Produced by WebRover, Peter Vachuska, Suzanne Wheeler, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE NIGHT OF TEMPTATION _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ LIFE'S SHOP WINDOW SIX WOMEN SELF AND THE OTHER THE ETERNAL FIRES FIVE NIGHTS THE LIFE SENTENCE ANNA LOMBARD (500,000 copies) SIX CHAPTERS OF A MAN'S LIFE TO-MORROW? PAULA THE WOMAN WHO DIDN'T A GIRL OF THE KLONDIKE THE RELIGION OF EVELYN HASTINGS LIFE OF MY HEART THE NIGHT OF TEMPTATION BY VICTORIA CROSS Author of "Life's Shop Window," "Six Women," etc., etc. NEW YORK THE MACAULAY COMPANY Copyright, 1912, by VIVIAN CORY GRIFFEN Copyright, 1914, by VIVIAN CORY GRIFFEN CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. HOME 11 II. IN THE WAYS OF DELIGHT 43 III. THE GIFT 77 IV. OUT OF THE STAGNANT HARBOUR 124 V. CLEAR WATERS 145 VI. PARADISE OR ----? 172 VII. WITH THE GREAT RIVER 196 VIII. THE LIONS OF THE DESERT 223 IX. IN THE DARK WATCHES 249 X. THE REACTION 285 XI. VAE VICTIS 296 XII. DAWN 305 THE NIGHT OF TEMPTATION CHAPTER I HOME She lay in a quiet corner of the Rectory Garden, looking up at the majestic white clouds, that sailed across the blue of the summer sky, like Viking ships under full sail, speeding along over the deep blue of a limitless ocean. How glorious they were! How wonderful to contemplate these summer nimbi, in their immaculate, fleecy whiteness, in their shadowy recesses, in their glistening summits. They were pure and radiant, even as the girl's soul was, and by their affinity with it they seemed to call it up to them, to lift it up away from the sordid Rectory, with its harsh, unloving father, its dejected, stupid mother, its quarrelling daughters; away from the horrible village, full of vice, squalor and disease; away from the narrow stone church, in which a yet narrower creed was weekly preached. Away from all these, to the contemplation of the pure and the beautiful, these glorious clouds called her, and she loved them, the friends and companions of her thoughts through many a lonely hour. Now, in the hush of a hot afternoon, she lay very still under the gold rain of the laburnum-trees, looking up at the towering snowy masses in a rapture of delight.