"Perhaps she is not well," said Mr. Gresley, closing the church-yard gate into the garden. Mrs. Gresley's heart swelled with a sense of injustice. She had often been unwell, often in feeble health before the birth of her children, but had she ever pleaded ill-health as an excuse for absenting herself from one of the many services which her husband held to be the main-spring of the religious life? "I do not think she can be very unwell. She is standing by the magnolia now," she said, her lip quivering, and withdrawing her hand from her husband's arm. She almost hated the slight, graceful figure, which was not of her world, which was, as she thought, coming between her and her husband. "I will speak seriously to her," said Mr. Gresley, dejectedly, who recollected that he had "spoken seriously" to Hester many times at his wife's instigation without visible result. And as he went alone to meet his sister he prayed earnestly that he might be given the right word to say to her. A ray of sunlight, faint as an echo, stole through the lingering mist, parting it on either hand, and fell on Hester. Hester, standing in a white gown under the veiled trees in a glade of silver and trembling opal, which surely mortal foot had never trod, seemed infinitely removed from him. Dimly he felt that she was at one with this mysterious morning world, and that he, the owner, was an alien and a trespasser in his own garden. But a glimpse of his cucumber-frames in the background reassured him. He advanced with a firmer step, as one among allies. Hester did not hear him. She was gazing with an absorption that shut out all other sights and sounds at the solitary blossom on the magnolia-tree. Yesterday it had been a bud; but to-day the great almond-white petals which guarded it, overlapping each other so jealously, had opened wide, and the perfect flower, keeping nothing back, had laid bare all its pure white soul before its God. As Mr. Gresley stopped beside her, Hester turned her little pinched, ravaged face towards him and smiled. Something of the passionate self-surrender of the flower was reflected in her eyes. "Dear Hester," he said, seeing only the wan, drawn face. "Are you ill?" "Yes--no. I don't think so," said Hester, tremulously, recalled suddenly to herself. She looked hastily about her. The world of dew and silver had deserted her, had broken like an iridescent bubble at a touch. The magnolia withdrew itself. Hester found herself suddenly transplanted into the prose of life, emphasized by a long clerical coat and a bed of Brussels sprouts. "I missed you," said Mr. Gresley, with emphasis. "Where? When?" Hester's eyes had lost their fixed look and stared vacantly at him. Mr. Gresley tried to subdue his rising annoyance. Hester was acting, pretending not to understand, and he saw through it. "At God's altar," he said, gravely, the priest getting the upper hand of the man.