Mary's eyes took in all the comfort and elegance, but her brain did not respond to their message. She was still thinking of and praying for the man who loved her and whom she loved, but the man who had not yet--despite all his marvellous generosity--bowed his head and murmured, "I believe." Then she saw his letter upon the writing-table--the firm, strong handwriting, with the up-stroke "d" and the Greek "e," which denote a public school and University training. Her heart throbbed as she took up the square envelope and opened it. This is what she read-- "Lady Kirwan has told me you are coming to them to-day. I want to see you most particularly. I bring you a message from Joseph, and I bring you news of myself. At four o'clock I will call, and please see me. Dearest and best, "THOMAS SHOLTO DUCAINE." She smiled at the signature. Tom always signed his full name, even in the most intimate letters. It was a trick, a habit he always had. For the moment Mary was like any other girl who dwells fondly on some one or other little peculiarity of the man she loves--making him in some subtle way more than ever her own. Mary lunched alone. Her luxurious surroundings seemed to strike an alien note. She was not as yet at home in them, though when the meal was over she drew up her chair to the glowing fire with a certain sense of physical ease and enjoyment. In truth, she was very tired. The strongly emotional incidents of her farewell at the hospital, the concentration of nervous force during her drive to Berkeley Square, had left her exhausted for the moment. She was glad of the comfortable silence, the red glow from the cedar logs upon the hearth, and, as the afternoon lengthened into the early dusk of a London fog, she sighed herself to sleep. Death has been defined as the cessation from correspondence with environment--a logical and scientific statement which, while it is perfectly accurate, still leaves room for every article of the Christian faith. Sleep, in a sense, is this also: and we have the authority of Holy Writ itself that many revelations have come to the dreamer of dreams. Mary lay back in her arm-chair, and the dewy loveliness of her face would, in its perfection, have shown no trace of what was passing in her sub-conscious mind to an onlooker. But all her life was being unfolded to her in a strange panorama as she slept. From first to last everything that had ever happened to her was unwound as if from the spool of Fate itself. She saw all the events of her life as if she were standing apart from them and they were another's. But, more than all this, she saw also, in a dread and mysterious revelation, the purpose, the controlling purpose of God, which had brought these events about. It was as though she was vouchsafed a glimpse into the workings of the Divine mind; as if all the operations of God's providence, as they had been connected with her past, were now suddenly made clear.