hey came to the village, they
became very ceremonious. At the Vicarage gate they shook hands, and
Howard raised his hat. "You will have to make up for this dignified
parting some time," said Howard. "Sleep well, my darling child! If you
ever wake, you will know that I am thinking of you; not far apart!
Good-night, my sweet one, my only darling."

Maud put one hand on his shoulder, but did not speak--and then slipped
in light-footed through the gate. Howard walked back to the Manor,
through the charmed dusk and the fragrance of hidden flowers, full of
an almost intolerable happiness, that was akin to pain. The evening
star hung in liquid, trembling light above the dark down, the sky
fading to a delicious green, the breeze rustled in the heavy-leaved
sycamores, and the lights were lit in the cottage windows. Did every
home, every hearth, he wondered, mean THAT? Was THAT present in dim and
dumb lives, the spirit of love, the inner force of the world? Yes, it
was so! That was the secret hidden in the Heart of God.

XXII

LOVE AND CERTAINTY

The weeks that followed were a time for Howard of very singular
happiness--happiness of a quality of which he had not thought himself
capable, and in the very existence of which he was often hardly able to
believe. He had never known what intimate affection was before; and it
was strange to him, when he had always been able to advance so swiftly
in his relations with others to a point of frankness and even
brotherliness, to discover that there was a whole world of emotion
beyond that. He was really deeply reserved and reticent; but he
admitted even comparative strangers so easily and courteously to his
house of life, that few suspected the existence of a secret chamber of
thought, with an entrance contrived behind the pictured arras, which
was the real fortress of his inner existence, and where he sate
oftenest to contemplate the world. That chamber of thought was a place
of few beliefs and fewer certainties; if he adopted, as he was
accustomed to do, conventional language and conventional ideas, it was
only to feel himself in touch with his fellows; for Howard's mind was
really a place of suspense and doubt; his scepticism went down to the
very roots of life; his imagination was rich and varied, but he did not
trust his hopes or even his fears; all that he was certain of was just
the actual passage of his thought and his emotion; he formed no views
about the future, and he