The two men stood some minutes and looked round the room. It was observed that Lord Robert did not remove his hat. He kept chewing the end of a broken cigarette, whereof the other end hung down his chin. One of the Sisters heard him say, "It will do with a little alteration, I think." Then he went off alone, and the Greek owner stepped up to John Storm.

It was not at first that John could attend to him, and when he was able to do so he began to rattle on about his own affairs. "See," he said with a delighted smile and a wave of the arm, "see how crowded we are! We'll have to think of taking in the next door soon."

"Father Storm," said the Greek, "I have something serious to say, though the official notification will of course reach you by another channel."

John's face darkened as a ripe cornfield does when the sun dies away from it.

"I am sorry to tell you that the trustees, having had a favourable offer for this property——"

"Well?" His great staring eyes had stopped the man.

"——have decided to sell."

"Sell? Did you say se——? To whom? What?"

"To tell you the truth, to the syndicate of a music hall."

John staggered back, breathing audibly. "Now if a man had to believe that—Do you know if I thought such a thing could happen——"

"I'm sorry you take the matter so seriously, Father Storm. It's true you've spent money on the property, but, believe me, the trustees will derive no profit——"

"Profit? Money? Do you suppose I'm thinking of that, and not of the desecration, the outrage, the horror? But who are they? Is that man—Lord——"

The Greek had nodded his head, and John flung open the door. "Out of this! Out of it, you Judas!" And almost before the Greek had crossed the threshold the door was banged at his back.

The incident had been observed, and there was dead silence in the club-room, but John only cried, "Let's sing something, girls," and when a Sister struck up his favourite Nazareth there was no voice so loud as his.

But he had realized everything. "Gloria" was coming back, and the work of months was overthrown!

When he was going home groups of the girls were talking in whispers in the hall, and Mrs. Pincher, who was wiping her eyes at the door, said, "I wonder you don't drown yourself—I do!"

At the corner of the lane Mr. Jupe was waiting for him to beg his pardon and to ask his advice. What he had said of Mrs. Jupe had turned out to be true. The Sharkeys had "split" on her and she had been arrested. "It was all in the evenin' pipers last night," the weak creature whimpered, "and to-day my manager told me I 'ad best look out for another place. Oh, my poor Lidjer! What am I to do?"

"Do? Cut her off like a rotten bough!" said John scornfully, and with that he strode down the street. The human sea roared around him, and he felt as if he wanted to fling himself into the midst of it and be swallowed up.

On reaching Victoria Square he told Mrs. Callender the news—flung it out at her with a sort of triumphant shout. His church had been sold over his head, and being only "Chaplain to the Greek-Turks," he was to be turned into the streets. Then he laughed wildly, and by some devilish impulse began to abuse Glory. "The next chaplain is to be a girl," he cried, "one of those creatures who throw kisses at gaping crowds and sweep curtsies for their dirty crusts."

But all at once he turned white as a ghost and sat down trembling. Mrs. Callender's face was twitching, and to prevent herself from crying she burst into scorching satire. "There!" she said, sitting in her rocking-chair and rocking herself furiously, "I ken'd weel what it would come til! Adversity mak's a man wise, they say, if it doesna mak' him rich. But it's the Prime Minister I blame for this. The auld dolt! he must be fallen to his dotage. It's enough to mak' a reasonable body go out of her mind to think of sic wise asses. I told you what to expect, but you were always miscalling me for a suspicious auld woman. Oh, it's a thing ye'd no suspect; but Jane Callender is only a daft auld fool, ye see, and doesna ken what she's saying!"

But at the next moment she had jumped up and flung her arms about John's neck, and was crying over him like a girl. "Oh, my son! my ain son! And is it for me to fling out at ye? Aye, aye, it's a heartless world, laddie!"

He kissed the old woman, and then she tried to coax him to eat. "Come, come, a wee bittie, just a wee bittie. We must eat our supper anyway."

"God seems dead and heaven a long way off!" he murmured.

"And a drap o' whisky will do no harm—a wee drappie."

"There's only one thing clear—God sees I'm unfit for the work, so he has taken it away from me."

She turned aside from the table, and the supper was left untouched.

* * * * *

The first post next morning brought a letter from Glory.

"The Garden House,

"Clement's Inn, W. C.

"Forgive me! I have returned to town! I couldn't help it, I couldn't, I couldn't! London dragged me back. What was I to do after everything was settled and the aunties provided for?—assist in a dame's school and wage war with pothooks and hangers? Oh! I was dying of weariness—dying, dying, dying!

"And then they made me such tempting offers. Not the music hall—don't think that. I dare say you were quite right there. No, but the theatre, the regular theatre! Mr. Drake has bought some broken-down old place, and is to turn it into a beautiful theatre expressly for me. I am to play Juliet. Only think—Juliet!—and in my own theatre! Already I feel like a liberated slave who has crossed her Red Sea.

"And don't think a woman's mourning is like the silly old laws which lasted but three days. He is buried in my heart, not in the earth, and I shall love him and revere him always! And then didn't you tell me yourself it would not be right to allow his death to stop my life?

"Write and say you forgive me, John. Reply by return, and make yourself your own postman—registered. You'll find me here at Rosa's. Come, come, come! I'll never forgive you if you don't come soon—never, never!

"Glory."



XII.

A fortnight had passed, and John Storm had not yet visited Glory. Nevertheless, he had heard of her from day to day through the medium of the newspapers. Every morning he had glanced down the black columns for the name that stood out from them as if its letters had been printed in blood. The reports had been many and mysterious. First, the brilliant young artiste, who had made such an extraordinary impression some months before, had returned to London and would shortly resume the promising career which had been interrupted by illness and family bereavement. Next, the forthcoming appearance would be on the regular stage, and in a Shakespearian character, which was always understood to be a crucial test of histrionic genius. Then, the revival of Romeo and Juliet, which had formerly been in contemplation, would probably give way to the still more ambitious project of an entirely new production by a well-known Scandinavian author, with a part peculiarly fitted to the personality and talents of the debutante. Finally, a syndicate was about to be formed for the purchase of some old property, with a view to its reconstruction as a theatre, in the interests of the new play and the new player.

John Storm laughed bitterly. He told himself that Glory was unworthy of the least of his thoughts. It was his duty to go on with his work and think of her no more.

He had received his official notice to quit. The church was to be given up in a month, the clergy-house in two months, and he believed himself to be immersed in preparations for the rehousing of the club and home. Twenty young mothers and their children now lived in the upper rooms, under obedience to the Sisterhood, but Polly's boy had remained with Mrs. Pincher. From time to time he had seen the little one tethered to a chair by a scarf about its waist, creeping by the wall to the door, and there gazing out on the world with looks of intelligence, and babbling to it in various inarticulate noises. "Boo-loo! Lal-la! Mum-um!" The little dark face had the eyes of its mother, but it represented Glory for all that. John Storm loved to see it. He felt that he could never part with it, and that if Lord Robert Ure himself came and asked for it he would bundle him out of doors.

But a carriage drew up at Mrs. Callender's one morning, and Lady Robert Ure stepped out. Her pale and patient face had the feeble and nervous smile of the humiliated and unloved.

"Mr. Storm," she said in her gentle voice, "I have come on a delicate errand. I can not delay any longer a duty I ought to have discharged before."

It was about Polly's baby. She had heard of what had happened at the hospital; and the newspapers which had followed her to Paris, with reports of her wedding, had contained reports of the girl's death also. Since her return she had inquired about the child, and discovered that it had been rescued by him and was now in careful keeping.

"But it is for me to look after it, Mr. Storm, and I beg of you to give it up to me. Something tells me that God will never give me children of my own, so I shall be doing no harm to any one, and my husband need never know whose child it is I adopt. I promise you to be good to it. It shall never leave me. And if it should live to be a man, and grow to love me, that will help me to forget the past and to forgive myself for my own share in it. Oh, it is little I can do for the poor girl who is gone—for, after all, she loved him and I took him from her. But this is my duty, Mr. Storm, and I can not sleep at night or rest in the day until it is begun."

"I don't know if it is your duty, dear lady, but if you wish for the child it is your right," said John Storm, and they got into the carriage and drove to Soho.

"Boo-loo! Lal-la! Mum-um!" The child was tethered to the chair as usual and talking to the world according to its wont. When it was gone and the women on the doorsteps could see no more of the fine carriage of the great lady who had brought the odour of perfume and the rustle of silk into the dingy court, and Mrs. Pincher had turned back to the house with red eyes and her widow's cap awry, John Storm told himself that everything was for the best. The last link with Glory was broken! Thank God for that! He might go on with his work now and need think of her no more!

That day he called at Clement's Inn.

The Garden House was a pleasant dwelling, fronting on two of its sides to the garden of the ancient Inn of Chancery, and cosily furnished with many curtains and rugs. The Cockney maid who answered the door was familiar in a moment, and during the short passage from the hall to the floor above she communicated many things. Her name was Liza; she had heard him preach; he had made her cry; "Miss Gloria" had known her former mistress, and Mr. Drake had got her the present place.

