In spite of this triumph, it had taken him still another year to prevail over one of his hearers.  True, she had met him after that first triumphant ordination sermon with her black lashes but half-veiling the admiration that shone warm in the gray of her eyes; and his low assurance, “Nance, you please me!  Really you do!” as his yellow eyes lingered down her rounded slenderness from summer bonnet to hem of summer gown, rippled her face with a colour she had to laugh away.

Yet she had been obstinate and wondering.  There had to be a year in which she knew that one she dreamed of would come back; another in which she believed he might; another in which she hoped he would—­and yet another in which she realised that dreams and hopes alike were vain—­vain, though there were times in which she seemed to feel again the tingling life of that last hand-clasp; times when he called to her; times when she had the absurd consciousness that his mind pressed upon hers.  There had been so many years and so much wonder—­and no one came.  It had been foolish indeed.  And then came a year of wondering at the other.  The old wonder concerning this one, excited by a certain fashion of rendering his head in unison with his shoulders—­as might the statue of Perfect Beauty turn upon its pedestal—­with its baser residue of suspicion, had been happily allayed by a closer acquaintance with Allan.  One must learn, it seemed, to distrust those lightning-strokes of prejudice that flash but once at the first contact between human clouds.

Yet in the last year there had come another wonder that excited a suspicion whose troubling-power was absurdly out of all true proportion.

It was in the matter of seeing things—­that is, funny things.

Doubtless she had told him a few things more or less funny that had seemed to move him to doubt or perplexity, or to mere seriousness; but, indeed, they had seemed less funny to her after that.  For example, she had told Aunt Bell the anecdote of the British lady of title who says to her curate, concerning a worthy relative by marriage lately passed away, toward whom she has felt kindly despite his inferior station:  “Of course I couldn’t know him here—­but we shall meet in heaven.”  Aunt Bell had been edified by this, remarking earnestly that such differences would indeed be wiped out in heaven.  Yet when Nancy went to Allan in a certain bubbling condition over the anecdote itself and Aunt Bell’s comment thereon, he made her repeat it slowly, after the first hurried telling, and had laughed but awkwardly with her, rather as if it were expected of him—­with an eye vacant of all but wonder—­like a traveller not sure he had done right to take the left-hand turn at the last cross-roads.

Again, the bishop who ordained him had, in a relaxed and social moment after the ceremony, related that little classic of Bishop Meade, who, during the fight over a certain disestablishment measure, was asked by a lobbyist how he would vote.  The dignified prelate had replied that he would vote for the bill, for he held that every man should have the right to choose his own way to heaven.  None the less, he would continue to be certain that a gentleman would always take the Episcopal way.  To Nancy Allan retold this, adding,