“Did you say Kant? I think I've seen a book of his in the library.” She pulled down a dusty volume of the “Critique of Pure Reason” from a top shelf and puzzled her young brains over it. It seemed to be dealing with vital questions, but, like Sir Oliver, she was hopelessly befogged. She asked the old doctor. He had a glimmering of her meaning. “The best book in the world, my dear,”--he waved a hand,--“is life itself.” “But I can't read it without a dictionary, Doctor,” she objected. “Your heart, my child,” said he. This was pretty, but not satisfactory. “Walter could tell me,” she said to herself, and forthwith wrote him a long letter. She lived in a state not only of suspended judgment, but also of suspended emotion. The latter hung in the more delicate balance. Her maidenhood realized it vaguely. She had half expected John to speak of his love for her; at the same time she had dreaded the moment of declaration; and, at the same time also, she had felt that beneath the shadow of the wings of death it behoved mortal passion to lie still and veiled. The anguish of the weeks preceding the tragedy had passed away. She had no pain save that of yearning pity for an agonized world. The old people in their dependence on her and in the pathos of their limited vision once more became inexpressibly dear. The childish titles were invested in a new beauty. Her pretty labours in sorrow-stricken cottages, amateurish as they were, held a profound significance. Unlike the thousands of sweet English girls up and down the land who are bred in the practice of philanthropy and think no more of it than of its concomitant tennis-parties and flirtations, she had come upon it unawares, and it had all the thrill of a discovery. It was one little piece fitted certainly into the baffling puzzle of life. John came down again for the week-end. Stella found him gentle, less gloomy, but oddly remote from her--remoter even than when he lay crushed beneath the tragedy. Now and again she caught him looking at her wistfully, whereupon she turned her eyes away in a distress which she could not explain. Gradually she became aware that the Great High Belovedest of the past had vanished into nothingness, with so many other illusory things. The awakening kiss that he had given her as he carried her in his arms faded into the far-off dreamland. On the Sunday night they lingered in the drawing-room for a moment after the old people had retired to bed. “I must be going back by the early train in the morning, and sha'n't see you,” said he, “so I 'll say good-by now.” “I'm sorry, dear.” She put out her hand. “I hope the little change has done you good.” For answer he bent down and touched her forehead with his lips. Then he held the door open for her to pass out. “God bless you, dear,” said he. She went up-stairs, feeling in a half-scared way that something, she knew not what, had happened, and she cried herself to sleep. CHAPTER XXV,