Paul sped along, relieved of the immediate pressure on his heart, and more determined than ever in his resolution. He had said little in the morning in answer to Spears’s question. He had declared that it was not love alone which had brought him there; that there had been nothing feigned in his enthusiasm for that teaching in which the salvation of the world he believed would be found to lie; but further he had said nothing. And Spears had been too much relieved on his own account and was too delicate on his child’s, to pursue the subject. To tell the truth, the demagogue, though the kindest of fathers, had not been delighted by the thought that his own favourite disciple, his captive aristocrat, the young hero whom he had won out of the enemy’s ranks, and who was his pride, had been all the time only his daughter’s lover. The thought had hurt and humbled him. That Paul might love Janet in the second place, might have learned to love her after his introduction to the shop, was a different matter. The gratification of recovering his own place and influence drove the other question from his mind; and by the time it recurred to him, the delicacy of a mind full of natural refinement had resumed its sway. It was for the lover to open this subject, not the girl or her friends. And though he wondered a little that Paul said nothing more to him, he asked no further question. It was a relief to Paul, on the other hand, not to be called to account. The evil day was deferred at least, if no more, and he was very glad to put it off, to wait for what might happen, to hope perhaps that after all nothing would happen. Paul did not know what had passed or what his mother had said. Her own broken and tremulous confession of wrong, and Janet’s consciousness, had been his only guides. He had thought himself for the moment bound to Janet; but perhaps things had not gone so far as he thought; and though he was determined to hold firmly to any bond of honour that might hold him, even though it were not of his own making, yet the sense that his freedom was still intact was an unspeakable relief to him. Since then he had managed to forget Janet; but when he turned his face towards her home it was not so easy to continue to forget. The twilight was brightened by the twinkle of the lamps all the way down the vista of the street, and by a dimmer light here and there from a window. The shutters had been put up in Spears’s shop, but the door was open, and in the doorway, faintly indicated by the light behind, stood some one looking out. Paul knew, before he could see, who it was. She was looking out for him. It is hard to find our arrival uncared for by those whom we want to see, but it is, if not more hard, at least far more embarrassing, to find ourselves eagerly looked for by those whom we have no wish to see. Paul’s heart sank when he saw the girl, with the long lines of her black gown filling the doorway, leaning