"I saw her at the glove counter where she is employed, and was puzzled by her resemblance to a face I had admired in San Francisco. I heard out there that some mystery hung about her, but no hint of any impropriety on her part. Such delicacy of features and perfect coloring are rare, and faces so beautiful etch deep on one's memory. Belmont painted her as 'Aurora' in his group, and gave me a photograph of her head; but he spoke of her with respect, and commented on her proud prudishness in refusing to sit in his studio. You recollect Sidney Forsyth? He carried me to a 'night school' for working girls, established by his mother, and there I first saw 'Aurora,' hard at work in the bookkeeping class. He admired her extravagantly, and told me that despite her girlish appearance she was a widow with a child, and lived like a nun in the very small cottage of an old uncle. Last summer, in hunting through a discarded trunk hastily packed at Oxford while you were on the Continent, I found among several sheets from your portfolio that water-color sketch, and it revived my old suspicion that some early tragedy had driven you into cloisters. Sooner or later one finds on almost every man's road through life the sign-post, _dux femina facti_, and I stumbled against yours when I had ceased to conjecture your motive for a course that astounded your friends. Last night, after you left me, I verified a few dates in my diary, and to-day's visit to Brooklyn made it absolutely certain my identification was correct. I congratulate you, and am heartily glad that I helped to flush your family covey." "Congratulations sound grim after all I passed through to-day. Did you ever dream you were dying from thirst, and just as you stooped to drink the spring vanished? I have realized that tantalizing vision. Nona will never forgive me, never accept my explanation, never believe my statements, never tolerate the sight of me. She hates me with an intensity that is sickening, and because the child is mine she would rather see him in his coffin than in my arms. She hugs to her heart the conviction that I am utterly vile, because she wants to believe the worst, and furiously rejects any attempt to prove that I am not a doubly dyed hypocrite and villain. You have been so loyal a friend, I should like to tell you all that occurred." When he finished a detailed recital of his interview, he leaned back, sighed heavily, and closed his eyes. "I knew you were going into a fiery furnace, for, from what I have heard and seen of your wife, I fear she is one of the few inexorable women, impervious to reason, to passionate pleading, to the most adroit cajolery. The hotter the lava, the harder when it cools. Will you permit me to offer a suggestion?" The priest raised his haggard face and laid his hand on Mr. Herriott's knee. "I shall be grateful for advice which I sorely need just now."