alone!

For a woman of her class what was there—what opening for the willing service of hand and heart? First and foremost, marriage. Well, marriage was, for her at all events, impossible without a great love to sanctify the bond, and love had not come to her. Had her mother spoken truly when she had reproved her for holding an ideal too high for this work-a-day world? Possibly.

Of course she might do as other women she knew of, who gave up their lives of ease and pleasure and spent their days in the crowded courts and alleys of great cities, waging war against the giants of dirt and ignorance and disease. Or, she thought whimsically, she could join the ranks of Women with a capital W, and hurl herself into a vortex of meetings and banner-wavings, like other unemployed. No, anything but that.

Poor souls, clamouring for place and power as they imagine it, without realising that even should they obtain beyond their wildest hopes, they are even now throwing away that priceless heritage of future generations—the dignity of their mothers. Those stately gentlewomen, our mothers and our grandmothers, living decorous and well-ordered lives, busy with manifold duties, wielding an influence impossible to over-estimate for good to their descendants, their country and the nation,—they are gone—their example is unheeded—their teaching is laid aside; but who will make good the loss to children yet unborn?

A log rolled from the fire with a soft crash, and Philippa roused herself. "Well," she said as she rose, "what is the use of thinking and wondering. 'Do the thing that's nearest,' which at the moment, my little dogs, is to go to bed!"

Spiker and Darracq uncurled themselves drowsily and sat up with questioning eyes. She rang the bell and delivered them into the butler's care, and then walked slowly up-stairs. The mood of her musings was still on her, and she was more than a little sleepy.

As she reached the top of the staircase she heard the man turn the switch, and the hall below her was plunged in sudden darkness. Before her the long corridor was dimly lighted by a few lights at a long distance from each other. All was very still. She heard the swish-swishing of her gown on the thick carpet and that was all. "How quiet," she thought, "so different from the glare in the passages of the hotel last night, with its echo of voices and perpetual banging of doors."

At the end of the gallery she turned to the right, and later to the right again, and twisting the handle of the first door on the left opened it wide. Instead of the firelight she expected the room was brilliantly lighted, and before she could move, a man who was standing in the centre started forward. His eyes met hers with a look in which love and longing and rapture were all blended. He moved quickly to her with outstretched hands. "Phil!" he said, "Phil! dear love! At last!"

CHAPTER III

THE STRANGER

"'Twas strange, 'twas passing strange.
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful."—Othello.

Before Philippa, dazed by the sudden light and the utter unexpectedness of it all, could collect herself sufficiently to speak, he took both her hands in his with a movement infinitely tender and possessive, and drew her further into the room.

"They said you would not come. They lied. I knew they lied. Oh, Phil! the joy to see you. My sweet! My sweet!"

The girl made an effort to withdraw her hands. What had happened? What did it mean?

"Oh, no!" she stammered. "It is a mistake—I do not know—— You are mistaking me for somebody else. I——"

He held her hands closer, closer, until they were pressed against his breast.

"Mistake?" he echoed with a little sound—it was hardly a laugh—of triumph and content.

"Mistake! Love makes no mistake!" and all the while his eyes burnt into hers with an intensity of passion and of longing.

"But yes—" she faltered. It was difficult to find words against the ardour of his gaze. "Yes, I am Philippa Harford. I must have mistaken the room. Believe me, I am sorry——"

"Philippa Harford!" and again that little sound broke from him, half sob, half sigh, and clearly indicative of infinite joy, a joy too deep to be expressed in words. "My Phil!—as if I should not know! Sun in my shadows—light in my darkness—darkness which surrounded and overwhelmed, and in which I groped in vain, and only clung to you."

He spoke her name as if the very repetition of it told the sum of his content. "Phil!—and I not know!—and my love's violets!" Releasing one hand he touched the flowers she wore. "And the little heart—the same! Your heart and mine!"

He led her, compelled against her will, unresisting to a sofa. Philippa sank upon it overwhelmed and almost nerveless under the stress of his emotion. He placed himself beside her, half sitting, half kneeling at her feet.

"I do not know—was it yesterday I saw you, cool and sweet in your soft primrose gown? or was it long ago before the shadows fell? Ah, love—your eyes! your hair! And always in the darkness the sound of your voice—the touch of your dear hand."

Philippa felt her senses reeling. With an effort she tore her eyes from his and gazed round the room. What did it mean? What dream was it? Was she waking or sleeping?

Beside the sofa stood a table, and on it an easel supporting a picture of—oh no, it could not be herself!

She drew one hand—the other was still tightly clasped in his—across her eyes as if to brush away a veil of unreality which seemed to hang over everything, and looked again. But no, there was no mistaking it—the dark hair drawn loosely back from the brow—her hair—her face as she saw it daily in her mirror—even her dress; a touch of pale yellow lightly indicated the folds of soft lace—the bunch of violets; and there, in black letters of unmistakable clearness on the gilding of the frame, the one word "Philippa."

On the table in front of the portrait was a bowl of violets—nothing else—just as might stand the offering at some shrine.

Beyond this one great mystery the room itself was devoid of anything out of the ordinary. The walls were panelled in white with touches of a pale grey colour; there were a few pictures, not many. The two windows were hung with a bright chintz of a somewhat old-fashioned design which matched the coverings of chairs and sofa, but the curtains were not drawn and the blinds were up.

From where she sat Philippa could see the moonlight flooding the sleeping park-land, and in the distance a clump of elm-trees outlined clear and lacy in the silver light.

Before one of the windows stood a large table littered with papers, a tumbler of water holding some brushes, and a drawing-board. By the fireplace was a comfortable chair, and on the floor beside it, as if dropped by a sudden careless movement of the reader, a book face downwards; and with the curious involuntary attention to detail to which we are liable in moments of strain, she noticed, almost with annoyance, that some of the pages were turned back and creased by the fall.

The room told of nothing beyond an everyday homelike peace; there was nothing to help her elucidate the mystery.

And all the while the man at her feet was pouring out a stream of rapid, fervent words. "And still you did not come! Ah, love! the long, long shadows—purple shadows—mysterious, unfathomable. No sun, no warmth, excepting when I saw you in my dreams—distant, illusive. No brightness, only darkness, until you came. But I knew you would come. Dearest, love makes no mistake, does it? Such love as mine that calling—calling—must draw you to me at the last. My beautiful Phil! my dreams of you never equalled the dear nearness of you. The night is past—the shadows are swept away, for the dawn has come—the dawn that was so long in coming, for it could only break to