She was not left long alone, for Mr. Flaxman Reed never kept any one waiting if he could help it. As he seated himself opposite to her, the set lines of his face relaxed and his manner softened. Her eyes followed the outline of his face, which stood out white and sharp against the dark window-curtain. She noted the crossed legs, the hands folded on his knees, the weary pose of the whole wasted figure. It ought to have been an appeal to her pity. The poor man was suffering from many kinds of hunger, and from intense exhaustion. He had just dismissed a tiresome parishioner, and, vexed with himself for having kept Audrey waiting, had left his dinner in the next room untouched, and came all unnerved to this interview which he dreaded yet desired. He listened quietly to the story of her failure; it was not only what he had expected, but what he had wished. "It's no good my trying any more," she urged in the pleading voice that she could make so sweet. "I can't do anything. The sight of those poor wretches' misery only makes me miserable too. I dream of it at night. I assure you it's been the most awful three days I ever spent in my life." "Has it?" "Yes. I feel things so terribly, you know; and it's not as if I could do anything--I simply can't. What _must_ you think of me?" "I think nothing. I knew that you would tell me this, and I am glad." "Are you? Glad that I failed?" "Yes; glad and thankful." He paused; his thin sensitive lips trembled, and when he spoke again it was in a low constrained voice, as if he were struggling with some powerful feeling. "I wanted you to learn by failure that it is not what we know, nor what we do, but what we are that matters in the sight of God." "Yes, I know that." She sat looking up, with her head a little on one side, holding her chin in one hand: it had been her attitude in her student days at Oxford when trying to follow a difficult lecture, and she reverted to it now. For Mr. Flaxman Reed was very difficult. His style fascinated and yet repelled her, and in this case the style was the man. "What am I?" said Audrey, presently. It was a curious question, and none of her friends had answered it to her satisfaction. She was eager to know Mr. Reed's opinion. He turned and looked at her, and his eyes were two clear lights under the shadow of the sharp eyebone. "What are you? With all your faults and all your failures, you are something infinitely more valuable than you know." "What makes you say so?" "I say so because I think that God cares more for those that hunger and thirst after righteousness than for those who are filled at his table. Believe me, nothing in all our intercourse has touched me so much as this confession of your failure." "Has it really? Can you--can you trust me again in spite of it?"