“It is _Life_!” he replied with eager emphasis. “The doctors are quite agreed as to _that_. All he needs now, they say, is rest, and perfect quiet, and good nursing. He’s quite sure to get rest and quiet, here: and, as for the nursing why, I think it’s just _possible_——” (he tried hard to make his trembling voice assume a playful tone) “he may even get fairly well nursed, in his present quarters!” “I’m sure of it!” I said. “Thank you so much for coming out to tell me!” And, thinking he had now said all he had come to say, I held out my hand to bid him good night. He grasped it warmly, and added, turning his face away as he spoke, “By the way, there is one other thing I wanted to say. I thought you’d like to know that—that I’m not—not in the mind I was in when last we met. It isn’t—that I can accept Christian belief—at least, not yet. But all this came about so strangely. And she had prayed, you know. And I had prayed. And—and—” his voice broke, and I could only just catch the concluding words, “_there is a God that answers prayer!_ I know it for certain now.” He wrung my hand once more, and left me suddenly. Never before had I seen him so deeply moved. So, in the gathering twilight, I paced slowly homewards, in a tumultuous whirl of happy thoughts: my heart seemed full, and running over, with joy and thankfulness: all that I had so fervently longed for, and prayed for, seemed now to have come to pass. And, though I reproached myself, bitterly, for the unworthy suspicion I had for one moment harboured against the true-hearted Lady Muriel, I took comfort in knowing it had been but a passing thought. Not Bruno himself could have mounted the stairs with so buoyant a step, as I felt my way up in the dark, not pausing to strike a light in the entry, as I knew I had left the lamp burning in my sitting-room. But it was no common _lamplight_ into which I now stepped, with a strange, new, dreamy sensation of some subtle witchery that had come over the place. Light, richer and more golden than any lamp could give, flooded the room, streaming in from a window I had somehow never noticed before, and lighting up a group of three shadowy figures, that grew momently more distinct—a grave old man in royal robes, leaning back in an easy chair, and two children, a girl and a boy, standing at his side. “Have you the Jewel still, my child?” the old man was saying. “Oh, _yes_!” Sylvie exclaimed with unusual eagerness. “Do you think I’d _ever_ lose it or forget it?” She undid the ribbon round her neck, as she spoke, and laid the Jewel in her father’s hand. Bruno looked at it admiringly. “What a lovely brightness!” he said. “It’s just like a little red star! May I take it in my hand?”