Good heavens, what an enigma life is! Some winged insect whirling in a cyclone would have as much chance of escaping its doom as a human being under such circumstances." Then he stopped, and looked with blank, unseeing eyes down the slanting fir avenue.

"It is a mystery," he went on--"the very mystery of mysteries; the Sphinx is nothing to it.

A month ago we were strangers--I neither knew nor cared that such a person as Elizabeth Templeton existed; and a week--a little cycle of seven or eight nights and days--has wrought this wondrous change.

Am I the same man?
Is this the solid earth on which I am walking ?" And then he gave an odd sort of laugh, which seemed to hurt him.

"My God," he muttered, "how I love this woman!" and his head was bowed as he walked on.
The following afternoon, when Malcolm returned from his charitable errand to Todmorden's Lane, he saw the Keston family grouped on the shady patch of lawn in the front garden.