"You don't mean that I'm not to go to church at all?"
"Not to the Seventh-Day Baptist church."
"Not this evening!"
"Not at all," was the decisive answer.
Having opened his lips and closed them, Matthew withdrew, backwards, and went upstairs.
CHAPTER IV
A SLUMBERING TERROR
It was not because of ingratitude or altogether because of forgetfulness that Stephen Lanfair had neglected his friend. Their association had continued as long as circumstances made the seeing of one another possible. When the longed-for interneship was won, Levis had been for two years out of the Medical School and Stephen was preoccupied with the straight, dark gaze and free and saucy manners of Hilda Fell. After Hilda had seen him, she had, for reasons as yet unexplained by psychologists, forsworn all other company. He was awkward, he knew none of the lively give-and-take of her set, he was grave in manner and thought; but she would have no other. Her passion for him assumed an ominous intensity; she was happy only when she had before her a definite prospect of meeting him, she was unhappy when the character of the meeting was such that she must share his attention with others.
Mayne related frankly the history of his family, but Stephen found in that no impediment to marriage. The insanity appeared—at least he received that mistaken impression—invariably in early youth. Apparently Hilda's mind was sound. Her education had not been of a very solid quality; in fact, she could do little more than write a presentable note and she did that as seldom as possible, and of general information she had none. But Stephen believed that association with him would largely supplement her knowledge. He believed that Mayne had not given her the proper sort of education and that she would learn from him with delight. He could not know or dream that the slightest opposition, even the thwarting of her whims, would reveal her fundamental instability. Until now life had brought everything to her; it had demanded no adaptations on her part.