"All right, Daddy; don't strain yourself. It's jolly down here, isn't
it?" She got up, stretched herself a little, and moved away, looking
like a very tall child, with her short hair curling in round her head.

Pierson, watching her vanish past the curtain, thought: 'What a lovely
thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following, went to the
piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in E minor. He
had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy passion. It was his
way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings; a way which never quite
failed him.

At Cambridge, he had intended to take up music as a profession, but
family tradition had destined him for Holy Orders, and an emotional
Church revival of that day had caught him in its stream. He had always
had private means, and those early years before he married had passed
happily in an East-End parish. To have not only opportunity but power to
help in the lives of the poor had been fascinating; simple himself, the
simple folk of his parish had taken hold of his heart. When, however, he
married Agnes Heriot, he was given a parish of his own on the borders
of East and West, where he had been ever since, even after her death had
nearly killed him. It was better to go on where work and all reminded
him of one whom he had resolved never to forget in other ties. But he
knew that his work had not the zest it used to have in her day, or even
before her day. It may well be doubted whether he, who had been in Holy
Orders twenty-six years, quite knew now what he believed. Everything had
become circumscribed, and fixed, by thousands of his own utterances; to
have taken fresh stock of his faith, to have gone deep into its roots,
would have been like taking up the foundations of a still-standing
house. Some men naturally root themselves in the inexpressible--for