"Tell me, Aunt Blin! You can see clear, where you are. Is there any good--any right in it? Ought I to tell him that I care?"

She cried, and she waited; but she got no answer there. She came away, and sat down.

She was left all to herself in the hard, dreary world, with this doubt, this temptation to deal with. It was her wilderness; and she did not remember, yet, the Son of G.o.d who had been there before her.

"Why do they go off so far away in that new life, out of which they might help us?"

She did not know how close the angels were. She listened outside for them, when they were whispering already at her heart. We need to go _in_; not to reach painfully up, and away,--after that world in which we also, though blindly, dwell.

On the table lay Aunt Blin's great Bible; beside it her gla.s.ses.

Something that Miss Euphrasia had told them one day at the chapel, came suddenly into her mind.

"The angels are always near us when we are reading the Word, because they read, always, the living Word in heaven."

Was that the way? Might she enter so, and find them?

She moved slowly to the table.

It was growing dark. She struck a match and lit the gas, turning it low. She laid back the leaves of the large volume, to the latter portion. She opened it in Matthew,--to the nineteenth chapter.

When she had read that, she knew what she was to do.

She heard nothing more from Morris Hewland that night.

In the morning, early, she had her room bright and ready for the day. The light was calm and clear about her. The shadows were all gone.

She opened her door, and sat down, waiting, before the fire. Did she think of that night when she had had on the rose-colored silk, and had set the door ajar? Something in her had made her ashamed of that. She was not ashamed--she had no misgiving--of this that she was going to do now.

She was all alone; she had no other place to wait in she had no one to tell her anything. She was going to do a plain, right thing, whether it was just what anybody else would do, or not. She never even asked herself that question.

She heard Mr. Sparrow, with his hop and step, come down over the stairs. He always came down first of all. Then for another half hour, she sat still. At the end of that time, Morris Hewland's door unlatched and closed again.

Her heart beat quick. She stood up, with her face toward the open door. At the foot of that upper flight, she heard him pause. She could not see him till he pa.s.sed; and he might pa.s.s without turning.

Unless he turned, she would be out of his sight; for the door swung inward from the far corner. No matter.

He went by with a slow step. He could not help seeing the open door.

But he did not stop or turn, until he reached the stairhead of the second flight; then he had to face this way again. And as he pa.s.sed around the railing, he looked up; for Bel was standing where she had stood last night.

She had put herself in his way; but she had not done it lightly, with any half intent, to give _him_ new opportunity for words. There was a pure, gentle quiet in her face; she had something herself to say. He saw it, and went back.

He colored, as he gave her his hand. Her face was pale.

"Come in a moment, Mr. Hewland," said the simple, girlish, voice.

He followed her in.

"You asked me questions last night, and I did not know how to answer them. I want to ask you one question, now."

She had brought him to the side of the round table, upon whose red cloth the large Bible lay. It was open at the place where she had read it.

She put her finger on the page, and made him look. She drew the finger slowly down from line to line, as if she were pointing for a little child to read; and his eye followed it.

"For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh.

"Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore G.o.d hath joined together, let not man put asunder."

"Is that the way you will make a home and give it to me,--before them all?" she said.

He forgot the sophistries he might have used; he forgot to say that it _was_ to leave father and mother and join himself to her, that he had purposed; he forgot to tell her again that he would be true to her all his life, and that nothing should put them asunder. He did not take up those words, as men have done, and say that G.o.d had joined their hearts together and made them in his sight one. The angels were beside him, in his turn, as he read. Those sentences of the Christ, shining up at him from the page, were like the look turned back upon Peter, showing him his sin.

"One flesh:" to be seen and known as one. To have one body of living; to be outwardly joined before the face of men. None to set them asunder, or hold them separate by thought, or accident, or misunderstanding. This was the sacred acknowledgment of man and wife, and he knew that he had not meant to make it.

As he stood there, silent, she knew it too. She knew that she should not have been his wife before anybody.

Her young face grew paler, and turned stern.

His flushed: a slow, burning, relentless flush, that betrayed him, marking him like Cain. He lowered his eyes in the heat of it, and stood so before the child.

She looked steadfastly at him for one instant; then she shut the book, and turned away, delivering him from the condemning light of her presence.

"No: I will not go to that little home with you," she said with a grief and scorn mingled in her voice, as they might have been in the voice of an angel.

When she looked round again, he was gone. Their ways had parted.

An hour later, Bel Bree turned the key outside her door, and with a little leather bag in her hand, saying not a word to any one, went down into the street.

Across the Common, and over the great hill, she walked straight to Greenley Street, and to Miss Desire.

CHAPTER XXV.

BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE PREACHING.

Desire Ledwith had a great many secrets to keep. Everybody came and told her one.

All these girls whom she knew, had histories; troubles, perplexities, wrongs, temptations,--greater or less. Gradually, they all confessed to her. The wrong side of the world's patchwork looked ugly to her, sometimes.

Now, here came Bel Bree; with her story, and her little leather bag; her homelessness, her friendlessness. No, not that; for Desire Ledwith herself contradicted it; even Mrs. Pimminy and Miss Smalley were a great deal better than nothing. Not friendlessness, then, exactly; but _belonglessness_.

Desire sent down to Leicester Place for Bel's box; for Cheeps also.

Bel wrote a note to Miss Smalley, asking her to take in Bartholomew.

What came of that, I may as well tell here as anywhere; it will not take long. It is not really an integral part of our story, but I think you will like to know.

Miss Smalley herself answered the note. It was easy enough to evade any close questions on her part; she thought it was "a good deal more suitable for Bel not to stay at Mrs. Pimminy's alone, and she wasn't an atom surprised to know she had concluded so;" besides, Miss Smalley was very much preoccupied with her own concerns.