the best of him, that was all.  Not quite all; for she had still to make the best of herself; and the two things seemed, at moments, incompatible.  To guard herself from all contact with the invading evil; to take her stand bravely, to raise the spiritual ramparts and retire behind them, that was no more than her bare duty to herself and him.  She must create a standard for him by keeping herself for ever high and pure.  He loved her still, in his fashion; he must also respect her, and, in respecting her, respect goodness—­the highest goodness—­in her.

Accustomed to move in a region of spiritual certainty, Anne was untroubled by any misgivings as to the soundness of her attitude.  It was open to no criticism except the despicable wisdom of the world.

Her chief difficulty was poor Majendie’s imperishable affection.  She tried to protect herself from it to-night by feigning drowsiness.  She lay still as a stone, stiff with her fear.  Once, at midnight, she felt him stir, and turn, and raise himself on his elbow.  She was conscious through all her unhappy being of the adoring tenderness with which he watched her sleep.

At last she slept, and sleeping, she dreamed a strange dream.  She found herself again in Westleydale, walking in green aisles of the holy, mystic, cathedral woods.  The tall beech-stems were the pillars of the temple.  A still light came through them, guiding her to the beech-tree that she knew.  And she saw an angel lying under the beech-tree.  It lay on its side, with its wings stretched out so that the right wing covered the left.  As she approached, it raised the covering wing, and in the warm hollow of the other she saw that it cradled a little naked child.  And at the sight there came a thorn in her breast that pricked her.  The child stirred in its sleep, and crawled to the place of the angel’s breast, and it fondled it with searching lips and hands.  Then it wailed, and as she heard its cry the thorn pressed sharper into Anne’s breast; and the angel’s eyes turned to her with an immortal anguish, and pity, and despair.  She looked, and saw that its breast was as the breast of the little child.  And she was moved to compassion at the helplessness of them both, of the heavenly and of the earthly thing; and she stooped and lifted the child, and laid it to her own breast, and nourished it; and had peace from her pain.

CHAPTER XVIII

It was the first day in Lent.  Anne had come down in a state of depression.  She was silent during breakfast, and Majendie became absorbed in his morning paper.  So much wisdom he had learnt.  Presently he gave a sudden murmur of interest, and looked up with a smile.  “I see,” said he, “your friend Mrs. Gardner has got a little son.”

“Has she?” said Anne coldly.

The blood flushed in her cheeks, and a sudden pang went through her and rose to her breasts with a pricking pain, such pain as she had felt once in her dream, and only once in her waking life before.  She thought of dear little Mrs. Gardner, and tried to look glad.  She failed miserably, achieving an expression of more than usual austerity.  It was the expression that Majendie had come to associate with Lent.  He thought he saw in it the spiritual woman’s abhorrence of her natural destiny.  And with the provocation of it the devil entered into him.