the Resurrection and the Life." He could find no parson to go with him.

On the way back to Albany he met the spring everywhere; it was just before the Easter holidays. Overhead the clouds rolled across a stainless sky, and they took ship-like forms to him and he felt a strong wish to escape—to depart. Rainsford had set him free. It would be months before he could hear from his competition. There was nothing in this continent to keep him. He had come North full of living hope and vital purpose, and meekly, solemnly, his graves had laid themselves out around him, and he alone stood living.

Was there nothing to keep him?

Bella Carew.

He had, of all people in the world, possibly the least right to her. She was his first cousin, nothing but a child; worth, the papers had said, a million in her own right. The heiress of a man who despised him.

But her name was music still; music as yet too delicate, sweet as it was, not to be drowned by the deeper, graver notes that were sounding through Fairfax. There was a call to labour, there was the imperious demand of his art. In him, something sang Glory, and if the other tones meant struggle and battle, nevertheless his desire was all toward them.


BOOK III

THE VISIONS