And since things to him were not the same as things to
Mr. Paramor, it cannot, after all, be said that he did not see things as
they were. But dirt upon a face that he wished to be clean he could not
see--a fluid in his blue eyes dissolved that dirt while the image of the
face was passing on to their retinae. The process was unconscious, and
has been called idealism. This was why the longer he reflected the more
agonisedly certain he became that his ward was right to be faithful
to the man