hands.  And immediately that goodness at which Kemper or Perry Bridewell would have laughed—­the goodness which is spirit, which both builds and destroys, which knows no law except the divine law of its own being; in which there is neither the whitened surface nor the loud self-glorification of the Pharisee—­the goodness which is a pure flame, a consuming passion—­this appeared to his eyes in all its alluring beauty.  The way of it was hard, he knew, a way of service, of self-sacrifice, and yet the one way of happiness as well.  This lesson he had learned from himself—­for it is the thing that no man can teach another—­and because it had come to him from himself he knew that it had come to him from God.

“I made a plan on the way home to-night,” he said, keeping his firm touch upon her throbbing temples.  “To-morrow I shall arrange for a fortnight’s absence at the office and the next day I’ll take you South.  There you’ll stay out of doors and get well again.  The flesh will come back to your body and the colour to your cheeks.

“I shall never be pretty again—­never,” she moaned, as he held her.

“Nonsense.  You’re a trifle pale and fagged that’s all—­but we’ll have you a beauty again before two weeks are up.”

And so through the long night he sat with his touch, which compelled quiet, upon her body, for when, after she had fallen at last into a fitful slumber, he arose and lowered the lights, she started up with a scream and called out that she was “alone—­fearfully alone!” Then, as he returned to his chair, she reached for him in the darkness and clung desperately to his outstretched arm, drawing it presently across her shoulders until she lay as if shielded by the soothing familiar presence.

CHAPTER II

AN ADVANCE AND A RETREAT

It was the day after this, while Laura was still in Kemper’s thoughts, that he ran across her as she came out of a church in Twenty-ninth Street.  At the first glance she appeared a little startled, but the disturbance was so slight that it passed swift as a shadow across her face, and the next instant the illumining smile which he had thought of as her one memorable beauty shone from her eyes and lips.

“At first I hardly recognised you,” she explained, “you don’t look quite as I remembered you.”

His amused glance lingered upon her face.  “So you did remember me?” he said and the retort was so characteristic of the man that Gerty Bridewell would have paused waiting for it after she had spoken.  If there was the smallest loophole apparent in the conversation through which the personal intention might be made to enter, he took to it as instinctively as the fox takes to the covert.  The mere uttered words were what he might have responded to any woman who unconsciously gave him the opportunity, yet as he looked down upon Laura, in her velvet hat and black furs, at his side, he was filled with amazement at