when he saw that the unknown woman was standing by within the shadow of a pillar. A gleam of yellow light fell through the dark on her rich dress, her eye glittered behind her white veil. He thought there was a tear in it. But when he was saying the exhortation he saw that the tall, silent figure had departed. He often wondered who the woman was,--if he should ever know her. Something told him that she wanted help. Something assured him that he should some day give it to her. And beyond this there was an unexplained conviction within him that the stranger was in some way concerned and bound up in the part he was to play in life. Long ago he had realised that it was idle to deny the interference of supernatural personalities in human life. Accepting the Incarnation, he accepted the Communion of Saints. And he was always conscious of hidden powers moulding, directing him. The episode of the cigarettes happened in this way. Stokes, one of Gortre's fellow-curates, came to supper one night in Lincoln's Inn. Spence was there also, as it was one of his free nights. About ten o'clock supper was over and they proposed to have a little music. Stokes was a fine pianist, and he had brought some of the nocturnes and ballads of Chopin with him, to try on the little black-cased piano which stood at an obtuse angle with the end of the large sitting-room. "Will you smoke, Stokes?" Spence said. "Thank you, I'll have a cigarette," the young man replied. "I can't stand cigars, and I've left my pipe at the Clergy House." They looked for cigarettes in the silver box lined with cedar which stood on the mantel-shelf, but some one had smoked them all and the box was empty. "Never mind," Spence said; "I've been meaning to run out and get a late _Westminster_ and I'll buy some cigarettes, too. There's a shop at the Holborn end of the Lane, next to the shop where the oysters come from, and it won't be shut yet." In a few minutes he came back with several packets of cigarettes in his hand. "I've brought Virginian," he said; "I know you can't stand Egyptian, none of us can, and if these are cheap, they're good, too." Till eleven o'clock Stokes played to them--Chopin's wild music of melancholy and fire--and as the hour struck he went home. Gortre and Spence sat and talked casually after he had gone, about the music they had heard, the cartoon in the evening paper, anything that came. Basil had not been smoking during the evening. He had been too intent upon the nocturnes, and now he felt a want of tobacco. One of the packets of cigarettes lay by him on the table. He pulled up the flaps and took one. Without thinking what he was doing he drew a little photograph, highly finished and very clear, from the tiny cardboard case. He glanced at it casually.