"Oh, no--oh, no," answered Constance, shaking her head. "It is a terrible condition of affairs, is it not? I see; I understand." She resumed her seat on the sofa and covered her face with her hands. For a few moments there was silence. Mrs. Wilson restrained a melting impulse to put her arm around her ward's shoulder in pitying encouragement. She felt that it was wiser to wait. "Terrible," repeated Constance, as though she had been dwelling on the thought, and she looked up. Her manner was calm and sweetly determined. "Thank you, Mr. Prentiss--thank you both so much. There is only one thing to do--one thing I wish to do, now that my duty has been made entirely plain. I shall tell Mr. Perry that though I love him I cannot marry him." "There is no reason that you should come to a decision on the spot," said Mr. Prentiss, reluctant to take undue advantage of an emotional frame of mind. "Take time to consider the matter." But Constance shook her head. "That would not help me. I have thought it out already. I could not consent to sin, and you have explained, to me that it would be a sin." "A sin surely; a carnal sin for you, Mrs. Stuart," said the clergyman with doughty firmness. Constance gave a little nervous laugh--or was it the echo of a shiver? "I had a conviction that it could never be. It was a pleasant dream." The pathos of the simple utterance reawoke Mrs. Wilson's strained sensibilities. She bent and kissed Constance on the forehead. Then turning to her rector she murmured with reverent ecstasy: "Will you not pray with us, Mr. Prentiss?" It was a grateful, benignant suggestion to the sufferer; the tonic which her yearning, baffled spirit needed. Divining as by telepathy that the moment had arrived for just this spiritual communion, the clergyman set the example to the two women by falling on his knees, and presently his voice was raised in fervent prayer. It was the prayer of praise and victory, not of consolation and distress. He thanked God--as he could do with an overflowing heart--for this triumph of intelligent spiritual discernment over the lures of easygoing and numbing materialism. The outcome of the occasion was indeed for him an oasis, one of those green, fruitful passages in the more or less general dryness of heart-to-heart contact with his parishioners, the occurrence of which made him surer both of his own professional capacity and of the eternal truths of his religion. His invocation of his God was alike a pæan of thanksgiving and an acknowledgment of rekindled faith. As for Constance, his words were so many cups of water to a thirsty soul. Scorched by his exaltation, the cloud mists of doubt no longer perplexed her, and she beheld with radiant eyes her cross, her privilege to renounce what reason and human passion urged, for the sake of an ideal--the higher, vital needs of the human race.