of the spirit--could make them blaze with candles and smoke with
incense, make them flush with pictures and flowers. The cost, in
the common phrase, of keeping them up fell wholly on the generous
heart.



CHAPTER II.



He had this year, on the eve of his anniversary, as happened, an
emotion not unconnected with that range of feeling. Walking home
at the close of a busy day he was arrested in the London street by
the particular effect of a shop-front that lighted the dull brown
air with its mercenary grin and before which several persons were
gathered. It was the window of a jeweller whose diamonds and
sapphires seemed to laugh, in flashes like high notes of sound,
with the mere joy of knowing how much more they were "worth" than
most of the dingy pedestrians staring at them from the other side
of the pane. Stransom lingered long enough to suspend, in a
vision, a string of pearls about the white neck of Mary Antrim, and
then was kept an instant longer by the sound of a voice he knew.
Next him was a mumbling old woman, and beyond the old woman a
gentleman with a lady on his arm. It was from him, from Paul
Creston, the voice had proceeded: he was talking with the lady of
some precious object in the window. Stransom had no sooner
recognised him than the old woman turned away; but just with this
growth of opportunity came a felt strangeness that stayed him in
the very act of laying his hand on his friend's arm. It lasted but