And he flung it back to her, “If I had had such a woman as you in my life——­”

“Oh, don’t, don’t.”  The radiance died.  “What has any woman to do with it?  It is you—­yourself, who must stand the test.”

After the ringing words there was dead silence.  Roger sat leaning forward, his eyes not upon her, but upon the fire.  In his white face there was no hint of weakness; there was, rather, pride, obstinacy, the ruggedness of inflexible purpose.

“I am afraid,” he said at last, “that I have not stood the test.”

Her clear eyes met his squarely.  “Then meet it now.”

For a moment he blazed.  “I know now what you think of me, that I am a man who has shirked.”

“You know I do not think that.”

He surrendered.  “I do know it.  And I need your help.”

Shaken by their emotion, they became conscious that this was indeed their hour.  She told him all that she had dreamed he might do.  Her color came and went as she drew the picture of his future.  Some of the advice she gave was girlish, impracticable, but through it all ran the thread of her faith to him.  She felt that she had the solution.  That through service he was to find—­God.

It was a wonderful hour for Roger Poole.  An hour which was to shine like a star in his memory.  Mary’s mind had a largeness of vision, the ability to rise above the lesser things in order to reach the greater, which seemed super-feminine.  It was not until afterward when he reviewed what they had said, that he was conscious that she had placed the emphasis on what he was to do.  Not once had she spoken of what had been done—­not once had she spoken of his wife.

“You mustn’t bury yourself.  You must find a way to reach first one group and then another.  And after a time you’ll begin to feel that you can face the world.”

He winced.  As she put it into words, he began to see himself as others must have seen him.  And the review was not a pleasant one.

In a sense that hour with Mary Ballard in the screened space by the fire was the hour of Roger Poole’s spiritual awakening.  He realized for the first time that he had missed the meaning of the candles on the altar, the voices in the choir; he had missed the knowledge that one must spend and be spent in the service of humanity.

“I must think it over,” he said.  “You mustn’t expect too much of me all at once.”

“I shall expect—­everything.”

As she spoke and smiled, and it seemed to him that his old garment of fear slipped from him—­as if he were clothed in the shining armor of her confidence in him.

They had little time to talk after that, for it was not long before they heard without the bray of a motor horn.

Roger rose at once.

“I must go before they come,” he said.

But she laid her hand upon his arm.  “No,” she said, “you are not to go.  You are never going to run away from the world again.  Set aside the screen, please—­and stay.”