colleague on his death bed to befriend the daughter, was but
moderately successful. The wife had the characteristics of her race;
largeness and liberality of view, high aspirations for humanity,
considerable intelligence, and a certain tendency towards mysticism of
the Swedenborgian type, qualities that her husband neither shared nor
could appreciate. It was perhaps as well, therefore that she died at
the birth of her only son, Godfrey, three years after her marriage.

Mr. Knight never married again. Matrimony was not a state which
appealed to his somewhat shrunken nature. Although he admitted its
necessity to the human race, of it in his heart he did not approve,
nor would he ever have undertaken it at all had it not been for a
sense of obligation. This attitude, because it made for virtue as he
understood it, he set down to virtue, as we are all apt to do, a
sacrifice of the things of earth and of the flesh to the things of
heaven, and of the spirit. In fact, it was nothing of the sort, but
only the outcome of individual physical and mental conditions. Towards
female society, however hallowed and approved its form, he had no
leanings. Also the child was a difficulty, so great indeed that at
times almost he regretted that a wise Providence had not thought fit
to take it straight to the joys of heaven with its mother, though
afterwards, as the boy's intelligence unfolded, he developed interest
in him. This, however, he was careful to keep in check, lest he should
fall into the sin of inordinate affection, denounced by St. Paul in
common with other errors.

Finally, he found an elderly widow, named Parsons, who acted as his
housekeeper, and took charge of his son. Fortunately for Godfrey her
sense of parenthood was more pronounced than that of his father, and
she, who had lost two children of her own, played the part of mother