of it was a broad stone seat, with carved back and ends.  There was not a house in sight; beyond there was only the green valley-end running up into the down, which was here densely covered with thickets.  It was perfectly still; and the only sound was the liquid springing of the water in the pool, and the birds singing in the bushes.  Howard had a sudden sense that the place held a significance for him.  Had he been there before, in some dream or vision?  He could not tell; but it was strangely familiar to him.  Even so the trees had leaned together, and the clear ripples pulsed upon the bank.  Something strange and beautiful had befallen him there.  What was it?  The mind could not unravel the secret.

He sat there long in the sun, his eyes fixed upon the pool, in a blissful content that was beyond thought.  Then he slowly retraced his steps, full of an intense inner happiness.

He found his aunt in the garden, sitting out in the sun.  He bent down to kiss her, and she detained his hand for a moment.  “So you are at home?” she said, “and happy?—­that is what I had wished and hoped.  You have been to the pool—­yes, that is a lovely spot.  It was that, I think, which made your uncle buy the place; he had a great love of water—­and in my unhappy days here, when I had lost him, I used often to go there and wish things were otherwise.  But that is all over now!”

After luncheon, Miss Merry excused herself and said she was going to the village to see a farm-labourer’s wife, who had lost a child and was in great distress.  “Poor soul!” said Mrs. Graves.  “Give her my love, and ask her to come and see me as soon as she can.”  Presently as they sat together, Howard smoking, she asked him something about his work.  “Will you tell me what you are doing?” she said.  “I daresay I should not understand, but I like to know what people are thinking about—­don’t use technical terms, but just explain your idea!”

Howard was just in the frame of mind, trying to revive an old train of thought, in which it is a great help to make a statement of the range of a subject; he said so, and began to explain very simply what was in his mind, the essential unity of all religion, and his attempt to disentangle the central motive from outlying schemes and dogmas.  Mrs. Graves heard him attentively, every now and then asking a question, which showed that she was following the drift of his thought.

“Ah, that’s very interesting and beautiful,” she said at last.  “May I say that it is the one thing that attracts me, though I have never followed it philosophically.  Now,” she went on, “I am going to reduce it all to practical terms, and I don’t want to beat about the bush—­there’s no need for that!  I want to ask you a plain question.  Have you any religion or faith of your own?”