Her head throbbed with pain, and her hands were hot and feverish, as she seated herself before the organ and began to play. But with the first sounds responding to her touch, she ceased to think of bodily discomfort. The music was the voice of her own soul, uttering to God all its desolation, its anguish and its despair. Then suddenly, with no seeming volition of her own, it changed to a passion of human love, human desire; the sorrow of separation, the strife with the emotions, the agony of renunciation were all there; and the November rain, beating in wild gusts against the window-panes behind the musician, lent a fitting accompaniment to the strains. She had been playing for perhaps an hour, when a sudden exhaustion seized upon her, and her hands fell nerveless and inert upon her lap; she dropped her chin upon her breast and closed her eyes. She was drunken with her own music. When she opened them again a few moments later, they fell upon the face of Arthur Stuart, who stood a few feet distant regarding her with haggard eyes. Unexpected and strange as his presence was, Joy felt neither surprise nor wonder. She had been thinking of him so intensely, he had been so interwoven with the music she had been playing, that his bodily presence appeared to her as a natural result. He was the first to speak; and when he spoke she noticed that his voice sounded hoarse and broken, and that his face was drawn and pale. “I came to Beryngford this morning expressly to see you, Joy,” he said. “I have many things to say to you. I went to your residence and was told by the maid that I would find you here. I followed, as you see. We have had many meetings in church edifices, in organ lofts. It seems natural to find you in such a place, but I fear it will be unnatural and unfitting to say to you here, what I came to say. Shall we return to your home?” His eyes shone strangely from dusky caverns, and there were deep lines about his mouth. “He, too, has suffered,” thought Joy; “I have not borne it all alone.” Then she said aloud: “We are quite undisturbed here; I know of nothing I could listen to in my room which I could not hear you say in this place. Go on.” He looked at her silently for a moment, his cheeks pale, his breast heaving. Before he came to Beryngford, he had fought his battle between religion and human passion, and passion had won. He had cast under his feet every principle and tradition in which he had been reared, and resolved to live alone henceforth for the love and companionship of one human being, could he obtain her consent to go with him.