“That their lives should be fuller!” she exclaimed.

“That drudgery and despair should be replaced by interest and hope,” he went on, “slavery by freedom.  In other words, that the whole attitude toward life should be changed, that life should appear a bright thing rather than a dark thing, that labour should be willing vicarious instead of forced and personal.  Otherwise, any happiness worth having is out of the question.”

She was listening now with parted lips, apparently unconscious of the fixity of her gaze.

“You mean it is a choice between that or nothing,” she said, in a low voice.  “That there is no use in lifting people out of the treadmill —­and removing the terror of poverty unless you can give them something more—­than I have got.”

“And something more—­than I have got,”—­he was suddenly moved to reply...

Presently, while the silence still held between them, the door opened and startled them into reality.  Mr. Bentley came in.

The old gentleman gave no sign, as they rose to meet him, of a sense of tension in the atmosphere he had entered—­yet each felt—­somehow, that he knew.  The tension was released.  The same thought occurred to both as they beheld the peaceful welcome shining in his face, “Here is what we are seeking.  Why try to define it?”

“To think that I have been gossiping with Mrs. Meyer, while you were waiting for me!” he said.  “She keeps the little florist’s shop at the corner of Tower Street, and she gave me these.  I little guessed what good use I should have for them, my dear.”

He held out to her three fragrant, crimson roses that matched the responsive colour in her cheeks as she thanked him and pinned them on her gown.  He regarded her an instant.

“But I’m sure Mr. Hodder has entertained you,” Mr. Bentley turned, and laid his hand on the rector’s shoulder.

“Most successfully,” said Alison, cutting short his protest.  And she smiled at Hodder, faintly.

CHAPTER XVI

AMID THE ENCIRCLING GLOOM

I

Hodder, in spite of a pressing invitation to remain for supper, had left them together.  He turned his face westward, in the opposite direction from the parish house, still under the spell of that moment of communion which had lasted—­he knew not how long, a moment of silent revelation to them both.  She, too, was storm-tossed!  She, too, who had fared forth so gallantly into life, had conquered only to be beaten down—­to lose her way.

This discovery strained the very fibres of his being.  So close he had been to her—­so close that each had felt, simultaneously, complete comprehension of the other, comprehension that defied words, overbore disagreements.  He knew that she had felt it.  He walked on at first in a bewildered ecstasy, careless of aught else save that in a moment they two had reached out in the darkness and touched hands.  Never had his experience known such communion, never had a woman meant what this woman meant, and yet he could not define that meaning.  What need of religion, of faith in an unseen order when this existed?  To have this woman in the midst of chaos would be enough!