There was a sound of laughter from the drawing-room. It was Glory's voice. When the door opened she was standing in the middle of the floor in a black dress and with a pale face, but her eyes were bright and she was laughing merrily. She stopped when John Storm entered and looked confused and ashamed. Drake, who was lounging on the couch, rose and bowed to him, and Miss Macquarrie, who was correcting long slips of printer's proofs at a desk by the window, came forward and welcomed him. Glory held his hand with her long hand-clasp and looked steadfastly into his eyes. His face twitched and her own blushed deeply, and then she talked in a nervous and jerky way, reproaching him for his neglect of her.

"I have been busy," he began, and then stopped with a sense of hypocrisy. "I mean worried and tormented," and then stopped again, for Drake had dropped his head.

She laughed, though there was nothing to laugh at, and proposed tea, rattling along in broken sentences that were spoken with a tremulous trill, which had a suggestion of tears behind it. "Shall I ring for tea, Rosa? Oh, you have rung for tea! Ah, here it comes!—Thank you, Liza. Set it here," seating herself. "Now who says the 'girl'? Remember?" and then more laughter.

At that moment there was another arrival. It was Lord Robert Ure. He kissed Rosa's hand, smiled on Glory, saluted Drake familiarly, and then settled himself on a low stool by the tea-table, pulled up the knees of his trousers, relaxed the congested muscles of one half of his face, and let fall his eyeglass.

Drake was handing out the cups as Glory filled them. He was looking at her attentively, vexed at the change in her manner since John Storm entered. When he returned to his seat on the sofa he began to twitch the ear of her pug, which lay coiled up asleep beside him, calling it an ugly little pestilence, and wondering why she carried it about with her. Glory protested that it was an angel of a dog, whereupon he supposed it was now dreaming of paradise—listen!—and then there were audible snores in the silence, and everybody laughed, and Glory screamed.

"I declare, on my honour, my dear," said Drake with a mischievous look at John, "the creature is uglier than the beast that did the business on the day we eloped."

"Eloped!" cried Rosa and Lord Robert together.

"Why, did you never hear that Glory eloped with me?"

Glory was trying to drown his voice with hollow laughter.

"She was seven and I was six and a half, and she had proposed to me in the orchard the day before!"

"Anybody have more tea? No? Some sally-lunn, perhaps?" and then more laughter.

"Hold your tongue, Glory! Nobody wants your tea! Let us hear the story," said Rosa.

"Why, yes, certainly," said Lord Robert, and everybody laughed again.

"She was all for travel and triumphal processions in those days——"

Glory stopped her ears and began to sing:

Willy, Willy Wilkin, Kissed the maid a-milkin'! Fa, la la!

"There were so many things people could do if they wouldn't waste so much time working——"

Willy, Willy Wilkin Kissed the maid——

"Glory, if you don't be quiet we'll turn you out!" and Rosa got up and nourished her proofs.

"I had brought my dog, and when I called her a——"

But Glory had leaped to her feet and fled from the room. Drake had leaped up also, and now, putting his back against the door, he raised his voice and went on with his story.

"Somebody saved us, though, and she lay in his arms and kissed him all the way home again."

Glory was strumming on the door and singing to drown his voice. When the story was ended and she was allowed to come back she was panting and gasping with laughter, but there were tears in her eyes for all that, and Lord Robert was saying, with a sidelong look toward John Storm, "Really, this ought to be a scene in the new Sigurdsen, don't you know!"

John had retired within himself during this nonsense. He had been feeling an intense hatred of the two men, and was looking as gloomy as deep water. "All acting, sheer acting," he thought, and then he told himself that Glory was only worthy of his contempt. What could attract her in the society of such men? Only their wealth, and their social station. Their intellectual and moral atmosphere must weary and revolt her.

Rosa had to go to her newspaper office, and Drake saw her to the door. John rose at the same time, and Glory said, "Going already?" but she did not try to detain him. She would see him again; she had much to say to him. "I suppose you were surprised to hear that I had returned to London?" she said, looking up at his knitted brows.

He did not answer immediately, and Lord Robert, who was leaning against the chimney-piece, said in his cold drawl, "Your friend ought to be happy that you have returned to London, seems to me, my dear, instead of wasting your life in that wilderness."

John drew himself up. "It's not London I object to," he said; "that was inevitable, I dare say."

"What then?"

"The profession she has come back to follow."

"Why, what's amiss with the profession?" said Lord Robert, and Drake, who returned to the room at the moment, said: "Yes, what's amiss with it? Some of the best men in the world have belonged to it, I think."

"Tell me the name of one of them, since the world began, who ever lived an active Christian life."

Lord Robert made a kink of laughter, and, turning to the window, began to play a tune with his finger tips on the glass of a pane. Drake struggled to keep a straight face, and answered, "It is not their role, sir."

"Very well, if that's too much to ask, tell me how many of them have done anything in real life, anything for the world, for humanity—anything whatever, I don't care what it is."

"You are unreasonable, sir," said Drake, "and such objections could as properly apply to the professions of the painter and the musician. These are the children of joy. Their first function is to amuse. And surely amusement has its place in real life, as you say."

"On the contrary," said John, following his own thought, for he had not listened, "how many of them have lived lives of reckless abandonment, self-indulgence, and even scandalous license!"

"Those are abuses that apply equally to other professions, sir. Even the Church is not free from them. But in the view of reasonable beings one clergyman of evil life—nay, one hundred—would not make the profession of the clergy bad."

"A profession," said John, "which appeals above all to the senses, and lives on the emotions, and fosters jealousy and vanity and backbiting, and develops duplicity, and exists on lies, and does nothing to encourage self-sacrifice or to help suffering humanity, is a bad profession and a sinful one!"

"If a profession is sinful," said Drake, "in proportion as it appeals to the senses, and lives on the emotions, and develops duplicity, then the profession of the Church is the most sinful in the world, for it offers the greatest temptations to lying, and produces the worst hypocrites and impostors!"

"That," said John, with eyes flashing and passion vibrating in his voice—"that, sir, is the great Liar's everlasting lie—and you know it!"

Glory was between them with uplifted hands. "Peace, peace! Blessed is the peacemaker! But tea! Will nobody take more tea? Oh, dear! oh, dear! Why can't we have tea over again?"

"I know what you mean, sir," said Drake. "You mean that I have brought Glory back to a life of danger and vanity, and sloth and sensuality. Very well. I deny your definition. But call it what you will, I have brought her back to the only life her talents are fit for, and if that's all——"

"Would you have done the same for your own sister?"

"How dare you introduce my sister's name in this connection?"

"And how dare you resent it? What's good for one woman is good for another."

Glory was turning aside, and Drake was looking ashamed. "Of course—naturally—all I meant," he faltered—"if a girl has to earn her living, whatever her talents, her genius—that is one thing. But the upper classes, I mean the leisured classes——"

"Damn the leisured classes, sir!" said John, and in the silence that followed the men looked round, but Glory was gone from the room.

Lord Robert, who had been whistling at the window, said to Drake in a cynical undertone: "The man is hipped and sore. He has lost his challenge, and we ought to make allowances for him, don't you know."

Drake tried to laugh. "I'm willing to make allowances," he said lightly; "but when a man talks to me as if—as if I meant to——" but the light tone broke down, and he faced round upon John and burst out passionately: "What right have you to talk to me like this? What is there in my character, in my life, that justifies it? What woman's honour have I betrayed? What have I done that is unworthy of the character of an English gentleman?"

John took a stride forward and came face to face and eye to eye with him. "What have you done?" he said. "You have used a woman as your decoy to win your challenge, as you say, and you have struck me in the face with the hand of the woman I love! That's what you've done, sir, and if it's worthy of the character of an English gentleman, then God help England!"

Drake put his hand to his head and his flushed face turned pale. But Lord Robert Ure stepped forward and said with a smile: "Well, and if you've lost your church so much the better. You are only an outsider in the ecclesiastical stud anyway. Who wants you? Your rector doesn't want you; your Bishop doesn't want you. Nobody wants you, if you ask me."

"I don't ask you, Lord Robert," said John. "But there's somebody who does want me for all that. Shall I tell you who it is? It's the poor and helpless girl who has been deceived by the base and selfish man, and then left to fight the battle of life alone, or to die by suicide and go shuddering down to hell! That's who wants me, and, God willing, I mean to stand by her."

"Damme, sir, if you mean me, let me tell you what you are," said Lord Robert, screwing up his eyeglass. "You"—shaking his head right and left—"you are a man who takes delicately nurtured ladies out of sheltered homes and sends them into holes and hovels in search of abandoned women and their misbegotten children! Why"—turning to Drake-"what do you think has happened? My wife has fallen under this gentleman's influence—the poor simpleton!—and not one hour before I left my house she brought home a child which he had given her to adopt. Think of it!—out of the shambles of Soho, and God knows whose brat and bastard!"

