persons, mostly men, who sat on the fence between Orthodoxy and Atheism,
thought highly of Mr. Harding's sermons, and even sometimes came down
on his side. And, of all signs surely the most promising for a West End
clergyman's success, smart people flocked to him to be married, and Arum
lilies were perpetually being carried in and out of his chancel, which
was adorned with Morris windows. He was married to a woman who managed
to be admirable without being dull, Lady Sophia, daughter of the late
Earl of Mansford, and sister of the present peer. He was comfortably off.
His health as a rule was good, though occasionally he suffered from some
obscure form of dyspepsia. And he was still comparatively young, just
forty-eight.

Nevertheless, as Evelyn Malling immediately perceived, Mr. Harding was
not a happy man.

In appearance he was remarkable. Of commanding height, with a big frame,
a striking head and countenance, and a pair of keen gray eyes, he looked
like a man who was intended by nature to dominate. White threads appeared
in his thick brown hair, which he wore parted in the middle. But his
face, which was clean-shaven, had not many telltale lines. And he did not
look more than his age.

The sadness noted by Malling was at first evasive and fleeting, not
indellibly fixed in the puckers of a forehead, or in the down-drawn
corners of a mouth. It was as a thin, almost impalpable mist, that can
scarcely be seen, yet that alters all the features in a landscape ever
so faintly. Like a shadow it traveled across the eyes, obscured the
forehead, lay about the lips. And as a shadow lifts it lifted. But it
soon returned, like a thing uneasy that is becoming determined to
discover an abiding-place.