be, and a profound hero-worship for the captain of the school Eleven,
and excursions out of bounds, when his excess of pocket-money would
enable him to stand treat all round? "Why not?" this friend of his used
to say. "Was it so very impossible for one to get back the cares and
interests, the ambitions, the amusements, the high spirits of one's
boyhood?" And if he now were to tell her that a far greater miracle had
happened to himself? That at an age when he had fancied he had done and
seen most things worth doing and seeing, when the past seemed to
contain everything worth having, and there was nothing left but to try
how the tedious hours could be got over; when a listless _ennui_ was
eating his very heart out--that he should be presented, as it were, with
a new lease of life, with stirring hopes and interests, with a new and
beautiful faith, with a work that was a joy in itself, whether any
reward was to be or no? And surely he could not fail to express to Lord
Evelyn and to herself his gratitude for this strange thing.

These are but the harsh outlines of what, so far, he wrote; but there
was a feeling in it--a touch of gladness and of pathos here and
there--that had never before been in any of his writing, and of which he
was himself unconscious.

But at this point he paused, and his breathing grew quick. It was so
difficult to write in these measured terms. When he resumed, he wrote
more rapidly.

What wonder, he made bold to ask her, if amidst all this bewildering
change some still stranger dream of what might be possible in the future
should have taken possession of him? She and he were leagued in sympathy
as regarded the chief object of their lives; it was her voice that had
inspired him; might he not hope that they should go forward together, in