The words were hardly out of the man's mouth when John Storm had taken him by both shoulders. "God does know," he said, "and so do I! Shall I tell you whose child that is? Shall I? It's yours!" The man saw it coming and turned white as a ghost. "Yours! and your wife has taken up the burden of your sin and shame, for she's a good woman, and you are not fit to live on the earth she walks upon!"

He left the two men speechless and went heavily down the stairs. Glory was waiting for him at the door. Her eyes were glistening after recent tears.

"You will come no more?" she said. She could read him like a book. "I can see that you intend to come no more."

He did not deny it, and after a moment she opened the door and he passed out with a look of utter weariness. Then she went back to her room and flung herself on the bed, face downward.

The men in the drawing-room were beginning to recover themselves. Lord Robert was humming a tune, Drake pacing to and fro.

"Buying up his church to make a theatre for Glory was the very refinement of cruelty!" said Drake. "Good heavens! what possessed me?"

"Original sin, dear boy!" said Lord Robert, with a curl of the lip.

"Original? A bad plagiarism, you mean!"

"Very well. If I helped you to do it, shall I help you to give it up? Withdraw the prospectus and return the deposits on shares—the dear Archdeacon's among the rest."

Drake took up his hat and left the house. Lord Robert followed him presently. Then the drawing-room was empty, and the hollow sound of sobbing came down to it from the bedroom above.

* * * * *

Father Storm read prayers in church that night with a hard and absent heart. A terrible impulse of hate had taken hold of him. He hated Drake, he hated Glory, he hated himself most of all, and felt as if seven devils had taken possession of him, and he was a hypocrite, and might fall dead at the altar.

"But what a fate the Almighty has saved me from!" he thought. Glory would have been a drag on his work for life. He must forget her. She was only worthy of his contempt. Yet he could not help but remember how beautiful she had looked in her mourning dress, with that pure pale face and its signs of suffering! Or how charming she had seemed to him even in the midst of all that deception! Or how she had held him as by a spell!

Going home he came upon a group of men in the Court. One of them planted himself full in front and said with an insolent swagger: "Me and my mytes thinks there's too many parsons abart 'ere. What do you think, sir?"

"I think there are more gamblers and thieves, my lad," he answered, and at the next instant the man had struck him in the face. He closed with the ruffian, grappled him by the throat, and flung him on his back. One moment he held him there, writhing and gasping, then he said, "Get up, and get off, and let me see no more of you!"

"No, sir, not this time," said a voice above his back. The crowd had melted away and a policeman stood beside them. "I've been waiting for this one for weeks, Father," he said, and he marched the man to jail.

It was Charlie Wilkes. At the trial of Mrs. Jupe that morning, Aggie, being a witness, had been required to mention his name. It was all in the evening papers, and he had been dismissed from his time-keeping at the foundry.



XIII.

A week passed. Breakfast was over at Victoria Square, and John Storm was glancing at the pages of a weekly paper. "Listen!" he cried, and then read aloud in a light tone of mock bravery which broke down at length into a husky gurgle:

"'The sympathy which has lately been evoked by the announcement that a proprietary church in Soho has been sold for secular uses, is creditable to public sentiment——'"

"Think of that, now!" interrupted Mrs. Callender.

"'——and no doubt the whole community will agree to hope that Father Storm will recover from the irritation natural to his eviction——'"

"Aye, we can all get over another body's disappointment, laddie."

"'But there is a danger that in this instance the altruism of the time may develop a sentimentality not entirely good for public morals——'"

"When the ox is down there are lots of butchers, ye ken!"

"'With the uses to which the fabric is to be converted, it is no part of our purpose to deal, further than to warn the public not to lend an ear to the all too prurient purity of the amateur moralist; but considering the character of the work now carried on in Soho, no doubt with the best intentions——'"

"Aye, aye, it's easy to steal the goose and give the giblets in alms."

"'——it behooves us to consider if the community is not to be congratulated on its speedy and effectual ending. Father Storm is a young man of some talents and social position, but without any special experience or knowledge of the world—in fact a weak, oversanguine, and rather foolish fanatic——'"

"Oh, aye, he's down; down with him!"

"'——and therefore it is monstrous that he should be allowed to subvert the order of social life or disturb the broad grounds of the reasonable and the practical——'"

"Never mind. High winds only blaw on high hills, laddie!"

"'——As for the "fallen sister" whom he has taken under his special care, we confess to a feeling that too much sympathy has been wasted on her already. Her feet take hold of hell, her house is the way of the grave, going down to the chamber of death——'"

Mrs. Callender leaped to her feet. "That's the 'deacon-man; I ken the cloven hoof!"

John Storm had flung the paper away. "What a cowardly world it is!" he said. "But God wins in the end, and by God he shall!"

"Tut, man! don't tak' on like that. You can't climb the Alps on roller-skates, you see! But as for the Archdeacon, pooh! I'm no windy aboot your 'Sisters' and 'Settlements' and sic like, but if there had been society papers in the Lord's time, Simon the Pharisee would have been a namby-pamby critic compared to some of them."

A moment afterward she was looking out of the window and holding up both hands. "My gracious! It's himsel'! It's the Prime Minister!"

A gaunt old gentleman with a meagre mustache, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and unfashionable black clothes, was stepping up to the door.

"Yes, it's my uncle!" said John, and the old lady fled out of the room to change her cap.

"I have heard what has happened, John, so I have come to see you," said the Prime Minister.

Was he thinking of the money? John felt uneasy and ashamed.

"I'm sorry, my boy, very sorry!"

"Thank you, uncle."

"But it all comes, you see, of the ridiculous idea that we are a Christian nation! Such a thing couldn't have occurred at the shrine of a pagan god!"

"It was only a proprietary church, uncle. I was much to blame."

"I do not deny that you have acted unwisely, but what difference does that make, my boy? To sell a church seems like the climax of irreverence; but they are doing as bad every day. If you want to see what times the Church has fallen on, look at the advertisements in your religious papers—your Benefice and Church Patronage Gazette, and so forth. A traffic, John, a slave traffic, worse than anything in Africa, where they sell bodies, not souls!"

"It is a crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven," said John; "but it is the Establishment that is to blame, not the Church, uncle."

"We are a nation of money-lenders, my boy, and the Church is the worst usurer of them all, with its learned divines in scarlet hoods, who hold shares in music halls, and its Fathers in God living at ease and leasing out public-houses. You have been lending money on usury too, and on a bad security. What are you going to do now?"

"Go on with my work, uncle, and do two hours where I did one before."

"And get yourself kicked where you got yourself kicked before!"

"Why not? If God puts ten pounds on a man, he gives him strength to bear twenty."

"John, John, I am feeling rather sore, and I can't bear much more of it. I'm growing old, and my life is rather lonely too. Except your father, you are my only kinsman now, and it seems as if our old family must die with you. But come, my boy, come, throw up all this sorry masquerade. Isn't there a woman in the world who can help me to persuade you? I don't care who she is, or what, or where she comes from."

John had coloured to the eyes, and was stammering something about the true priest cut off from earthly marriage, therefore free to commit himself completely to his work, when Mrs. Callender came back, spruce and smart, with many smiles and curtsies. The Prime Minister greeted her with the same old-fashioned courtesy, and they cooed away like two old doves, until a splendid equipage drove up to the door, and the plain old gentleman drove away in it.

"Wasn't he nice with me? wasn't he, now?" the old lady kept saying, and John being silent—"Tut! you young men are just puir loblollyboys with a leddy when the auld ones come."

Going to Soho that day John Storm felt a sudden thrill at seeing on the street in front of him, walking in the same direction, an elderly figure in cassock and cord. It was the Father Superior of the Brotherhood. John overtook him and greeted him.

"Ah, I was on my way to see you, my son."

"Then you have heard what has happened?"

"Yes, Satan's shafts fly fast." Then taking John's arm as they walked, "Earthly blows are but reminders of Him, my son, like the hair shirt of the monk, and this trouble of yours is God's reminder of your broken obedience. What did I tell you when you left us—that you would come back within a year? And you will! Leave the world, my son. It treats you badly. The human spirit reigns over it, and even the Church is a Christian society out of the sphere and guidance of the Divine Spirit. Leave it and return to your unfinished vows."

John shook his head and took the Father into the clergy-house, where the girls were gathering for the evening. "How can I leave the world, Father, when there's work like this to do? Society presents to a large proportion of these bright creatures the alternative, 'Sell yourself or starve.' But God says, 'Live, work, and love.' Therefore society is doomed, and that dead man's sepulchre, the Establishment, is doomed, but the Church will live, and become the corner-stone of the new order, and stand between woman and the world, as it stood of old between the poor and the rich."

The Father preached for John that night, taking for his text "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh." And on parting from him at the door of the sacristy he said: "Religious work can only be good, my son, if it concerns itself first of all with the salvation of souls. Now what if it pleased God to remove you from all this—to call you to a work of intercession—say, to the mission field?"

John's face turned pale. "There can be no need to fly," he said, with a frightened look. "Surely London is a mission field wide enough for any man."

"Yet who knows? Perhaps for your own soul's sake, lest vanity should take hold of you, or the love of fame, or—or any of the snares of Satan! But good-bye, and God be with you!"

