ould not unravel the secret.

He sat there long in the sun, his eyes fixed upon the pool, in a
blissful content that was beyond thought. Then he slowly retraced his
steps, full of an intense inner happiness.

He found his aunt in the garden, sitting out in the sun. He bent down
to kiss her, and she detained his hand for a moment. "So you are at
home?" she said, "and happy?--that is what I had wished and hoped. You
have been to the pool--yes, that is a lovely spot. It was that, I
think, which made your uncle buy the place; he had a great love of
water--and in my unhappy days here, when I had lost him, I used often
to go there and wish things were otherwise. But that is all over now!"

After luncheon, Miss Merry excused herself and said she was going to
the village to see a farm-labourer's wife, who had lost a child and was
in great distress. "Poor soul!" said Mrs. Graves. "Give her my love,
and ask her to come and see me as soon as she can." Presently as they
sat together, Howard smoking, she asked him something about his work.
"Will you tell me what you are doing?" she said. "I daresay I should
not understand, but I like to know what people are thinking
about--don't use technical terms, but just explain your idea!"

Howard was just in the frame of mind, trying to revive an old train of
thought, in which it is a great help to make a statement of the range
of a subject; he said so, and began to explain very simply what was in
his mind, the essential unity of all religion, and his attempt to
disentangle the central motive from outlying schemes and dogmas. Mrs.
Graves heard him attentively, every now and then asking a question,
which showed that she was following the drift of his thought.

"Ah, that's very interesting and beautiful," she said at last. "May I
say that it is the one thing that attracts me, though I have never
followed it philosophically. Now," she went on, "I am going to reduce
it all to practical terms, and I don't want to beat about the
bush--there's no need for that! I want to ask you a plain question.
Have you any religion or faith of your own?"

"Ah," said Howard, "who can say? I am a conformist, certainly, because
I recognise in religion a fine sobering, civilising force at work, and
if one must choose one's side, I want to be on that side and not on the
other. But religion seems to me in its essence a very artistic thing, a
perception of effects which are hidden from many hearts and minds. When
a