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gnized, each in the other, the man of faith. The same forces played on both, mysteriously linking them, as the same sea links the headland which throws back its waves with the harbour which receives them.
* * * * *
Meynell too was conscious of Dornal as somewhere near him in the still, beautiful place, but only vaguely. He was storm-beaten by the labour and excitement of the preceding weeks, and these moments of rest in the Cathedral were sometimes all that enabled him to go through his day. He endeavoured often at such times to keep his mind merely vacant and passive, avoiding especially the active religious thoughts which were more than brain and heart could continuously bear. "One cannot always think of it--one must not!" he would say to himself impatiently. And then he would offer himself eagerly to the mere sensuous impressions of the Cathedral--its beauty, its cool prismatic spaces, its silences.
He did so to-day, though always conscious beyond the beauty, and the healing quiet, of the mysterious presence on which he "propped his soul."...
Conscious, too, of a dear human presence, closely interwoven now with his sense of things ineffable.
Latterly, as we have seen, he had not been without some scanty opportunities of meeting Mary Elsmere. In Miss Puttenham's drawing-room, whither the common anxiety about Hester had drawn him on many occasions, he had chanced once or twice on Miss Puttenham's new friend. In the village, Mrs. Flaxman was beginning to give him generous help; the parish nurse was started. And sometimes when she came to consult, her niece was with her, and Meynell, while talking to the aunt either of his people or of the progress of the heresy campaign, was always keenly aware of the girlish figure beside her--of the quick, shy smile--the voice and its tones.
She was with him in spirit--that he knew--passionately knew. But the barriers between them were surely insurmountable. Her sympathy with him was like some warm, stifled thing--some chafing bir