It was that question which had moved Wilmot in the Sessions Court, the possibility of purification, that re-gaining of stainlessness which all religions have enshrined in the imagery of sacrifice and the blood of a victim. But that sense of the indomitable which was Johanna's inheritance put an end to idle questioning, for into the shadowy doubts of the mind her power cut with the clean blow of steel.

"But," said Wilmot, "one part of me wants what the other part of me doesn't want; and as for you, I know what it must be to you to see me going back to Challacombe. Who made us, you and me, to fall and struggle so uselessly?"

"God, I reckon," said Johanna, softly patting the sleeping child.

"Ah, yes, so you say; but you don't understand what you're really saying, after all. For what does the word mean? Nothing to anybody. It's only a way of saying we can't understand."

"See here, missus," said Johanna, holding Elizabeth's fat toes in her hand to warm them, "have 'ee ever seen the lights spring out night-times over the moor, when the dimpsy light is coming down?"

"Often."

"Well, there's some lights that come of a farthing dip and some of a lamp, but there's one thing a body can be sure of all of 'em."

"Yes?"

"That when the light starts up, Somebody lighted it. Every light means something human, and it's the same with the pains that wring the heart of us. There's God there somewhere. That's all I know. And I can't tell 'ee what human means, no more'n I can what God means. But where there's lights, there's a man or woman, and where there's heart-pains, there's God, just the same."

It was a deeper rendering of the saying attributed to the Master who incarnated in life the human thirst to render itself god-like. "Cleave the wood, and I am there; lift the stone, and there am I."

A couple of hours later, Johanna crept upstairs with a basin of bread-and-milk for her guest, who lay in the worm-eaten four-poster by the child. But the tinkle of cup and spoon and the prospect of food, more powerful than any whirl of human words, awoke the little sleeping animal. She insisted on sharing Wilmot's meal, fetching out pieces of soaked bread with a pink fore-finger, and happily devouring them as she blinked sleepily in the candlelight.

"She's like a fat skin-stuffed full of warmth," said Wilmot, snuggling the creature closer to her. "But where are you going to sleep to-night, Johanna ?"

"Oh, I'll do well enough on the settle downstairs. I'm strong enough to sleep on the floor if need be."

She was thinking that, as this was the last of the milk in the house, she would have to be up early at the farm for more, since there was now nothing but bread and tea in the house.

that

"Elizabeth," said Wilmot, "do you remember Avis, you used to see when you came to me?"

But Elizabeth shook her head.

"She's just a little shadow now, even to me, you know, Johanna," said Wilmot.

"Iss, and it's better so, for they do say that they can't go, they'm tied down here, as long as we weary for 'em, the dead little ones. My mother used to tell me that, when the wild birds called over the moor. Let the little shadow go, missus, we be going her way fast enough."

"And yet you love your own child so much that once you told me you'd go back to your old life-for her. Would you?"

"If there was no other way to keep her. But I'd never tend her again."

You couldn't do it, Johanna. I don't believe it."

"There's that in me, since I've begun to go up, that would carry me where I'd a mind to go. And I've often wondered, too, whether we weren't bearing for other women what the weaker ones couldn't, we who live like I did, and then it didn't seem so bad. But you've got a hard day to-morrow."

She blew out the light and sat for a long while, gently tapping Wilmot's shoulder as she had done her child's. And under the power of human strength, and in the sweeps of the night wind over the meadows, Wilmot found the force of rest that girdles all the world. Then Johanna stole softly away; had there been any there to watch her face, they would have seen the woman's strength that watched ages ago in the Roman market-place over the sleeping virgins. She lay awake for hours downstairs, for it is one by one to the lonely heights-those heights so hardly gained, flint-strewn too, and at times, as now, crossed by the zigzag lightning of passion. Then at last the dawn crept through the glimmering window-pane, with the twittering of birds and the sullen drip of rain-drops.

CHAPTER XXXII

A BERSERK EXIT

THE old builders often laid the foundations of their strongest bridges on sacks of wool, weight-resisting, though the softest substance procurable. In the same way man, the first conscious bridge-builder in the scale of creation, founds the pillars that support his arches in renunciation, which, though it shrinks from the touch of pain, quivering and sensitive like living flesh, is yet stronger than the more rigid qualities. Call the abyss between the beast and angel in humanity what we may, man, " he who looks up," can only span the depths between the lower life of slavery and the higher life of mastery by pain, often self-inflicted, and always willingly endured. At first the quivering foundations bear their load easily, for it is not until the never-ceasing pressure of the weight becomes felt that the sense of impotent revolt sets in.

It was thus in a mood of conscious self-mastery, the most exhilarating of emotions, that Wilmot returned to Challacombe. Nothing seemed too hard for her to endure, as she wrote a note to Captain Penrice to announce her arrival some time in the course of the day; but she waited in Johanna's cottage till the afternoon before setting out. The sea-wind that greeted her as she left the train seemed like the notes of an orchestra in the rhythm of a triumph song. It was not until she sat at tea with the captain and his wife that the reaction set in. It began at the sight of the prim perfection of that tea-table, as she mentally compared it with the rough-and-ready meals to which she had now become accustomed at Uppacott. The flowers in low vases, the many kinds of cakes, the bright silver; her gorge

rose at it all, when she remembered William's pies and halfboiled potatoes, the liqueurs, the smell of pipes in her uncle's house before the reign of Miss Dorothy Penaluna began. For with the change in viands a change in tone had set in; the eminently calm conversation that skated neatly over the thin ice of the proprieties, the absorption of both husband and wife in details of domestic management and furniture, the chuckling delight of Captain Penrice in the acquisition of two huge Japanese jars at a sale: she watched it all in bewilderment. At last it dawned upon her that the apparent pre-occupation of Captain Dickie in these details was due to his wife's leading. Mrs. Penrice had coldly welcomed Wilmot, and had still more coldly directed the conversation to trifles. The captain took his cue from her, as was sufficiently evident, and Wilmot suspected serious curtain lectures.

When the interminable meal came to an end at last, Wilmot pushed back her chair with a noisy movement that grated on Mrs. Penrice's ears.

"Uncle Dickie, can I speak to you alone?" she said rudely. "There is something I have to ask, before I go across to Tony."

"I will sit in the other room till you are at liberty, Richard," said his wife, with eyebrows rising towards her hair. "Perhaps I might be permitted to remind you that you have a class at seven to-night."

"A Bible-class?" laughed Wilmot. "Uncle Dickie is becoming pious in his old age."

The two women's eyes flashed lancet-glances, and the captain groaned. He only just managed to prevent its being an outward demonstration.

"Your uncle," said Mrs. Penrice, firmly, "has never been one to forget the duty a man of his talents owes to others." "My dear," said the captain, deprecatingly, "I sent