"What is it?" said Mrs. Chepstow, surprised at the sudden radiance in
Nigel's face, seeing before her for the first time a man she could not
read, but a man whose physique now forcibly appealed to her--seemed to
become splendid under some inward influence, as a half-naked athlete's
does when he slowly fills his lungs, clenches his fists, and hardens all
his muscles. "What is it?"

But he did not tell her. He could not tell her. And he got up to go
away. As he passed the piano, he looked again at the score of "The Dream
of Gerontius."

"Are you fond of that?" he asked her.

"What? Oh--'Gerontius'"

She let her eyes rest for a brief instant on his face.

"I love it. It carries me away--as the soul is carried away by the
angel. 'This child of clay to me was given'--do you remember?"

"Yes."

He bade her good-bye. The last thing he looked at in her room was "The
Scarlet Letter," bound in white, lying upon her table. And he glanced
from it to her before he went out and shut the door.

Just outside in the corridor he met a neatly dressed French girl, whose
eyes were very red. She had evidently been crying long and bitterly. She
carried over her arm the skirt of a gown, and she went into the room
which communicated with Mrs. Chepstow's sitting-room.