trouble your need of others, your need to love them, and that they should love you--the only lesson worth learning in life...." The Bishop came over to Brandon and put his hand on his head. Strange peace came into Brandon's heart, not from the old man's words, but from the contact with him, the touch of his thin trembling hand. The room was filled with peace. Ronder was suddenly of little importance. The Cathedral faded. For a time he rested. For the rest of that day, until evening, that peace stayed with him. With it still in his heart he came, late that night, into their bedroom. Mrs. Brandon was in bed, awake, staring in front of her, not moving. He sat down in the chair beside the bed, stretched out his hand, and took hers. "Amy, dear," he said, "I want us to have a little talk." Her little hand lay still and hot in his large cool one. "I've been very unhappy," he went on with difficulty, "lately about you--I have seen that you yourself are not happy. I want you to be. I will do anything that is in my power to make you so!" "You would not," she said, without looking at him, "have troubled to think of me had not your own private affairs gone wrong and--had not Falk left us!" The sound of her hostility irritated him against his will; he beat the irritation down. He felt suddenly very tired, quite exhausted. He had an almost irresistible temptation to go down into his dressing-room, lie on his sofa there, and go instantly to sleep. "That's not quite fair, Amy," he said. "But we won't dispute about that. I want to know why, after our being happy for twenty years, something now has come in between us or seems to have done so; I want to clear that away if I can, so that we can be as we were before." Be as they were before! At the strange, ludicrous irony of that phrase she turned on her elbow and looked at him, stared at him as though she could not see enough of him. "Why do you think that there is anything the matter?" she asked softly, almost gently. "Why, of course I can see," he said, holding her hand more tightly as though the sudden gentleness in her voice had touched him. "When one has lived with some one a long time," he went on rather awkwardly, "one notices things. Of course I've seen that you were not happy. And Falk leaving us in that way must have made you very miserable. It made me miserable too," he added, suddenly stroking her hand a little. She could not bear that and very quietly withdrew her hand. "Did it really hurt you, Falk's going?" she asked, still staring at him. "Hurt me?" he cried, staring back at her in utter astonishment. "Hurt me? Why--why----" "Then why," she went on, "didn't you go up to London after him?" The question was so entirely unexpected that he could only repeat: "Why?..." "Oh, well, it doesn't matter now," she said, wearily turning away.