When John Storm reached home he found a letter awaiting him. It was from Glory:

"Are you dead and buried? If so, send me word, that I may compose your epitaph. 'Here lies—Lies is good, for though you didn't promise to come back you ought to have done so; therefore it comes to the same thing in the end. You must not think too ill of Mr. Drake. I call him the milk of human kindness, and his friend Lord Robert the oil thereof—I mean the oil of vitriol. But his temper is like the Caspian Sea, having neither ebb nor flow, while yours is like the Bay of Biscay—oh, so I can't expect you to agree. As for poor me, I may be guilty of all the seven deadly sins, but I can't see why I should be boycotted on that account. There is something I didn't know when you were here, and I want to explain about it. Therefore come 'right away' (Lord Bob, Americanized). Being slow to anger and plenteous in mercy, I will forgive you if you come soon. If you don't, I'll—I'll go on the bike—feminine equivalent to the drink. To tell you the truth, I've done so already, having been careering round the gardens of the Inn during the early hours of morning, clad in Rosa's 'bloomers,' in which I make a picture and a sensation at the same time, she being several sizes larger round the hips, and fearfully and wonderfully made. If that doesn't fetch you I'll go in for boxing next, and in a pair of four-ounce gloves I'll cut a striking figure, I can tell you.

"But, John Storm, have you cast me off entirely? Do you intend to abandon me? Do you think there is no salvation left for me? And are you going to let me sink in all this mire without stretching out a hand to help me? Oh, dear! oh, dear! I don't know what has come over the silly old world since I came back to London. Think it must be teething, judging by the sharpness of its bite, and feel as if I should like to give it a dose of syrup of squills."

As John read the letter his eyelids quivered and his mouth relaxed. Then he glanced at it again, and his face clouded.

"I can not leave her entirely to the mercy of men like these," he thought.

This innocent daring, this babelike ripping up of serviceable conventions—God knows what advantage such men might take of it. He must see her once again, to warn, to counsel her. It was his duty—he must not shrink from it.

* * * * *

It had been a day of painful impressions to Glory. Early in the morning Lord Robert had called to take her to the "reading" of the new play. It took place in the saloon of an unoccupied Strand theatre, of which the stage also had been engaged for rehearsal. The company were gathered there, and, being more or less experienced actors and actresses, they received her with looks of courteous indulgence, as one whose leading place must be due to other things than talent. This stung her; she felt her position to be a false one, and was vexed that she had permitted Lord Robert to call for her. But her humiliation had yet hardly begun.

While they stood waiting for the manager, who was late, a gorgeous person with a waxed mustache and in a fur-lined coat, redolent of the mixed odour of perfume and stale tobacco, forced his way up to her and offered his card. She knew the man in a moment.

"I'm Josephs," he said in a confidential undertone, "and if there's anything I can do for you—acting management—anything—it vill give me pleesure."

Glory flushed up and said, "But you don't seem to remember, sir, that we have met before."

The man smiled blandly. "Oh, yes. I've kept track of you ever since and know all about you. You hadn't made your appearance then, and naturally I couldn't do much. But now—now if you vill give me de pleesure——"

"Then an agent is one who can do nothing for you when you want help, but when you don't want it——"

The man laughed to carry off his audacity. "Veil, you know vhat they say of us—agent from agere,'to do,' and we're always 'doing.' Ha, ha! But if you are villing to let bygones he bygones, I am, and velcome."

Glory's face was crimson. "Will somebody go for the stage doorkeeper?" she said, and one of the company went out on that errand. Then, raising her voice so that everybody listened, she said: "Mr. Josephs, when I was quite unknown, and trying to get on, and finding it very hard, as we all do, you played me the cruellest trick a man ever played on a woman. I don't owe you any grudge, but, for the sake of every poor girl who is struggling to live in London, I am going to turn you out of the house."

"Eh? Vhat?"

The stage doorkeeper had entered. "Porter, do you see this gentleman? He is never to come into this theatre again as long as we are here, and if he tries to force his way in you are to call a policeman and have him bundled back into the street!"

"Daddle doo," and the waxed mustache over the grinning mouth seemed to cut the face across.

When Josephs had gone Glory could see that the looks of indulgence on the faces of the company had gone also. "She'll do!" said one. "She's got the stuff in her!" said another, but Glory herself was now quaking with fear, and her troubles were not yet ended.

A little stout gentleman entered hurriedly with a roll of papers in his hand. He stepped up to Lord Robert, apologized for being late, and mopped his bald crown and red face. It was Sefton.

"This is to be our manager," said Lord Robert, and Mr. Sefton bobbed his head, winked with both eyes, and said, "Charmed, I'm sure—charmed!"

Glory could have sunk into the earth for shame, but in a moment she had realized the crushing truth that when a woman has been insulted in the deepest place—in her honour—the best she can do is to say nothing about it.

The company seated themselves around the saloon, and the reading began. First came the list of characters, with the names of the cast. Glory's name and character came last, and her nerves throbbed with sudden pain when the manager read, "and Gloria—Miss Glory Quayle."

There was a confused murmur, and then the company composed themselves to listen. It was Gloria's play. She was rather scandalous. After the first act Glory thought it was going to be the story of Nell Gwynne in modern life; after the second, of Lady Hamilton; and after the third, in which the woman wrecks and ruins the first man in the country, she knew it was only another version of the Harlot's Progress, and must end as that had ended.

The actors were watching their own parts, and pointing and punctuating with significant looks the places where the chances came, but Glory was overwhelmed with confusion. How was she to play this evil woman? The poison went to the bone, and to get into the skin of such a creature a good woman would have to dispossess herself of her very soul. The reading ended, every member of the company congratulated some other member on the other's opportunities, and Sefton came up to Glory to ask if she did not find the play strong and the part magnificent.

"Yes," she said; "but only a bad woman could play that part properly."

"You'll do it, my dear, you'll do it on your own!" he answered gaily, and she went home perplexed, depressed, beaten down, and ashamed.

A newspaper had been left at the door. It was a second-rate theatrical journal, still damp from the press. The handwriting on the wrapper was that of Josephs, and there was a paragraph marked in blue pencil. It pretended to be a record of her short career, and everything was in it—the programme selling, the dressing, the foreign clubs—all the refuse of her former existence, set in a sinister light and leaving the impression of an abject up-bringing, as of one who had been in the streets if not on them.

Well, she had chosen her life and must take it at its own price. But, oh, the cruelty of the world to a woman, when her very success could be her shame! She felt that the past had gripped her again—the pitiless past—she could never drag herself out of the mire.

That night she wrote to John Storm, and next morning before Rosa had risen—her duties kept her up late—she heard a voice downstairs. Her dog also heard it and began to bark. At the next moment John was in the room and she was laughing up into his splendid black eyes, for he had caught her down at the sofa holding the pug's nose and trying to listen.

"Is it you? It's so good of you to come early! But this, dog"—breaking into the Manx dialect—"she's ter'ble, just ter'ble!" Then rising and looking serious: "I wished to tell you that I knew nothing about the church, nothing whatever. If I'd had the least idea... but they told me nothing—it was very wrong—nothing. And the first thing I knew was when I saw it in all the newspapers."

He was leaning on the end of the mantelpiece. "If they deceived you like that, how can you go on with them?"

"You mean" (she was leaning on the other end, and speaking falteringly), "you mean that I ought to give it all up. But it's too late for that now. It was too late when I came to know. Besides, it would do no good; you would be in the same position still, and as for me—well, somebody else would have the theatre, so where's the use?"

"I was thinking of the future, Glory, not the past. People who deceive us once are capable of doing so again."

"True—that's true—only—only——"

She was breaking down, and he turned his eyes away from her, saying, "Well, it's all over now, and there's no help for it."

"No, there's no help for it."

He tried to think what he had come to say, but do what he would he could not remember. The moment he looked at her the thread of his thoughts was lost, and the fragrance of her presence, so sweet, so close, made him feel as if he wanted to touch her. There was an awkward silence, and then he fidgeted with his hat and moved.

"Are you going so soon?"

"I'm busy, and——"

"Yes, you must be busy now."

"And then why—why should we prolong a painful interview, Glory?"

She shot up a look under her eyebrows. His eyes had a harassed expression, but there was a gleam in them that set her heart beating.

"Is it so painful? Is it?"

"Glory, I meant to tell you I could not come again."

"No! You're not so busy as all that, are you? Surely" (the Manx again, only she seemed to be breathless now)—"surely you're not so ter'ble busy but you can just put a sight on a girl now and again for all?"

He made a gesture with his hand. "It disturbs, it distracts——"

"Oh, is that all? Then," with a forced laugh, "I'll come to see you instead. Yes, I will, though."

"No, you mustn't do that, Glory. It would only torment——"

"Torment! Gough bless me! Why torment?" and a fugitive flame shot up at him.

"Because"—he stammered, and she could see that his lips quivered; then calmly, very calmly, pronouncing the words slowly, and in a voice as cold as ice—"because I love you!"

"You!"

