Mary, who according to her custom went to bed early, being by this time fast asleep, he retired to his laboratory in the old chapel, where it was his habit to sit, especially when, as at the present time, his father was away from home.

Here, without wasting a moment, he began his study of them.
It was with very strange sensations, such as he had never before experienced, that he opened the first of the volumes, written some thirteen years earlier, that is, about ten years before Stella's death.
Their actual acquaintance had been but brief.

Now he was about to complete his knowledge of her, to learn many things which he had found no time, or had forgotten to inquire into, to discover the explanation of various phases of her character hitherto but half-revealed; perhaps to trace to its source the energy of that real, but mystic, faith with which it was informed.

This diary that had come--or perhaps been sent to him--in so unexpected a fashion, was the key whereby he hoped to open the most hidden chambers of the heart of the woman whom he loved, and who loved him with all her strength and soul.
Little wonder, then, that he trembled upon the threshold of such a search.

He was like the neophyte of some veiled religion, who, after long years of arduous labour and painful preparation, is at length conducted to the doors of its holy of holies, and left to enter there alone.