"One can only unite them certainly by seeking for a higher truth that combines them both. It may seem a strange thing for a Christian minister to say, but it has always seemed to me that those words, 'die to live,' were an admirable expression of a philosophy, but a very poor maxim for daily life; partly because they ignore that duty of self-realisation, in which I for one believe, and partly because, so long as a man says, 'Am I dying to live?' he cannot possibly do it. The maxim accentuates the very element we want to get rid of. If we are indeed to die to live, we must cease to think about it; we must cease to know whether we live or die." "But the higher truth, Mr Reynolds, what is that?" "Nay, I should be doing you a poor service by telling you." "There is only one higher truth conceivable," Mona said boldly, "and that is--God in all." "And is not that enough? God in me. God to have His way in me, and to find the fullest possible expression there. God in all men--in the church, the ball-room, the Blum. If we see all things through the medium of God, what becomes of the strife between self-renunciation and self-realisation?" Mona pressed his hand in silence. "You knew all that before, dear child," he said; "you had only got confused for the moment." Mona shook her head. "I knew it vaguely," she said, "but you must not think I am living up to that level. I thought, in my infinite conceit, that I had risen above happiness and attained to blessedness; and now--and now--I want the happiness too." He laid his hand on her shoulder. "And so you are wearing yourself out at hospital," he said quietly, as though that were the natural outcome of what she had said; "but don't forget the friends who love you, and who are depending on you." Mona looked up gratefully into his face. The advice was almost the same as that which she herself had given to Lucy some months before; but the value of advice is rarely intrinsic--we think far less of its substance than we do of the personality of the giver. The words that are empty platitudes on the lips of one man, become living inspiration on those of another. To-night, however, even Mr Reynolds had not the power to raise Mona above the longing for happiness. As the months went on, the strain of uncertainty was becoming almost unendurable. Never, since that night when he drove her home in his gig from Colonel Lawrence's Wood, had she heard anything from Dr Dudley; never, since the chance glimpses at Burlington House, had she even seen him. It seemed incredible that he could have failed to find her, if he had really tried; and yet--and yet---- "Oh, my friend, my friend!" she said wearily, "I have waited so long. _Where are you?_" CHAPTER LII. OLD FRIENDS. "You are late," said Lady Munro. "Had you forgotten that you were going to take us to the theatre?" She was sitting alone in the firelight, one dainty slippered foot on the burnished fender.