also upon him. And so he found another derelict, to whom he was sealed
forever.

At a time of more calmness he might have balked at this one. She was a
cross, to be sure, and it was now his part in life to bear crosses. But
there were plenty of these, and even one vowed to a life of sacrifice,
he suspected, need not grossly abuse the powers of discrimination with
which Heaven had seen fit to endow him. But he had lately been on the
verge of a seething maelstrom, balancing there with unholy desire and
wickedly looking far down, and the need to atone for this sin excited
him to indiscretions.

It was not that this star in his crown was in her late thirties and less
than lovely. He had learned, indeed, that in the game which, for the
chastening of his soul, he now played with the Devil, it were best to
choose stars whose charms could excite to little but conduct of a
saintlike seemliness. The fat, dumpy figure of this woman, therefore,
and her round, flat, moonlike face, her mouse-coloured wisps of hair cut
squarely off at the back of her neck, were points of a merit that was in
its whole effect nothing less than distinguished.

But she talked. Her tones played with the constancy of an ever-living
fountain. Artlessly she lost herself in the sound of their music, until
she also lost her sense of proportion, of light and shade, of simple,
Christian charity. Her name was Lorena Sears, and she had come in with
one of the late trains of converts, without friends, relatives, or
means, with nothing but her natural gifts and an abiding faith in the
saving powers of the new dispensation. And though she was so alive in
her faith, rarely informed in the Scriptures, bubbling with enthusiasm
for the new covenant, the new Zion, and the second coming of the