At moments he was astonished at himself. He could not understand what had taken possession of him. He even whispered a desperate question to himself whether it might not be that he had been singled out for a special temptation of the devil,--a distinction too flattering to be wholly disagreeable. Then he glanced again at his hostess, fair, sweet, and to his mind sacred before him, and felt that he had wronged her by supposing that the arch fiend could make of her a temptation. He had for a moment a humiliating fear that he might have eaten something that after the spare diet of the Clergy House had exhilarated him unduly. He felt that at best he was a poor thing; and he seemed to stand outside of his bare, empty life, pitying and scorning the futility of an existence unblessed by the love of this peerless woman. The evening went on, and Ashe struggled to conceal the wild commotion of his mind, feeling it almost a relief to get away, so fearful had he been of losing control of his tumultuous emotions. It would be bliss to be alone with his dream. As he and Mrs. Herman were going home, Helen said:-- "I do wonder"-- "What do you wonder?" he asked. "Did I say that out loud?" she responded. "I didn't mean to. I was thinking that I couldn't help wondering whether Edith Fenton will ever marry Mr. Candish." The first thought of Ashe was terror lest his secret had been discovered; his second was a memory of the way in which he had seen Mrs. Fenton look at the rector at dinner. He was overwhelmed by a rush of hot anger against his rival. "Mr. Candish!" he echoed. "Why, he is an ordained priest!" His own words cut him like a sword. He had himself pronounced the death sentence of his own hope. It was with difficulty that he suppressed a groan, and what reply or comment Mrs. Herman made was lost in the tumult of an inner voice crying in his heart: "O thou, to the arch of whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave!" V VOLUBLE AND SHARP DISCOURSE Comedy of Errors, ii. 1. On the morning after the dinner at Mrs. Fenton's, Philip Ashe and Maurice Wynne met on the steps of Mrs. Chauncy Wilson's. The house was on the proper side of the Avenue, with a regal front of marble and with balconies of wrought iron before the wide windows above, one of especially elaborate workmanship, having once adorned the front of the palace of the Tuileries. Pillars of verd antique stood on either side of the doorway, as if it were the portal of a temple. "Good morning, Phil," Maurice called out as they met. "Are you bound for Mrs. Wilson's too?" "Yes," was the answer. "I had a note last night." "Well," Wynne said gayly, as they mounted the steps, "if the inside of the house is as splendid as the outside, we two poor duffers will be out of place enough in it." Ashe smiled. "You may be a duffer if you like," he retorted, "but I'm not."