me most; and by degrees I was brought to see daylight.  Since then my one desire has been to hand on the true view to others, and that is what I was trying to do to-day; though it is only lately that I have preached hereabout.  The first months of my ministry have been spent in the North of England among strangers, where I preferred to make my earliest clumsy attempts, so as to acquire courage before undergoing that severest of all tests of one’s sincerity, addressing those who have known one, and have been one’s companions in the days of darkness.  If you could only know, Tess, the pleasure of having a good slap at yourself, I am sure—­”

“Don’t go on with it!” she cried passionately, as she turned away from him to a stile by the wayside, on which she bent herself.  “I can’t believe in such sudden things!  I feel indignant with you for talking to me like this, when you know—­when you know what harm you’ve done me!  You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!  Out upon such—­I don’t believe in you—­I hate it!”

“Tess,” he insisted; “don’t speak so!  It came to me like a jolly new idea!  And you don’t believe me?  What don’t you believe?”

“Your conversion.  Your scheme of religion.”

“Why?”

She dropped her voice.  “Because a better man than you does not believe in such.”

“What a woman’s reason!  Who is this better man?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“Well,” he declared, a resentment beneath his words seeming ready to spring out at a moment’s notice, “God forbid that I should say I am a good man—­and you know I don’t say any such thing.  I am new to goodness, truly; but newcomers see furthest sometimes.”

“Yes,” she replied sadly.  “But I cannot believe in your conversion to a new spirit.  Such flashes as you feel, Alec, I fear don’t last!”

Thus speaking she turned from the stile over which she had been leaning, and faced him; whereupon his eyes, falling casually upon the familiar countenance and form, remained contemplating her.  The inferior man was quiet in him now; but it was surely not extracted, nor even entirely subdued.

“Don’t look at me like that!” he said abruptly.

Tess, who had been quite unconscious of her action and mien, instantly withdrew the large dark gaze of her eyes, stammering with a flush, “I beg your pardon!” And there was revived in her the wretched sentiment which had often come to her before, that in inhabiting the fleshly tabernacle with which Nature had endowed her she was somehow doing wrong.

“No, no!  Don’t beg my pardon.  But since you wear a veil to hide your good looks, why don’t you keep it down?”

She pulled down the veil, saying hastily, “It was mostly to keep off the wind.”