What sort of being should come forth from that dwelling of peace? Mr. Schöninger asked himself. Who should stretch out hands to him, and draw him out of his troubled life, approaching now a climax he shrank from? His heart rose and beat quickly. The door under the vines swung slowly back, and a woman floated out over the green, as silent and as gracious as a cloud over the blue above. The drapery fluttered back from her advancing foot till it reached the first shining ripple of the pond, and then she paused--a presence so warm and living that it quickened his breathing. She stretched her strong white arms out toward him over the lilies she would not cross, and the face was Honora Pembroke's. The large, calm look, the earnest glow that saved from coldness, the full humanity steeped through and shone through by spiritual loveliness--they were all hers. He started, and opened his eyes. Their pace was slackening, the great black figure in its fiery atmosphere was in some spasm of motion, and walls of brick and stone were shutting them in. The cars stopped at the foot of an immense flight of stairs that stretched upward indefinitely, a dingy Jacob's ladder, without the angels. Mr. Schöninger slowly ascended them, heavyhearted again, and therefore heavy-footed; and, not far behind, a man with a skulking step and a mean face followed after. There was nothing very mysterious in this walk. It led merely through a deserted business street, by the shortest route, to a respectable hotel. Mr. Schöninger called for a room, and went to it immediately; the little man lingered in the office, and hung about the desk. "That gentleman comes down here pretty often in the night, doesn't he?" he asked of the clerk. The man nodded, without looking up. "Does he always record his name when he comes?" pursued the questioner. "Can't say," was the short answer, still without looking up. "Comes down every Wednesday night, I suppose?" remarked the stranger. The clerk suddenly thrust his face past the corner of the desk behind which his catechiser stood. "Look here, sir, what name shall I put down for you?" he asked sharply. The man drew back a little, and turned away. "I'm not sure of booking myself here," he replied. The clerk came down promptly from his perch. "Then it's time to lock up," he said. And when he had locked the door, and pulled down the curtains, with a snap that threatened to break their fastenings, he put his hands in his pockets, and made a short and emphatic address to an imaginary audience. "I don't believe there is any redemption for spies," he said; "and I would rather have a thief in my house than a sneak. You sometimes hear of a criminal who repents; but nobody ever yet heard of one of your prying, peeping, tattling sort reforming."