“I think,” she continued, “if I had been very ignorant, and had seen a good deal of this old man, I would have followed him anywhere, because I would have thought the spiritual force of his life was based on his opinions, which must therefore be considered true.  Isn’t that the way we are apt to argue about any phase of Church or Dissent that has vitality?”

But the knowledge she had just come by was making its way to a foremost place in her thought, and her open heart closed gently as a sensitive plant closes its leaves.  As he watched the animation of her face, he saw the habitual reserve come over it again like a shadow.  He felt that she was withdrawing from him as truly as if she had been again walking away, although now she stood still where his renewal of talk had stopped her.  He tried again to grasp at the moment of gracious chance, to claim her interest, but failed.

He went on down the road.  He had not guessed the lady had seen his heart, for he hardly saw it himself; yet he called himself a blundering fool.  He wondered that he had dared to talk with her so long, yet he wondered more that he had not dared to talk longer.  In all this he never thought of social grades, as he had done in connection with the smiles of the Miss Browns.  Sophia Rexford had struck his fancy more as a superior being; and to angels, or to the Madonna, we do not seek to recommend ourselves by position or pedigree.

The strong, clear evening light, tinted with gold, was upon everything.  He felt that if he could but live near the woman he had left, the problem of living would become simple, and the light of life’s best hours would shine for him always; but he entered into no fine distinction of ideal friendships.

CHAPTER V.

In the meantime the elder of the brothers Trenholme had not the satisfaction of meeting with Sophia Rexford, or of going to see the strange old man laid away in his last resting-place.

Robert Trenholme lay in his house, suffering a good deal of physical pain, suffering more from restlessness of nerve caused by his former tense activity, suffering most from the consideration of various things which were grievous to him.

He had been flouted by the woman he loved.  The arrow she had let fly had pierced his heart and, through that, his understanding.  He never told her, or anyone, how angry he had been at the first stab that wounded, nor that, when the familiar sound of his brother’s voice came to him in the midst of this anger, he had been dumb rather than claim kindred in that place with the young man who, by his actions, had already taken up the same reproach.  No, he never told them that it was more in surly rage than because he had slipped in the ditch that he had let them go on without him in the darkness; but he knew that this had been the case; and, although he was aware of no momentous consequences following on this