s resolution was
swiftly overturned, and showed him a different face.

"I won't tell you anything about what I feel and what I want to-night
except this--I find that you are influencing all my thoughts and all my
days in what is to me a very new and a very happy way. You hear as much
as that often, and from many people, don't you? So there is nothing in
it that need startle you or make you uncomfortable." He paused, and she
nodded in a visible effort to follow him.

"So I am here to-night to ask you to let me do something for you just
for my own pleasure--there must be some way of helping you, and being
your friend----"

"As Mr. Harris is," she interrupted. "I do influence Mr. Harris for
good, I know. He says so."

"Influence me," he begged, "in any way you like."

"I will pray for you," she said. "I promise that."

"And you will let me see you sometimes?" he asked, conceding the point.

"If I thought it would do you any good"--she looked at him doubtfully,
clasping and unclasping her hands--"I will see; I will ask for guidance.
Perhaps it is one of His own appointed ways. If you have no objection, I
will give you this little book, _Almost Persuaded_. I am sure you are
almost persuaded. Above all, I hope, you will go on coming to the
meetings."

And in the course of the next two or three moments Lindsay found
himself, somewhat to his astonishment, again in the night of the
staircase, dismissed exactly as Mr. Harris had been, by the agency of a
printed volume. Only in his case, a figure of much angelic beauty stood
at the top, holding a patent kerosene lamp high to illumine his way. He
refrained from looking back lest she should see something too human in
his face and vanish, leaving him in darkness which would be indeed
impenetrable.

CHAPTER VII.

There was a panic in Dhurrumtolla; a "ticca-gharry"--the shabby oblong
box on wheels, dignified in municipal regulations as a hackney
carriage--was running away. Coolie mothers dragged naked children up on
the pavement with angry screams; drivers of ox-carts dug their lean
beasts in the side and turned out of the way almost at a trot; only the
tramcar held on its course in conscious invincibility. A pariah tore
along beside the vehicle barking; crows flew up from the dung in the
road by half-dozens, protesting shrilly; a pedlar of blue bead necklaces
just escaped being knocked down. Little groups of baboos[4] and
bunnias[5] stood looking after, laughing a