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to the hospital at once. There he asked for Glory, and they went downstairs together to that still chamber underground which has always its cold and silent occupant. It is only a short tenancy that anybody can have there, so the old woman had to be buried the same morning. The parish was to bury her, and the van was at the door.

      He was standing with Glory in the hall, and his heart had softened to her.

      “Glory,” he said, “you shouldn't have gone out yesterday without telling me, the dangers of London are so great.”

      “What dangers?” she asked.

      “Well, to a young girl, a beautiful girl——”

      Glory peered up under her long eyelashes.

      “I mean the dangers from—I'm ashamed in my soul to say it—the dangers from men.”

      She shot up a quick glance into his face and said in a moment, “You saw us, didn't you?”

      “Yes, I saw you, and I didn't like your choice of company.”

      She dropped her head demurely and said, “The man?”

      John hesitated. “I was speaking of the girl. I don't like the freedom with which she carries herself in this house. Among these good and devoted women is there no one but this—this——?”

      Glory's lower lip began to show its inner side. “She's bright and lively, that's all I care.”

      “But it's not all I care, Glory, and if such men as that are her friends outside——”

      Glory's head went up. “What is it to me who are her friends outside?”

      “Everything, if you allow yourself to meet them again.”

      “Well,” doggedly, “I am going to meet them again. I'm going to the Nurses' Ball on Tuesday.”

      John answered with deliberation, “Not in that girl's company.”

      “Why not?”

      “I say not in that girl's company.”

      There was a short pause, and then Glory said with a quivering mouth: “You are vexing me, and you will end by making me cry. Don't you see you are degrading me too? I am not used to being degraded. You see me with a weak silly creature who hasn't an idea in her head and can do nothing but giggle and laugh and make eyes at men, and you think I'm going to be led away by her. Do you suppose a girl can't take care of herself?”

      “As you will, then,” said John, with a fling of his hand, going off down the steps.

      “Mr. Storm—Mr. Storm—Jo—Joh——”

      But he was out on the pavement and getting into the workhouse van.

      “Ah!” said a mincing voice beside her. “How jolly it is when anybody is suffering for your sake!” It was Polly Love, and again her eyelids were half covering her eyes.

      “I'm sure I don't know what you mean,” said Glory. Her own eyes were swimming in big tear-drops.

      “Don't you? What a funny girl you are! But your education has been neglected, my dear.”

      It was a combination van and hearse with the coffin under the driver's box, and John Storm (as the only discoverable mourner) with the undertaker on the seat inside.

      “Will ye be willin' ter tyke the service at the cimitery, sir?” said the undertaker, and John answered that he would.

      The grave was on the paupers' side, and when the undertaker, with his man, had lowered the coffin to its place, he said, “They've gimme abart three more funerals this morning, so I'll leave ye now, sir, to finish 'er off.”

      At the next moment John Storm in his surplice was alone with the dead, and had opened his book to read the burial service which no other human ear was to hear.

      He read “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” and then the bitter loneliness of the pauper's doom came down on his soul and silenced him.

      But his imprisoned passion had to find a vent, and that night he wrote to the Prime Minister: “I begin to understand what you meant when you said I was in the wrong place. Oh, this London, with its society, its worldly clergy, its art, its literature, its luxury, its idle life, all built on the toil of the country and compounded of the sweat of the nameless poor! Oh, this 'Circe of cities,' drawing good people to it, decoying them, seducing them, and then turning them into swine! It seems impossible to live in the world and to be spiritually-minded. When I try to do so I am torn in two.”

X.

       Table of Contents

      On the following Tuesday evening two young men were dining in their chambers in St. James's Street. One of them was Lord Robert Ure; the other was his friend and housemate, Horatio Drake. Drake was younger than Lord Robert by some seven or eight years, and also beyond comparison more attractive. His face was manly and handsome, its expression was open and breezy; he was broad-shouldered and splendidly built, and he had the fair hair and blue eyes of a boy.

      Their room was a large one, and it was full of beautiful and valuable things, but the furniture was huddled about in disorder. A large chamber-organ, a grand piano, a mandolin, and two violins, pictures on the floor as well as on the walls, many photographs scattered about everywhere, and the mirror over the mantelpiece fringed with invitation-cards, which were stuck between the glass and the frame.

      Their man had brought in the coffee and cigarettes. Lord Robert was speaking in his weary drawl, which had the worn-out tone of a man who had made a long journey and was very sleepy.

      “Come, dear boy, make up your mind, and let us be off.”

      “But I'm tired to death of these fashionable routs.”

      “So am I.”

      “They're so unnatural—so unnecessary.”

      “My dear fellow, of course they're unnatural—of course they're unnecessary; but what would you have?”

      “Anything human and natural,” said Drake. “I don't care a ha'p'orth about the morality of these things—not I—but I am dead sick of their stupidity.”

      Lord Robert made languid puffs of his cigarette, and said, in a tearful drawl: “My dear Drake, of course it is exactly as you say. Who doesn't know it is so? It has always been so and always will be. But what refuge is there for the poor leisured people but these diversions which you despise? And as for the poor titled classes—well, they manage to make their play their business sometimes, don't you know. Confess that they do sometimes, now, eh?”

      Lord Robert was laughing with an awkward constraint, but Drake looked frankly into his face and said:

      “How's that matter going on, Robert?”

      “Fairly, I think, though the girl is not very hot on it. The thing came off last week, and when it was over I felt as if I had proposed to the girl and been accepted by the mother, don't you know. I believe this rout to-night is expressly in honour of the event, so I mustn't run away from my bargain.”

      He lay back, sent funnels of smoke to the ceiling, and then said, with a laugh like a gurgle: “I'm not likely to, though. That eternal dun was here again to-day. I had to tell him that the marriage would come off in a year certain. That was the only understanding on which he would agree to wait for his money. Bad? Of course it's bad; but what would you have, dear boy?”

      The men smoked in silence for a moment, and then Lord Robert said again: “Come, old fellow, for friendship's sake, if nothing else. She's a decent little woman, and dead bent on having you at her house to-night. And if you're badly bored we'll not stay long. We'll come

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