some alchemistic process changing them to gold as he stared. He
had the sense of not being alone in the room, of the presence of
another self observing from without the stirring of subconscious
impulses that sent flushes of humiliation to his forehead. At
length he stood up, and with the gesture of a man who wishes to
give outward expression to his purpose--to establish, as it were,
a moral alibi--swept the letters into a heap and carried them
toward the grate. But it would have taken too long to burn all
the packets. He turned back to the table and one by one fitted
the pages into their envelopes; then he tied up the letters and
put them back into the locked drawer.



III


It was one of the laws of Glennard's intercourse with Miss Trent
that he always went to see her the day after he had resolved to
give her up. There was a special charm about the moments thus
snatched from the jaws of renunciation; and his sense of their
significance was on this occasion so keen that he hardly noticed
the added gravity of her welcome.

His feeling for her had become so vital a part of him that her
nearness had the quality of imperceptibly readjusting his point of
view, so that the jumbled phenomena of experience fell at once
into a rational perspective. In this redistribution of values the
sombre retrospect of the previous evening shrank to a mere cloud
on the edge of consciousness. Perhaps the only service an unloved