The "fairyland of science and the long results of time," passing from
the Bishop's hands into the child's, were turned into such graphic
tales, for Eleanor, with all her airy charm, struck straight from the
shoulder. Never was there a sense of superiority on the Bishop's side,
or of being lectured on Eleanor's.

"Why do you like to walk with the Bishop?" Mrs. Vail asked, curiously.

"Because he hasn't any morals," said the little girl, fresh from a
Sunday-school lesson.

Saturday night Mr. Fielding stayed late in the city, and Dick was with
his lady-love at the Vails; so the Bishop, after dining alone, went down
on the wide beach below the house and walked, as he smoked his cigar.
Through the week he had been restless under the constant prick of a duty
undone, which he could not make up his mind to do. Over and over he
heard his friend's agitated voice. "If you had had temptations like
mine, trials like mine, I would try to follow you," it said. He knew
that the man would be good as his word. He could perhaps win Dick's
happiness for him if he would pick up the gauntlet of that speech. If he
could bring himself to tell Fielding the whole story that he had shut so
long ago into silence--that he, too, had cared for Eleanor Gray, and had
given her up in a harder way than the other, for the Bishop had made it
possible that the Southerner should marry her. But it was like tearing
his soul to do it. No one but his mother, who was dead, had known this
one secret of a life like crystal. The Bishop's reticence was the
intense sort, that often goes with a frank exterior, and he had never
cared for another woman. Some men's hearts are open pleasure-grounds,
where all the world may come and go, and the earth is dusty with many
feet; and some are like theatres, shut perhaps to the world in general,