clergyman, glancing at the shop keeper. Then to his son, "What a
picture she makes!"

Brian looked up hastily from some medical books which he had been
turning over.

"Why that's my little Gower Street friend," he exclaimed, the words
being somehow surprised out of him, though he would fain have
recalled them the next minute.

"I don't interrupt her," said the shop owner. "Her father has done
a great deal of business with me, and the little lady has a fancy
for poetry, and don't get much of it in her life, I'll be bound."

"Why, who is she?" asked Charles Osmond, who was on very friendly
terms with the old book collector.

"She's the daughter of Luke Raeburn," was the reply, "and whatever
folks may say, I know that Mr. Raeburn leads a hard enough life."

Brian turned away from the speakers, a sickening sense of dismay at
his heart. His ideal was the daughter of Luke Raeburn! And Luke
Raeburn was an atheist leader!

For a few minutes he lost consciousness of time and place, though
always seeing in a sort of dark mist Erica's lovely face bending
over her book. The shop keeper's casual remark had been a fearful
blow to him; yet, as he came to himself again, his heart went out
more and more to the beautiful girl who had been brought up in what
seemed to him so barren a creed. His dream of love, which had been