reservation in it when it touched upon Miss Madden. Her running in and
out of the pastorate at all hours, the way the priest patted her on
the shoulder before others, the obvious dislike the priest's ugly old
housekeeper bore her, the astonishing freedom of their talk with each
other--these dark memories loomed forth out of a mass of sinister
conjecture.

He could bear the uncertainty no longer. Was it indeed not entirely his
own fault that it had existed thus long? No man with the spirit of a
mouse would have shilly-shallied in this preposterous fashion, week
after week, with the fever of a beautiful woman's kiss in his blood, and
the woman herself living only round the corner. The whole world had been
as good as offered to him--a bewildering world of wealth and beauty and
spiritual exaltation and love--and he, like a weak fool, had waited for
it to be brought to him on a salver, as it were, and actually forced
upon his acceptance! "That is my failing," he reflected; "these
miserable ecclesiastical bandages of mine have dwarfed my manly side.
The meanest of Thurston's clerks would have shown a more adventurous
spirit and a bolder nerve. If I do not act at once, with courage and
resolution, everything will be lost. Already she must think me unworthy
of the honor it was in her sweet will to bestow." Then he remembered
that she was now always at home. "Not another hour of foolish
indecision!" he whispered to himself. "I will put my destiny to the
test. I will see her today!"

A middle-aged, plain-faced servant answered his ring at the door-bell
of the Madden mansion. She was palpably Irish, and looked at him with a
saddened preoccupation in her gray eyes, holding the door only a little
ajar.