But the fine passion of the man broke everywhere through his rather lame words, and set something in the air about them aflame. The violins sounded thin and trashy compared to the rhythm of this earnest voice; all the glitter of the ball-room seemed cheap—the costume of Carmen absurdly incongruous. Mr. Ambleside slipped back somehow into the key of the afternoon when Cosmic Powers had held direct communion with his soul. He understood that he was meant to listen. Something big was in progress, something important in a high sense. He did listen—to every word. It was Carmen speaking now; but her voice marred the picture. It was thin, trifling, even affected.

“It’s very flattering,” she simpered, “but—don’t you see—it means the end of all my fun and enjoyment in life. You’re so fearfully in earnest. You’d exhaust me in the first week!” She cocked her pretty head on one side, holding the fan against her cheek. Something, nevertheless, belied the lightness of her words, the listener felt.

“But I’ll teach you a different kind of happiness,” replied the man eagerly, “so that you’ll never again want this passing excitement, this ‘unrest which men miscall delight.’ Give me your answer—now. I see it in your eyes. Let me go away tomorrow with this great new happiness in my heart.” He leaned forward. “Let your real self speak out once for all!” He took her fan away and she made no resistance. She clasped her hands in her lap, still looking at him mischievously through her mask.

“Let’s wait till we meet later in town,” she sighed at length prettily, coaxingly. “I shall be able to enjoy myself here then for the rest of the summer first—I feel so young for such a programme.”

But the man cut her short.

“Now,” he said, holding her steadily with his eyes. “You said that to me a year ago, remember.

I have waited ever since. It is your youth I want.”

The girl played with him for another ten minutes, while the clergyman listened, wondering greatly at the other’s patience. Clearly, she delighted to feel his great love beating up against the citadel she meant in the end to yield. The lighter side of her was vastly interested and amused by it; but all the time the deeper part was ready with its answer. It was only that the “child” in her wanted to enjoy itself a little longer before it capitulated for ever to the strength that should take her captive, and lead her by sharp ways of sacrifice to the high rôle she was meant to fill.

It would all have vexed and wearied Mr. Ambleside exceedingly, but for this singular feeling that it was part of some much larger scheme of which he might never know the whole perhaps, but in which he was playing his little part with a secret thrill. Through the tawdry glitter of that scented ball-room he saw again that terrible white-lipped Face, and felt the measure of this great purpose rolling past him— immense, remorseless—which, for all its splendour, could include even so small a thing as this vain and silly girl. The tide of it rose about him with a flood of power. He glanced at the small black domino of the Carmen opposite him … he saw the little flashing eyes, the pert lips and mouth—thinking with something like a shudder of that ofher Countenance in the hollow of whose eyes hid tempests, yet which could look down upon a tiny fluttering paper, because that paper was an item of importance in its great scheme of which both beginning and end were nevertheless veiled… .

His thoughts must have wandered for a time. The conversation, at any rate, had meanwhile taken a singular turn. The girl was on her feet, the man facing her.

“Then what is this test of yours?” he was saying, half serious, half laughing—“this test which you say will prove how much I care?”

The girl put back between her lips the small red rose that was part of the Carmen costume.

Either it was that the stalk made her lisp a little, or else that a sudden rush of the violins in the waltz drowned her words. The Reverend Phillip, standing there trembling—he never quite understood why he should have awaited her answer so nervously—only caught the second half of her phrase.

“… that I gave you in this very room six weeks ago, and that you promised to carry about with you always?” he heard the end of her sentence, in a voice that for the first time that evening was serious; “because, if you’ve kept your word in a small thing like that I can trust you to keep it in bigger things. It was a part of myself, you know, that little bit of hair!” She laughed deliciously in his face, raising herself on tiptoe with her hands behind her back.