"Didn't you know that?" His voice was guttural. "Haven't you known it all along? What's the use of pretending? You've dragged it out of me. Was that only to show your power over me?"

"Oh!"

She had heard what her heart wanted to hear, and not for worlds would she have missed hearing it, yet she was afraid, and trembling all over.

"We two are of different natures, Glory, that's the trouble between us—now, and always has been. We have nothing in common, absolutely nothing. You have chosen your path in life, and it is not my path. I have chosen mine, and it is not yours. Your friends are not my friends. We are two different beings altogether, and yet—and yet I love you! And that's why I can not come again."

It was sweet, but it was terrible. So different from what she had dreamed of: "I love you!—you are my soul!—I can not live without you!" Yet he was right. She had slain his love before it was born to her—it was born dead. In an unsteady voice, which had suddenly become husky, she said:

"No doubt you are right. I must leave you to judge. Perhaps you have thought it all out."

"Don't suppose it will be easy for me, Glory. I've suffered a good deal, and I dare say I shall suffer more yet. If so, I'll bear it. But for the sake of my work——"

"Ah!—But of course I can't expect—Naturally you love your work also——"

"I do love my work also, and therefore it's no use trifling. 'If thine eye offend—'"

She was stung. "Well, since there's no help for it, I suppose we must shake hands and part."

Not until then—not until he had pronounced his doom and she had accepted it did he realize how beautiful she seemed to him. He felt as if something in his throat wanted to cry out.

"It isn't what I expected, Glory—what I dreamed of for years."

"But it's best—it seems best."

"I tried to make a place for you, too, but you wouldn't have it—you let it go; you preferred this other lot in life."

She remembered Josephs, and Sefton, and the newspaper, and the part, and she covered her face with her hands.

"How can I go on, Glory, to the peril of my—It's dangerous, even dangerous."

"Yes, you are a clergyman and I am an actress. You must think of that. People are so ignorant, so cruel, and I dare say they are talking already."

"Do you think I should care for that, Glory?" Her hands came down from her face. "Do you think I should care one jot if all the miserable scandal-mongering world thought——"

"You'll think the best of me, then?"

"I'll think of both of us as we used to be, my child, before the world came between us, before you——"

She was fighting against an impulse to fling herself into his arms, but she only said in a soft voice: "You are quite right, quite justified. I have chosen my lot in life, and must make the best of it."

"Well——" He was holding out his hand.

But nevertheless she put her hand behind her, thinking: "No; if I shake hands with him it will be the end of everything."

"Good-bye!" and with an expression of utter despair he left her.

She did not cry, and when Rosa came down immediately afterward she was smiling and her eyes were very bright.

"Was that your friend Mr. Storm? Yes? You must beware of him, my dear. He would stop your career and think he was doing God's service."

"There's no danger of that, Rosa. He only came to say he would come no more," and then something flashed in her eyes and died away, and then flashed again.

"Yes," thought Rosa, "there's an extraordinary attraction about her that makes all other women seem tame." And then Rosa remembered somebody else, and sighed.

* * * * *

John Storm went back to Soho by way of Clare Market, and when people saluted him in the streets with "Good-morning, Father," he did not answer because he did not see them. On going to church that night he came upon a group of Charlie's cronies betting six to one against his getting off, and a girl in gay clothes was waiting to speak to him. It was Aggie. She had come to plead for Charlie.

"It's the drink, sir. 'E's a good boy when 'e's not drinking. But I ask pardon for 'im; and if you would only not prosecute——"

John was ashamed of himself at sight of the girl's fidelity to her unworthy lover.

"And you, my child—what about you?"

"Oh, I'm all right. What's broken can't be mended."

And meanwhile the church bells were ringing and the cabs were running to the theatres.



XIV.

The rehearsals began early in the morning and usually lasted until late in the afternoon. Glory found them wearisome, depressing, and often humiliating. The body of the theatre was below the level of the street, and in the daytime was little better than a vast vault. If she entered by the front she stumbled against seats and saw the figures of men and women silhouetted in the distance, and heard the echo of cavernous voices. If by the back, she came upon the prompter's table set midway across the stage, with a twin gas-bracket shooting up behind it like a geyser, and an open space of some twenty feet by twenty in front whereon the imaginary passions were to disport themselves at play.

Glory found real ones among them, and they were sometimes in hideous earnest. Jealousy, envy, uncharitableness, and all the rancour of life where the struggle for it is bitterest, attempts to take advantage of her inexperience, to rob her of the best positions on the stage, to cut out her lines which "scored"—these, with the weary waits, the half darkness, the chill atmosphere, the void in front, with its seats in linen covers, suggesting an audience of silent ghosts, and then the sense of the bright, busy, bustling, rattling, real world above, sent her home day after day with a headache, a heartache, and tears bubbling out of her eyes.

And when she had conquered these conditions, or settled down to them, and had made such progress with her part as to throw away her scrip, the old horror of the woman she was to make herself into, came back as a new terror. The visionary Gloria was very proud and vain and selfish, and trampled everything under foot that she might possess the world and the things of the world.

Meantime the real Gloria had a far different part to play. Every morning, with a terrible reality at her heart, she glanced over the newspapers for news of John Storm. She had not far to look. A sort of grotesque romance had gathered about him, as of a modern Don Quixote tilting at windmills. His name was the point of a pun; there were cartoons, caricatures, and all other forms of the joke that is not a joke because it is an insult.

Sometimes she took stolen glances at his work. On Sunday morning she walked through Soho, past the people sitting on their doorsteps reading the sporting intelligence in the Sunday papers, with their larks in cages hung on nails, overhead, until she came to the church, and heard the singing inside, and saw chalked up on the walls the legend, "God bless the Farver!"

"Strange charge against a clergyman!" It was a low-class paper, and the charge was a badge of honour. A young ruffian (it was Charles Wilkes) had been brought up on remand on a charge of assaulting Father Storm, and being sentenced to a week's imprisonment, notwithstanding the Father's appeal and offer of bail, he had accused the clergyman of relations with his sweetheart (it was Agatha Jones).

Glory's anger at the world's treatment of John Storm deepened to a great love of the misunderstood and downtrodden man. She saw an announcement of his last service, and determined to go to it. The church was crowded, chiefly by the poor, and the air was heavy with the smell of oranges and beer. It was a week-day evening, and when the choir came in, followed by John Storm in his black cassock, Glory could not help a thrill of physical joy at being near him.

The text was, "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outside, but are within full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness!" The first half of the, sermon was a denunciation of the morality of men. We made clean the outside of the platter, but the so-called purity of England was a smug sham built upon rottenness and sin! There were men among us, damned sensualists, left untouched by the idleness of the public conscience, who did not even know where their children were to be found. Let them go down into the gutters of life and look for their own faces, and—God forgive them!—their mothers' faces, among the outcast and the criminal. The second half was a defence of woman. The sins of the world against women were the most crying wrongs of the time. Had they ever reflected on the heroism of women, on their self-denying, unrewarded labour? Oh, why was woman held so cheap as in this immoral London of to-day? There had been scarcely a breach of the law of Nature by women, and not one that men were not chiefly to blame for. Men tempted them by love of dress, of ease, of money, and of fame, to forget their proper vocation; but every true woman came right in the end, and preferred to the false and fictitious labour for worldly glory, a mother's silent and unseen devotion, counting it no virtue at all. "Yes, women, mothers, girls, in your hands lies the salvation of England. May you live in this prospect, and may God and his ever-blessed Mother be your reward all through this weary life and in glory everlasting!"

There was a procession with banners, cross, stars, green and blue fleur-de-lis, but Glory saw none of it. She was kneeling with her head down and heart choked with emotion. The next she knew the service was over, the congregation was gone; only one old woman in widow's weeds was left, jingling a bunch of keys.

"Has the Father gone?"

"No, ma'am; he is still in the sacristy."

"Show me to it."

At the next moment, with fluttering throat and a look of mingled love and awe, she was standing eye to eye with John Storm in the little bare chamber off the church.

"Glory, why do you come here?"

"I can't help it."

"But we said good-bye and parted."

"You did. I didn't. It was not so easy——"

"Easy? I told you it wouldn't be easy, my child, and it hasn't been. I said I should suffer, and I have suffered. But I've borne it—you see I've borne it. Don't ask me at what cost."

"Oh, oh, oh!" and she covered her face.

"Yes, the devil tortured me with love first. I was seeing you and hearing you everywhere and in everything, Glory. But I got over that, and then he tortured me with remorse. I had left you to the mercy of the world. It was my duty to watch over you. I did it, too."

She glanced up quickly.

"Ah, you never knew that, but no matter! It's all over now, and I'm a different man entirely. But why do you come and torment me again? It's nothing to you, nothing at all. You can shake it off in a moment. That's your nature, Glory; you can't help it. But have you no pity? You find me here, trying to help the helpless—the brave girls who have the virtue to be poor, and the strength to be weak, and the courage to be friendless. Why can't you leave me alone? What am I to you? Nothing at all! You care nothing for me—nothing whatever."

