"Oh no, no, not hard." But he was wondering for the first time what this wife of his was made of.

If

"Yes, hard. I don't want you to think me hard. you could understand why I cannot meet that manwhat it means to me-the effect it has on me." "What," he said, "is the precise effect?" He was really interested. He had always been curious to know how different men affected different women, and to get his knowledge at first hand.

"It's the effect," said she, "of being brought into contact with something terribly painful and repulsive, the effect of intense suffering-of unbearable disgust."

He listened with his thoughtful, interested air. “I know. The effect that your friend Canon Wharton sometimes has on me."

"I see no resemblance between Canon Wharton and your friend Mr. Gorst."

"And I see no resemblance between my friend Mr. Gorst and Canon Wharton."

She was silent, gathering all her strength to deliver her spirit's last appeal.

"Dear," said she (for she wished to be very gentle with him, since he had thought her hard), "dear, I wonder if you ever realise what the thing we call-purity is?"

He blushed violently.

"I only know it's one of those things one doesn't speak about."

"I must speak," said she.

"You needn't," he said curtly; "I understand all right." "If you did you wouldn't ask me. All the same, Walter" She lifted to him the set face of a saint surrendered to the torture-"If you compel me"

"Compel you?

I can't compel you.

Especially if

you're going to look like that.”

"It's no use," he said to Edith. "First she talks of

dining with the Gardners—"

"She will, too"

"No. She'll stay-if I compel her."

"Oh, I see.

That's worse. She'd let him see it. He

wouldn't enjoy his Christmas if he came."

"No, poor fellow, I really don't think he would. She's awfully funny about him."

"You still think her funny?"

"My dear-it's the only way to take her. I'm sorry, but I can't let Charlie spoil her Christmas; nor," he added, "Anne his."

So Mr. Gorst did not come to Prior Street that Christmas. There came instead of him whole sheaves and stacks of flowers, Christmas roses and white lilies, the sacred flowers which, at that festival, the poor prodigal brought as his tribute to his adored and beloved lady.

He spent the greater part of his Christmas Day in the society of Mr. Dick Ransome, and the greater part of his Christmas Night in the society of pretty Maggie Forrest, the new girl in Evans's shop who had sold him the Christmas roses and the lilies. "For," said he, "if I can't go and see Edie, I'll go and see Maggie." And he enjoyed seeing Maggie as much as it was possible to enjoy anything that was not seeing Edie.

And Edie lay among her Christmas roses and her lilies, and smiled, with a high courage, at Nanna, at Majendie, and Anne; and did her best to make everybody believe that she was having a very happy Christmas. But at night, when it was all over, Majendie held a tremulous and tearful Edie in his arms.

"Don't think me a brute, darling," he said. "I would have insisted, only if he'd come to-day he'd have found out he wasn't wanted."

"I know; and he never would have come again."

He didn't come. For Canon Wharton enlightened Mrs. Hannay, and Mrs. Hannay enlightened Mr. Hannay, and Mr. Hannay enlightened Mr. Gorst.

"Of course," said the prodigal, "if she walks out of the house when I walk into it, I can't very well go."

"Well, not at present, perhaps, for the sake of peace," said Hannay. "It strikes me poor old Majendie's in a pretty tight place with that wife of his."

So, for the sake of peace, Mr. Gorst kept away from Prior Street and his Edie, and spent a great deal of time in Evans's shop, cultivating the attention of Miss Forrest.

And, for the sake of peace, Majendie kept silence, and his sister concealed her trembling and her tears.

CHAPTER XVII

LOOM fell on the house in Prior Street in the weeks

GL

that followed Christmas. The very servants went heavily in the shadow of it.

Anne began to have her bad headaches again. Deep lines of worry showed on Majendie's face. And on her couch by the window, looking on the blackened winter garden, Edith fought day after day a losing battle with her spine.

The slow disease that held her captive there seemed to be quickening its pace. In January there came a whole procession of bad nights, without, as she pathetically said, "anything to show for it," for her hands could make nothing now. She lay flatter than ever; each day she seemed to sink deeper into her couch.

Anne, between her headaches, deyoted herself to her sister with a kind of passion. Her keenest experience of passion came to her through the emotion wakened in her by the sight of Edith's suffering. She told herself that her love for Edith satisfied her heart completely; that she fulfilled herself in it as she never could have fulfilled herself in any other way. Nothing could degrade or spoil the spiritual beauty of this relation. It served as a standard by which she could better judge her relation to her husband. "I love her more than I ever loved him," she thought. "I cannot help it. If it had been possible to love him as I love her-but I have lowered myself by loving him. I will raise myself by loving her." She was never tired of being with Edith, sewing si

lently by her fireside, or reading aloud to her (for Edith's hands were too tremulous now to hold a book), or sitting close up against her couch, nursing her hands in hers, as if she would have given them her own strength. And thus her ardour spent and renewed itself, and left her colder than ever to her husband.

At times she mourned, obscurely, the destruction of the new soul that had been given her last year, on her birthday, when she had been born again to her sweet human destiny. At times she had glimpses of the perfect thing it might have been. There was no logical sequence in the events that had destroyed it, the return of Lady Cayley and the spectacle of her triumph. She could not say that her husband had deteriorated in consequence. The change was in herself, and not in him. He was what he always had been; only she seemed to see him more completely now. At times, when the high spiritual life died down in sleep, she slipped from her trouble, and turned, with her arms stretched towards him, where he lay. In her dreams he came to her with the low cry she had heard in the wood at Westleydale. And in her dreams she was tender; but her waking thoughts were sad and hard.

Majendie found it more than ever difficult to realise that she had ever shown him kindness, that her arms had opened to him and her pulses beaten with his own. Her face and her body were changing with this change. of soul. Her health suffered. Her eyes became dull, her skin dry; her small, reticent mouth had taken on the tragic droop; she was growing austerely thin. She had abandoned the pleasing and worldly fashion of her dress, and arrayed herself now in straight-cut, sombre garments, very serviceable in the sick-room, but mournfully