The last Gospel was then read, and she followed Ulick out of church.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

On getting outside the church, they were surprised to find that it had been raining.  The shower had laid the dust, freshened the air, and upon the sky there was a beautiful flowerlike bloom; the white clouds hung in the blue air unlifting fugitive palace and tower, and when Evelyn and Ulick looked into this mysterious cloudland, their hearts overflowed with an intense joy.

She opened her parasol, and told him that her father was lunching with the Jesuits.  But he and she were going to dine together at Dowlands; and after dinner they were not to forget to practise the Bach sonata which was in the programme for the evening concert.  She thought of the long day before them, and with mixed wonderment and pleasure of how much better they would know each other at the end of the day.  She wanted to know how he thought and felt about things; and it seemed to her that he could tell her all that she yearned to know, though what this was she did not know herself.

There were strange hills and valleys and fabulous prospects in the great white cloud which hung at the end of the suburban street, and it seemed to her that she would like to wander with him there among the white dells, and to stand with him upon the high pinnacles.  She was happy in an infinite cloudland while he told her of her father’s struggle to obtain mastery in St. Joseph’s.  But she experienced a passing pang of regret that she had not been present to witness the first struggles of the reformation.

She was interested in the part that Ulick had played in it.  He told her how almost every week he had written an article developing some new phase of the subject, and Evelyn told him how her father had told her of the extraordinary ingenuity and energy with which he had continued the propaganda from week to week.  When her father was called away to negotiate some financial difficulty, Ulick had taken charge of the rehearsals.  Mr. Innes had told Evelyn that Ulick had displayed an unselfish devotion, and she added that he had been to her father what Liszt had been to Wagner, and while paying this compliment she looked at him in admiration, thanking him with her eyes.  Had it not been for him, her father might have died of want of appreciation, killed by Father Gordon’s obstinacy.

“But you came to him,” she said, speaking unwillingly, “when I selfishly left him.”

Ulick would not concede that he was worthy of any distinction in the victory of the old music; it would have achieved its legitimate triumph without his aid.  He had merely done his duty like any private soldier in the ranks.  But from first to last all had depended upon Monsignor.  Mr. Innes had shown more energy and practical intelligence than anyone, not excepting Evelyn herself, would have credited him with; he had interested many people by his enthusiasm,