She glanced up again, and the look of love in her eyes was stronger now than the look of awe. He saw it and could not help knowing how strongly it worked upon his feelings.

"Go back to your own world, unhappy girl! You love it—you must; you have sacrificed the best impulses of your heart to it!"

She was smiling now. It was the old radiant smile, but with a gleam of triumph in it that he had never seen before. It worked like madness upon him, and he tried to insult her again.

"Go back to your own company, to the people who play at real life, and build toy houses, and give themselves away body and soul for the clapping of hands in a theatre! Go back to the lies and hypocrisies of society, and the brainless, mashers who adorn it! They dance superbly, and are at home in drawing-rooms, and know all about sporting matters and theatrical affairs! I know none of these things, and I am kicked and cuffed and ridiculed and hounded down as an indecent man or shunned as a moral leper I Why do you come to me?" he cried, hoarse and husky.

But she only stretched out her hands to him and said, "Because I love you!"

"What are you saying?" He was quivering with pain.

"I love you, and have always loved you, and you love me—you know you do—you love me still!"

"Glory!"

"John!"

"For God's sake! Glory!"

With a wild shout of joy he rushed upon her, flung his arms about her, and covered her face and hands with kisses. After a moment he whispered, "Not here, not here!" and she felt too that the room was suffocating them, and they must go out into the open air, the fields, the park.

Somebody was knocking at the door. It was Mrs. Pincher. A man was waiting to speak to the Father. They found him in the lane. It was Jupe, the waiter. His simple face wore a strange expression of joy and fear, as if he wished to smile and dare not.

"My pore missis 'as got off and wants to come 'ome, sir, and I thought as you'd tell me what I oughter do."

"Take her back and forgive her, my man, that's the Christian course."

His love was now boundless; his large charity embraced everything, and going off he saluted everybody. "Good-evening, Mrs. Pincher.—Good-night, Lydia."

"Well, 'e is a Father, too, and no mistake!" somebody was saying behind him as he went away with Glory.

The moon was at the full, and while they were passing through the streets it struggled with the gas from the shop windows as the flame of a fire struggles with the sunshine, but when they passed under the trees it shone out in its white splendour like a bride. The immeasurable vault above was silvered with stars, too, through depth on depth of space, and all the glorious earth and heaven seemed to smile the smile of love. A strong south breeze was blowing, and as it shook the trees of the park, that blessed patch of Nature in the midst-of the toiling city seemed to sing the song of love!

Their hands found each other and they walked along almost in silence, afraid to break the spell of their dream lest they should awake and find it gone. It seemed wonderful to him that they were together, and he could hardly believe it was reality, though the touch of her hand filled him with a strange physical exultation which he had never felt before. He seemed to be walking on the clouds, and she too was swaying by his side as if her blood was dancing. Sometimes she dried her glistening eyes, and once she stopped and swung in front of him and looked long at him and then raised her face to his and kissed him.

"Whether you like it or not your life is bound up with mine for ever and ever!" she whispered.

"It had to be," he answered. "I know it now. I can no longer deceive myself."

"And we shall be happy? In spite of all you said we shall be very happy, eh?"

"Yes, that will be quite forgotten, Glory."

"And forgiven," she said, and then between a sigh and a blush she asked him to kiss her again.

"My love!"

"My soul!"

The wind swept the hood of her cape about her head and he could smell the fragrance of her hair.

He tried to think what he had done to deserve such happiness, but all the suffering he had gone through seemed as nothing compared to a joy like this. The great clock of Westminster swung its hollow sounds into the air, which went riding by on the wind like the notes of an organ, now full and now as soft as a baby's whisper. They could hear the far-off rumble of the vast city which fringed their blessed island like a mighty sea, and through the pulse of their clasped hands it seemed as if they felt the pulse of the world. An angel had come down and breathed on the face of the waters, and it was God's world, after all.

He took her home, and they parted at the door. "Don't come in to-night," she whispered. She wished to be alone, that she might think it all out and go over it again, every word, every look. There was a lingering hand-clasp and then she was gone.

He returned through the park and tried to step over the very places where her feet had trod. On reaching Buckingham Gate he turned back and walked round the park, and again round it, and yet again. The bells tolled out the hours, the cabs went westward with ladies in evening wraps going home from theatres, the tide of traffic ebbed farther and farther and died down, but still he walked and the wind sang to him.

"God can not blame us," he thought. "We were made to love each other." He uncovered his head to let the wind comb through his hair, and he was happy, happy, happy! Sometimes he shut his eyes, and then it was hard to believe that she was not walking by his side, a fragrant presence in the moonlight, going step by step with him.

When the day was near the wind had gone, the little world of wood was silent, and his footsteps crunched on the gravel. Then a yellow gleam came in the sky to the east, and a chill gust swept up as a scout before the dawn, the trees began to shiver, the surface of the lake to creep, the birds to call, and the world to stretch itself and yawn.

Peace in her chamber, wheresoe'er It be—a holy place.

As he went home by Birdcage Walk the park was still heavy with sleep, and its homeless wanderers had not yet risen from their couches on the seats. A pale mist was lying over London, but the towers of the Abbey stood clear above it, and pigeons were wheeling around them like sea-fowl about rocks in the sea. What a night it had been! A night of dreams, of love, of rapture!

The streets were empty and very quiet—only the slow rattle of the dust-cart and the measured step of policemen changing beats. Long blue vistas and a cemetery silence as of a world under the great hand of the gentle brother of Death, and then the clang of Big Ben striking six.

A letter was waiting for John in the breathless hall. It was from the Bishop of London: "Come and see me at St. James's Square."



XV.

Suddenly there sprang out to Glory the charm and fascination of the life she was putting away. Trying to be true to her altered relations with John Storm, she did not go to rehearsal the next morning—, but not yet having the courage of her new position, she did not tell Rosa her true reason for staying away. The part was exhausting—it tried her very much; a little break would do no harm. Rosa wrote to apologize for her on the score of health, and thus the first cloud of dissimulation rose up between them.

Two days passed, and then a letter came from the manager: "Trust you are rested and will soon be back. The prompter read your lines, but everything has gone to pieces. Slack, slovenly, spiritless, stupid, nobody acting, and nobody awake, it seems to me. 'All right at night, governor,' and the usual nonsense. Shows how much we want you. But envious people are whispering that you are afraid of the part. The blockheads! If you succeed this time you'll be made for life, my dear. And you will succeed! Yours merrily," etc.

With this were three letters addressed to the theatre. One of them was from a press-cutting agency asking to be allowed to supply all newspaper articles relating to herself, and inclosing a paragraph as a specimen: "A little bird whispers that 'Gloria,' as 'Gloria,' is to be a startling surprise. Those who have seen her rehearse——But mum's the word—an' we could an' we would," etc. Another of the letters was from the art editor of an illustrated weekly asking for a sitting to their photographer for a full-page picture; and the third inclosed the card of an interviewer on an evening paper. Only three days ago Glory would have counted all this as nothing, yet now she could not help but feel a thrilling, joyous excitement.

Drake called after the absence of a fortnight. He had come to speak of his last visit. His face was pale and serious, not fresh and radiant as usual, his voice was shaking and his manner nervous. Glory had never seen him exhibit so much emotion, and Rosa looked on in dumb astonishment.

"I was to blame," he said, "and I have come to say so. It was a cowardly thing to turn the man out of his church, and it was worse than cowardly to use you in doing it. Everything is fair, they say, in——" But he flushed up like a girl and stopped, and then faltered: "Anyhow, I'm sorry—very sorry; and if there is anything I can do——"

Glory tried to answer him, but her heart was beating violently, and she could not speak.

"In fact, I've tried to make amends already. Lord Robert has a living vacant in Westminster, and I've asked him to hand it over to the Bishop, with the request that Father Storm——"

"But will he?"

"I've told him he must. It's the least we can do if we are to have any respect for ourselves. And anyhow, I'm about tired of this anti-Storm uproar. It may be all very well far men like me to object to the man—I deny his authorities, and think him a man out of his century and country—but for these people with initials, who write in the religious papers, to rail at him, these shepherds who live on five thousand a year and pretend to follow One who hadn't a home or a second coat, and whose friends were harlots and sinners, though he was no sinner himself—it's infamous, it's atrocious, it raises my gorge against their dead creeds and paralytic churches. Whatever his faults, he is built on a large plan, he has the Christ idea, and he is a man and a gentleman, and I'm ashamed that I took advantage of him. That's all over now, and there's no help for it; but if I might hope that you will forgive—and forget——"

"Yes," said Glory in a low voice, and then there was silence, and when she lifted her head Drake was gone and Rosa was wiping her eyes.

"It was all for love of you, Glory. A woman can't hate a man when he does wrong for love of herself."

John Storm came in later the same day, when Rosa had gone out and Glory was alone. He was a different man entirely. His face looked round and his dark eyes sparkled. The clouds of his soul seemed to have drifted away, and he was boiling over with enthusiasm. He laughed constantly, and there was something almost depressing in the lumbering attempts at humour of the serious man.

