‘Miss Radnor?’ Mr. Barmby asked.

‘She is shattered; she holds up; she would not break down.’

‘I can conceive her to possess high courage.’

‘She has her friend Mademoiselle de Seilles.’

Mr. Barmby remained humbly silent.  Affectionate deep regrets moved him to say:  ’A loss irreparable.  We have but one voice of sorrow.  And how sudden!  The dear lady had no suffering, I trust.’

’She fell into the arms of Mr. Durance.  She died in his arms.  She was unconscious, he says.  I left her straining for breath.  She said “Victor”; she tried to smile:—­I understood I was not to alarm him.’

‘And he too late!’

‘He was too late, by some minutes.’

‘At least I may comfort.  Miss Radnor must be a blessing to him.’

‘They cannot meet.  Her presence excites him.’

That radiant home of all hospitality seemed opening on from darker chambers to the deadly dark.  The immorality in the moral situation could not be forgotten by one who was professionally a moralist.  But an incorruptible beauty in the woman’s character claimed to plead for her memory.  Even the rigorous in defence of righteous laws are softened by a sinner’s death to hear excuses, and may own a relationship, haply perceive the faint nimbus of the saint.  Death among us proves us to be still not so far from the Nature saying at every avenue to the mind:  ‘Earth makes all sweet.’

Mr. Durance had prophesied a wailful end ever to the carol of Optimists!  Yet it is not the black view which is the right view.  There is one between:  the path adopted by Septimus Barmby:—­if he could but induce his brethren to enter on it!  The dreadful teaching of circumstances might help to the persuading of a fair young woman, under his direction . . . having her hand disengaged.  Mr. Barmby started himself in the dream of his uninterred passion for the maiden:  he chased it, seized it, hurled it hence, as a present sacrilege:—­constantly, and at the pitch of our highest devotion to serve, are we assailed by the tempter!  Is it, that the love of woman is our weakness?  For if so, then would a celibate clergy have grant of immunity.  But, alas, it is not so with them!  We have to deplore the hearing of reports too credible.  Again we are pushed to contemplate woman as the mysterious obstruction to the perfect purity of soul.  Nor is there a refuge in asceticism.  No more devilish nourisher of pride do we find than in pain voluntarily embraced.  And strangely, at the time when our hearts are pledged to thoughts upon others, they are led by woman to glance revolving upon ourself, our vile self!  Mr. Barmby clutched it by the neck.