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He was, in fact, in a far ie had had any idea of She had interrupted hiain steadily until five ain to finish it afterwards He had now finished it; and he wanted to think

It had had a surprising effect on hi as it did upon a state of mind intensely stirred to its depths by his sorrow Crossness, as I have said, had been the natural psychological result of his emotions; but his emotions were none the less real The froth of whipped cream is real cream, after all

Now Laurie had seen perfectly well the extreenuine enough in his little shrug of disapproval in answer to Maggie's, after lunch; yet that lady's reht This train had shtly by two breezes--the sense of Maggie's superiority and the faint rebellious reaction which had coion Certainly he had had Mass said for A; but it had been by alious instinct He was, in fact, in that state of religious unreality which occasionally coe of their faith The impetus of old association is absent, and the force of novelty has died

Underneath all this then, itthat was intensely real to him was his sense of loss of the one soul in whom his own had been wrapped up Even this afternoon as yesterday, even thisas he lay awake, he had been conscious of an irresistible ilimpse of that which was now denied to him

It was in this mood that he had read the book; and it is not to be wondered at that he had been excited by it

For it opened up to him, beneath all its sharotesque parody of spirituality--of all of which he was largely aware--a gli avenue of a faintly possible hope of which he had never dreamed--a hope, at least, of that half self-deception which is so te to certain characters

Here, in this book, written by a living iven, were stories so startling, and theories so apparently consonant with themselves and with other partly known facts--stories and theories, too, whichdesire, that it is little wonder that he was affected by them