received the Viaticum. He was fully vested. I could just see his
venerable white head on the pillow. After the Communion one of the canons
knelt by him and recited the Creed of Pope Pius IV."

Laura started. But Helbeck did not notice the sudden tremulous movement
of the hands lying in his. He was sitting rigidly upright, the eyes half
closed, his mind busy with the past.

"And as he recited it, the bands that held my own heart seemed to break.
I had not been able to approach any clause of that creed for months
without danger of blasphemy; and now--it was like a bird escaped from the
nets. The snare is broken--and we are delivered! The dying man raised his
voice in a last effort; he repeated the oath with which the Creed ends.
The Gospels were handed to him; he kissed them with fervour. '_Sic me
Deus adjuvet, et Sancta Dei Evangelia_.' 'So may God help me, and His
Holy Gospels!' I joined in the words mentally, overcome with joy. Before
me, as in a vision, had risen the majesty and glory of the Catholic
Church; I felt her foundations once more under my feet."

He drew a long breath. Then he turned. Laura felt his eyes upon her, as
though in doubt. She herself neither moved nor spoke; she was all
hearing, absorbed in a passionate prescience of things more vital yet to
come.

"Laura!"--his voice dropped--"I want you to know it all, to understand me
through and through. I will try that there shall not be a word to offend
you. That scene I have described to you was for me only the beginning of
another apostasy. I had no longer the excuse of doubt. I believed and
trembled. But for two years after that, I was every day on the brink of
ruining my own soul--and another's. The first, the only woman I ever