"What do you think has happened? The Bishop sent for me and offered me a living in Westminster. It turns out to being the gift of Lord Robert Ure; but no thanks to him for it. Lady Robert was at the bottom of everything. She had called on the Bishop. He remembered me at the Brotherhood, and told me all about it. St. Jude's, Brown's Square, on the edge of the worst quarter in Christendom! It seems the Archdeacon expected it for Golightly, his son-in-law. The Reverend Joshua called on me this morning and tried to bully me, but I soon bundled him off to Botany Bay. Said the living had been promised to him—a lie, of course. I soon found that out. A lie is well named, you know—it hasn't a leg—to stand upon. Ha, ha, ha!"

Nothing would serve but that they should go to look at the scene of their future life, and with Don—he had brought his dog; it had to be held back from the pug under the table—they set off immediately. It was Saturday night, and as they dipped down into the slums that lie under the shadow of the Abbey, Old Pye Street, Peter's Street, and Duck Lane were aflare with the coarse lights of open naphtha lamps, and all but impassable with costers' barrows. There were the husky voices of the street hawkers, the hoarse laughter, the quarrelling, the oaths, the rasping shouts of the butcher selling chunks of dark joints by auction, the screeches of the roast-potato man, and the smell of stale vegetables and fried fish. "Jow, 'ow much a pound for yer turmaters?" "Three pence; I gave mor'n that for 'em myself." "Garn!" "S'elp me, Gawd, I did, mum!"

"Isn't it a glorious scene?" said John; and Glory, who felt chilled and sickened, recalled herself from some dream of different things altogether and said, "Isn't it?"

"Sanctuary, too! What human cats we are! The poor sinners cling to the place still!"

He took her into the alleys and courts that score and wrinkle the map of Westminster like an old man's face, and showed her the "model" lodging-houses and the gaudily decorated hells where young girls and soldiers danced and drank.

"What's the use of saying to these people, 'Don't drink; don't steal'? They'll answer, 'If you lived in these slums you would drink too.' But we'll show them that we can live here and do neither—that will be the true preaching."

And then he pictured a life of absolute self-sacrifice, which she was to share with him. "You'll manage all money matters, Glory. You can't think how I'm swindled. And then I'm such a donkey as far as money goes—that's not far with me, you know. Ha, ha, ha! Who's to find it? Ah, God pays his own debts. He'll see to that."

They were to live under the church itself; to give bread to the hungry and clothes to the naked; to set up their Settlement in the gaming-house of the Sharkeys, now deserted and shut up; to take in the undeserving poor-the people who had nothing to say for themselves, precisely those; and thus they were to show that they belonged neither to the publicans and sinners nor to the Scribes and Pharisees.

"Only let us get rid of self. Only let us show that self-interest never enters our head in one single thing we do——" and meantime Glory, who had turned her head aside with a lump in her throat, heard some one behind them saying:

"Lawd, Jow, that's the curick and his dorg—'im as got pore Sharkey took! See—'im with the laidy?"

"S'elp me, so it is! Another good man gorn to 'is gruel, and all 'long of a bloomin' dorg."

They walked round by the church. John was talking—rapturously at every step, and Glory was dragging after him like a criminal going to the pillory. At last they came out by Great Smith Street, and he cried: "See, there's the house of God under its spider's web of scaffolding, and here's the Broad Sanctuary—broad enough in all conscience! Look!"

A crowd of girls and men were trooping out of a place of entertainment opposite, and there were screams and curses. "Look at 'im!" cried a woman's voice. "There 'e is, the swine! And 'e was the ruin of me; and now 'e's 'listed for a soldier and going off with another woman!"

"You're bleedin' drunk, that's what you are!" said a man's voice, "and if you down't take kear I'll send ye 'ome on a dawer!"

"Strike me, will ye, ye dog? Do it! I dare you!"

"She ain't worth it, soldier—come along," said another female voice, whereupon the first broke into a hurricane of oaths; and a little clergyman going by at the moment—it was the Rev. J. Golightly—said: "Dear, dear! Are there no policemen about?" and so passed on, with his tall wife tucked under his arm.

John Storm pressed through the crowd and came between the two who were quarrelling. By the light of the lamp he could see them. The man was Charlie Wilkes, in the uniform of a soldier; the woman, with the paint running on her face, her fringe disordered, and her back hair torn down, was Aggie Jones.

"We down't want no religion 'ere," said Charlie, sneering.

"You'll get some, though, if you're not off quick!" said John. The man looked round for the dog and a moment afterward he had disappeared.

Glory came up behind. "O Aggie, woman, is it you?" she said, and then the girl began to cry in a drunken sob.

"Girls is cruel put upon, mum," said one of the women; and another cried, "Nix, the slops!" and a policeman came pushing his way and saying: "Now, then, move on! We ain't going to stand 'ere all night."

"Call a cab, officer," said John.

"Yes. sir-certainly, Father. Four-wheel-er!"

"Where do you live, Aggie?" said Glory; but the girl, now sobbing drunk, was too far gone to follow her.

"She lives in Brown's Square, sir," said the woman who had spoken before, and when the cab came up she was asked to get in with the other three.

It was a tenement house, fronting to one facade of St. Jude's, and Aggie's room was on the second story. She was helpless, and John carried her up the stairs. The place was in hideous disorder, with clothing lying about on chairs, underclothing scattered on the floor, the fire out, many cigarette ends in the fender, a candle stuck in a beer bottle, and a bunch of withered roses on the table.

As John laid the girl on the bed she muttered, "Lemme alone!" and when he asked what was to happen to her when she grew old if she behaved like this when young, she mumbled: "Don't want to be old. Who's goin' to like me then, d'ye think?"

Half an hour afterward Glory and John were passing through the gates into Clement's Inn, with its moonlight and silence, its odour of moistened grass, its glimpse of the stars, and the red and white blinds of its windows lit up round about. John was still talking rapturously. He was now picturing the part which Glory was to play in the life they were to live together. She was to help and protect their younger sisters, the child-women, the girls in peril, to enlist their loyalty and filial tenderness for the hour of temptation.

"Won't it be glorious? To live the life, the real life of warfare with the world's wickedness and woe! Won't it be magnificent? You'll do it too! You'll go down into those slums and sloughs which I've shown you to-night—they are the cradle of shame and sin, Glory, and this wicked London rocks it!—you'll go down into them like a ministering angel to raise the fallen and heal the wounded! You'll live in them, revel in them, rejoice in them, they'll be your battlefield. Isn't that better, far better, a thousand times better, than playing at life, and all its fashions and follies and frivolities?"

Glory struggled to acquiesce, and from time to time in a, trembling voice she said "Yes," and "Oh, yes," until they came to the door of the Garden House, and then a strange thing happened. Somebody was singing in the drawing-room to the music of the piano. It was Drake. The window was open and his voice floated over the moonlit gardens;

Du liebes Kind, komm' geh mit mir! Gar schoene Spiele spiel' ich mit dir.

Suddenly it seemed to Glory that two women sprang into life in her—one who loved John Storm and wished to live and work beside him, the other who loved the world and felt that she could never give it up. And these two women were fighting for her heart, which should have it and hold it and possess it forever.

She looked up at John, and he was smiling triumphantly, "Are you happy?" she asked.

"Happy! I know a hundred men who are a hundred times as rich as I, but not one who is a hundredth part as happy!"

"Darling!" she whispered, holding back her tears. Then looking away from him she said, "And do you really think I'm good enough for a life of such devotion and self-sacrifice?"

"Good enough!" he cried, and for a moment his merry laughter drowned the singing overhead.

"But will the world think so?"

"Assuredly. But who cares what the world thinks?"

"We do, dear—we must!"

And then, while the song went on, she began to depreciate herself in a low voice and with a creeping sense of hypocrisy—to talk of her former life in London as a danger, of the tobacco-shop, the foreign clubs, the music hall, and all the mire and slime with which she had been besmirched. "Everything is known now, dear. Have you never thought of this? It is your duty to think of it."

But he only laughed again with a joyous voice. "What's the odds?" he said. "The world is made up for the most part of low, selfish, sensual beings, incapable of belief in noble aims. Every innovator in such a world exposes himself to the risk of being slandered or ridiculed, or even shut up in a lunatic asylum. But who wouldn't rather be St. Theresa in her cell than Catharine of Russia on her throne? And in your case, what does it come to anyway? Only that you've gone through the fiery furnace and come out unscathed. All the better—you'll be a living witness, a proof that it is possible to pass through this wicked Babylon unharmed and untouched."

"Yes, if I were a man—but with a woman it is so different! It is an honour to a man to have conquered the world, but a disgrace to a woman to have fought with it. Yes, believe me, I know what I'm saying. That's the cruel tragedy in a woman's life, do what you will to hide it. And then you are so much in the eye of the world; and besides your own position there is your family's, your uncle's. Think what it would be if the world pointed the finger of scorn at your—at your mission—at your high and noble aims—and all on account of me! You would cease to love me-and I—I——"

"Listen!" He had been shuffling restlessly on the pavement before her. "Here I stand! Here are you! Let the waves of public opinion dash themselves against us—we stand or fall together!" "Oh, oh, oh!"

