any one—­and least of all to himself.  He had begun, logically enough, with an illuminating review of the motives which led him into the ministry; they were a sorry lot, on the whole; but his subsequent ambitions appeared even worse.  For the first time, he perceived his own consummate selfishness set over against the shining renunciations of his mother.  Then, step by step, he followed his career in Brookville:  his smug satisfaction in his own good looks; his shallow pride and vanity over the vapid insincerities he had perpetrated Sunday after Sunday in the shabby pulpit of the Brookville church; his Pharisaical relations with his people; his utter misunderstanding of their needs.  All this proved poignant enough to force the big drops to his forehead....  There were other aspects of himself at which he scarcely dared look in his utter abasement of spirit; those dark hieroglyphics of the beast-self which appear on the whitest soul.  He had supposed himself pure and saintly because, forsooth, he had concealed the arena of these primal passions beneath the surface of this outward life, chaining them there like leashed tigers in the dark....  Two faces of women appeared to be looking on, while he strove to unravel the snarl of his self-knowledge.  Lydia’s unworldly face, wearing a faint nimbus of unimagined self-immolation, and Fanny’s—­full of love and solicitude, the face which he had almost determined to forget.

He was going to Lydia.  Every newly awakened instinct of his manhood bade him go.

She came to him at once, and without pretense of concealment began to speak of her father.  She trembled a little as she asked: 

“He told you who he was?”

Without waiting for his answer she gravely corrected herself.

“I should have said, who we are.”

She smiled a faint apology: 

“I have always been called Lydia Orr; it was my mother’s name.  I was adopted into my uncle’s family, after father—­went to prison.”

Her blue eyes met his pitying gaze without evasion.

“I am glad you know,” she said.  “I think I shall be glad—­to have every one know.  I meant to tell them all, at first.  But when I found—­”

“I know,” he said in a low voice.

Then because as yet he had said nothing to comfort her, or himself; and because every word that came bubbling to the surface appeared banal and inadequate, he continued silent, gazing at her and marveling at her perfect serenity—­her absolute poise.

“It will be a relief,” she sighed, “When every one knows.  He dislikes to be watched.  I have been afraid—­I could not bear to have him know how they hate him.”

“Perhaps,” he forced himself to say, “they will not hate him, when they know how you—­ Lydia, you are wonderful!”

She looked up startled and put out her hand as if to prevent him from speaking further.

But the words came in a torrent now: