“The will of God, which shall be done,” she said with a sudden resolution, and stood up. Her hands were lightly clasped before her like those of Titian’s Mater Dolorosa among the Rubens and Tintorettos of the Prado, a lonely figure, whose lot it was to spend her life for others. Even as she already had done; for thrice she had refused marriages suitable and possible to her. In each case she had steeled her heart against loving, that she might be all in all to her sister’s child and to her father. There is no habit so powerful as the habit of care of others. In Faith it came as near being a passion as passion could have a place in her even-flowing blood, under that cool flesh, governed by a heart as fair as the apricot blossoms on the wall in her father’s garden. She had been bitterly hurt in the Meeting-house; as bitterly as is many a woman when her lover has deceived her. David had acknowledged before them all that he had played the flute secretly for years! That he should have played it was nothing; that she should not have shared his secret, and so shared his culpability before them all, was a wound which would take long to heal. She laid her hand upon his shoulder suddenly with a nervous little motion. “And the will of God thee shall do to His honour, though thee is outcast to-day.... But, Davy, the music-thee kept it from me.” He looked up at her steadily; he read what was in her mind. “I hid it so, because I would not have thy conscience troubled. Thee would go far to smother it for me; and I was not so ungrateful to thee. I did it for good to thee.” A smile passed across her lips. Never was woman so grateful, never wound so quickly healed. She shook her head sadly at him, and stilling the proud throbbing of her heart, she said: “But thee played so well, Davy!” He got up and turned his head away, lest he should laugh outright. Her reasoning--though he was not worldly enough to call it feminine, and though it scarce tallied with her argument--seemed to him quite her own. “How long have we?” he said over his shoulder. “The sun is yet five minutes up, or more,” she said, a little breathlessly, for she saw his hand inside his coat, and guessed his purpose. “But thee will not dare to play--thee will not dare,” she said, but more as an invitation than a rebuke. “Speech was denied me here, but not my music. I find no sin in it.” She eagerly watched him adjust the flute. Suddenly she drew to him the chair from the doorway, and beckoned him to sit down. She sat where she could see the sunset. The music floated through the room and down the hillside, a searching sweetness. She kept her face ever on the far hills. It went on and on. At last it stopped. David roused himself, as from a dream. “But it is dark!” he said, startled. “It is past the time thee should be with me. My banishment began at sunset.” “Are all the sins to be thine?” she asked calmly. She had purposely let him play beyond the time set for their being together.