Sam felt his heart leap within him. “Adams thought frankness best,” he said. “Yes, yes, at the Concentrics. But there are difficulties for me, and perhaps I shall speak only to the Young Men’s Class at the-Sunday School. Though that,” he reflected, “is perilously near to compromise.” “But what is it?” asked Ada. “What are you talking about?” Sam was silent. So was Peter, and the silence grew till he felt it a reproach. He looked at Sam. “You see?” he said. “That is the dilemma of the Church. I shall speak to the young men, and, after that perhaps, perhaps----” He glanced at Ada. “No,” he finished decidedly, “I must leave it at that.” He was fifty-six, and most of his life had been lived under Victoria the Good. CHAPTER XII--DROPPING THE PILOT |ANNE lived for Sam: and if she rarely showed it, if, for instance, it appeared sometimes that she lived to make her house the cleanest in the row, that was no more than a symptom of her stoicism. She lived for Sam, and he knew it. She belonged to a race which hates ostentation like the devil and keeps its feelings veiled behind a grim reserve. It conceals emotion as a hidden treasure and wears a mask which strangers take to indicate a want of sensibility. She had not the habit of caressing Sam; she chastened whom she loved; and Sam was very well aware of the strength of Anne’s love. She was ready, at the proper time, to give him to the proper woman, but she held that Ada was not the woman nor this the time. She was ready to go her ways from Sam, and from life itself, when he made a marriage of which she could approve, but she was not ready to leave him to Ada Struggles of whom she disapproved. She was not ready to die for the likes of Ada Struggles. Let Sam marry Ada, and Anne, meant to live, because some day he would have need of her and, when the day came, she would be there. Now, Sam would have been pleased if he could have told Anne about the pamphlet and the legacy. He had hoped after the Minnilie affair that his next “stroke” would be one of which he could tell Anne, but he did not see this as tellable. She would naturally ask what the pamphlet was about, and if Peter could not speak of it to his daughter, Sam could speak of it even less to his mother. And as to the legacy, what was the use of mentioning that to a woman who would point out that security was only to be had with two and a half per cent? Which wasn’t at all Sam’s notion of the uses of a thousand pounds.