She was crying on his breast, but with what mixed and conflicting feelings! Joy, pain, delight, dread, hope, disappointment. She had tried to dishonour herself in his eyes, and it would have broken her heart if she had succeeded. But she had failed and he had triumphed, and that was harder still to bear.

From overhead they heard the last lines of the song:

Erreicht den Hof mit Mueh und Noth In seinen Armen das Kind war todt.

"Good-night," she whispered, and fled into the house. The lights in the dining-room were lowered, but she found a telegram that was waiting on the mantelpiece. It was from Sefton, the manager: "Author arrived in London today. Hopes to be at rehearsal Monday. Please be there certain."

The world was seizing her again, the imaginary Gloria was dragging her back with visions of splendour and success. But she crept upstairs and went by the drawing-room on tip-toe. "Not to-night," she thought. "My face is not fit to be seen to-night."

There was a dying fire in her bedroom, and her evening gown had been laid out on a chair in front of it. She put the gown away in a drawer, and out of a box which she drew from beneath the bed she took a far different costume. It was the nurse's outdoor cloak, which she had bought for use at the hospital. She held it a moment by the tips of her fingers and looked at it, and then put it back with a sigh.

"Gloria! is that you?" Rosa called up the stairs; and Drake's cheery voice cried, "Won't our nightingale come down and give us a stave before I go?"

"Too late! Just going to bed. Good-night," she answered. Then she lit a candle and sat down to write a letter.

"It's no use, dear John, I can not! It would be like putting bad money into the offertory to put me into that holy work. Not that I don't admire it, and love it, and worship it. It is the greatest work in the world, and last week I thought I could count everything else as dross, only remembering that I loved you and that nothing else mattered. But now I know that this was a vain and fleeting sentiment, and that the sights and scenes of your work repel me on a nearer view, just as the hospital repelled me in the early mornings when the wards were being cleaned and the wounds dressed, and before the flowers were laid about.

"Oh, forgive me, forgive me! But if I am fit to join your life at all it can not be in London. That 'old serpent called the devil and Satan' would be certain to torment me here. I could not live within sight and sound of London and go on with the life you live. London would drag me back. I feel as if it were an earlier lover, and I must fly away from it. Is that possible? Can we go elsewhere? It is a monstrous demand, I know. Say you can not agree to it. Say so at once—it will serve me right."

The stout watchman of the New Inn was calling midnight when Glory stole out to post her letter. It fell into the letter-box with a thud, and she crept back like a guilty thing.



XVI.

Next morning Mrs. Callender heard John Storm singing to himself before he left his bedroom, and she was standing at the bottom of the stairs when he came down three steps at a time.

"Bless me, laddie," she said, "to see your face shining a body would say that somebody had left ye a legacy or bought ye a benefice instead of taking your church frae ye!"

"Why, yes, and better than both, and that's just what I was going to tell you."

"You must be in a hurry to do it, too, coming downstairs like a cataract."

"You came down like a cataract yourself once on a time, auntie; I'll lay my life on that."

"Aye, did I, and not sae lang since neither. And fools and prudes cried 'Oh!' and called me a tomboy. But, hoots; I was nought but a body born a wee before her time. All the lasses are tomboys now, bless them, the bright heart-some things!"

"Auntie," said John softly, seating himself at the breakfast table, "what d'ye think?"

She eyed him knowingly. "Nay, I'm ower thrang working to be bothered thinking. Out with it, laddie."

He looked wise. "Don't you remember saying—that work like mine wanted a woman's hand in it?"

Her old eyes blinked. "Maybe I did, but what of it?"

"Well, I've taken your advice, and now a woman's hand is coming into it to guide it and direct it."

"It must be the right hand, though, mind that."

"It will be the right hand, auntie."

"Weel, that's grand," with another twinkle. "I thought it might be the left, ye see, and ye might be putting a wedding-ring on it!" And then she burst into a peal of laughter.

"However did you find it out?" he said, with looks of astonishment.

"Tut, laddie, love and a cough can not be hidden. And to think a woman couldna see through you, too! But come," tapping the table with both hands, "who is she?"

"Guess."

"Not one of your Sisters—no?" with hesitation.

"No," with emphasis.

"Some other simpering thing, na doot-they're all alike these days."

"But didn't you say the girls were all tomboys now?"

"And if I did, d'ye want a body to be singing the same song always? But come, what like is she? When I hear of a lassie I like fine to know her colour first. What's her complexion?"

"Guess again."

"Is she fair? But what a daft auld dunce I am!—to be sure she's fair."

"Why, how did you know that, now?"

"Pooh! They say a dark man is a jewel in a fair woman's eye, and I'll warrant it's as true the other way about. But what's her name?"

John's face suddenly straightened and he pretended not to hear.

"What's her name?" stamping with both feet.

"Dear me, auntie, what an ugly old cap you're wearing!"

"Ugly?" reaching up to the glass. "Who says it's ugly?"

"I do."

"Tut! you're only a bit boy, born yesterday. But, man, what's all this botherment about telling a lassie's name?"

"I'll bring her to see you, auntie."

"I should think you will, indeed! and michty quick, too!"

This was on Sunday, and by the first post on Monday John Storm received Glory's letter. It fell on him like a blast out of a cloud in the black northeast, and cut him to the heart's core. He read it again, and being alone he burst into laughter. He took it up a third time, and when he had finished there was something at his throat that seemed to choke him. His first impulse was fury. He wanted to rush off to Glory and insult her, to ask her if she was mad or believed him to be so. Because she was a coward herself, being slave-bound to the world and afraid to fight it face to face, did she wish to make a coward of him also—to see him sneak away from the London that had kicked him, like a cur with its tail between its legs?

After this there came an icy chill and an awful consciousness that mightier forces were at work than any mere human weakness. It was the world itself, the great pitiless world, that was dividing them again as it had divided them before, but irrevocably now-not as a playful nurse that puts petted children apart, but as a torrent that tears the cliffs asunder. "Leave the world, my son, and return to your unfinished vows." Could it be true that this was only another reminder of his broken obedience?

Then came pity. If Glory was slave-bound to the world, which of us was not in chains to something? And the worst slavery of all was slavery to self. But that was an abyss he dared not look into; and he began to think tenderly of Glory, to tell himself how much she had to sacrifice, to remember his anger and to be ashamed.

A week passed, and he went about his work in a helpless way, like a derelict without rudder or sail and with the sea roaring about it. Every afternoon when he came home from Soho Mrs. Callender would trip into the hall wearing a new cap with a smart bow, and finding that he was alone she would say, "Not to-day, then?"

"Not to-day," he would answer, and they would try to smile. But seeing the stamp of suffering on his face, she said at last, "Tut, laddie! they love too much who die for love."

On the Sunday afternoon following he turned again toward Clement's Inn. He had come to a decision at last, and was calm and even content, yet his happiness was like a gourd which had grown up in a day, and the morrow's sun had withered it.

Glory had been to rehearsal every day that week. Going to the theatre on Monday night she had said to herself, "There can be no harm in rehearsing—I'm not compelled to play." Notwithstanding her nervousness, the author had complimented her on her passion and self-abandonment, and going home she had thought: "I might even go through the first performance and then give it all up. If I had a success, that would be beautiful, splendid, almost heroic—it would be thrilling to abandon everything." Not hearing from John, she told herself he must be angry, and she felt sorry for him. "He doesn't know yet how much I am going to do." Thus the other woman in her tempted and overcame her, and drew her on from day to day.

Mrs. Macrae sent Lord Robert to invite her to luncheon on Sunday. "There can be no harm in going there," she thought. She went with Rosa, and was charmed with the lively, gay, and brilliant company. Clever and beautiful women, clever and handsome men, and nearly all of them of her own profession. The mistress of the mansion kept open house after church parade on Sunday, and she sat at the bottom of her table, dressed in black velvet, with the Archdeacon on her right and a famous actor on her left. Lord Robert sat at the head and talked to a lady whose remarks were heard all over the room; but Lady Robert was nowhere to be seen; there was a hush when her name was mentioned, and then a whispered rumour that she had differences with her husband, and had scandalized her mother by some act of indiscretion.

Glory's face beamed, and for the first half-hour she seemed to be on the point of breaking into a rapturous "Well!" Nearly opposite to her at the table sat a lady whose sleepy look and drowsy voice and airs of languor showed that she was admired, and that she knew it. Glory found her very amusing, and broke into little trills of laughter at her weary, withering comments. This drew the attention of some of the men; they found the contrast interesting. The conversation consisted first of hints, half signs, brilliant bits of by-play, and Glory rose to it like a fish to the May-fly. Then it fell upon bicycling and the costumes ladies wore for it. The languid one commented upon the female fetich, the skirt, and condemned "bloomers," whereupon Glory declared that they were just charming, and being challenged (by a gentleman) for her reasons she said, "Because when a girl's got them on she feels as if she's an understudy for a man, and may even have a chance of playing the part itself in another and a better world."