He laid his right hand on her head amid the masses of her fair hair, and held it there, forcing her head back a little, studying her in a bitter passion—the upper lip drawn back a little over the teeth, which held and tormented the lower.

'Twelve years!' he said, slowly, after a minute, his eyes plunging into hers—'twelve years! What do you know of me now?—or I of you? I should offend you twenty times a day. And—perhaps—it might be the same with me.'

Phoebe released herself, and laid her head against his knee.

'John!—take me back—take me back!'

'Why did you torture me?' he said, hoarsely. 'You sent me Carrie six weeks ago—and then swept her away again.'

She cried out. 'It was the merest accident!' And volubly—abjectly—she explained.

He listened to her, but without seeming to understand—his own mind working irrelevantly all the time. And presently he interrupted her.

'Besides—I'm unhinged—I'm not fit to have women dependent on me. I can't answer for myself. Yesterday—if that picture had come at eight o'clock instead of seven—it would have been too late!'

His voice altered strangely.

Phoebe fell back upon the floor, huddled together—staring at him.

'What do you mean?'

'I should have destroyed myself. That's what I mean. I had made up my mind. It was just touch and go.'

Phoebe sat speechless. It seemed as though her eyes—so wide and terrified—were fixed in their places, and could not release him. He moved impatiently; the appeal, the horror of them, were more than he could bear.

'And much better for you if I had!—and as for Carrie!—Ah!—good Heavens! there she is.'

He sprang up in agitation, looking through the open window, yet withdrawing from it. Phoebe too rose, the colour rushing back into her cheeks. This was to be her critical, her crucial moment. If she recovered him, she was to owe it to her child.

Carrie and Miss Mason came along the path together. They had been in a wood beside the Elterwater road; not knowing how to talk to each other; wandering apart, and gathering flowers idly, to pass the time. Carrie held a large bunch of bluebells in her hand. She wore a cotton dress of greyish-blue, just such a dress as Phoebe might have worn in her first youth. The skirt was short, and showed her tripping feet. Under her shady hat with its pink rose, her eyes glanced timidly towards the house, and then withdrew themselves again. Fenwick saw that the eyes were in truth darker than Phoebe's, and the hair much darker—no golden mist like her mother's, but nearer to his own—a warm brown, curly and vigorous. Her face was round and rosy, but so delicately cut and balanced, it affected him with a thrill of delight. He perceived also that she was very small—smaller than he had thought, in the theatre. But at the same time, her light proportions had in them no hint of weakness or fragility. If she were a fairy, she was no twilight spirit, but rather a cheerful dawn-fairy—one of those happy household sprites that help the work of man.

He went and opened the door for them, trembling.

Carrie saw him there—paused—and then walked on quickly—ahead of Miss Mason.

'Father!' she said, gravely, and looking at him, she held out her hand.

He took it, and then, drawing her to him, he kissed her hurriedly.

Carrie's cheeks grew very red, and her eyes moist, for a moment. But she had long since determined not to cry—because poor mummy would be sure to.

'I guess you'll be wanting your tea,' she said, shyly, looking from him to her mother; 'I'll go and see to it.'

Miss Anna came up behind, concealing as best she could the impression made upon her by the husband and wife as they stood in the porch, under the full western light. Alack! here was no happy meeting!—and it was no good pretending.



Fenwick greeted her with little or no demonstration of any sort, though he and she, also, had never met since the year of Phoebe's flight. His sunken eyes indeed regarded her with a look that seemed to hold her at bay—a strange look full of bitterness. She understood it to mean that he was not there to lend himself to any sham sentimental business; and that physically he was ill, and could stand no strain, whatever women might wish.

After a few questions about his journey, Miss Anna quietly begged him to come in and rest. He hesitated a moment, then with his hands in his pockets followed her to the parlour; while Phoebe, with Carrie's arm round her, went falteringly upstairs.

Miss Anna made no scene and asked for no information. She and Carrie bustled to and fro, preparing supper. Fenwick at his own request remained alone in the parlour. But when supper-time came, it was evident that he was too feeble to face an ordinary meal. He lay back in Miss Anna's armchair with closed eyes, and took no notice of Phoebe's timid summons. The women looked in upon him, alarmed and whispering together. Then Miss Anna drew Phoebe away, and mixing some milk and brandy sent Carrie in with it. 'He will go away to-morrow!' she said, in Phoebe's ear, referring to a muttered saying of the patient,—'we shall see!'

As Carrie entered the parlour with the milk and brandy, Fenwick looked up.

'Where am I to sleep?' he asked her, abruptly, his eyes lingering on her.

'In my room,' she said, softly; 'I'm going in to Miss Anna. I've lengthened the bed!'

A faint smile flickered over his face.

'How did you do that?'

'I nailed on a packing-case. Isn't it queer?—Miss Anna hadn't any tools. I had to borrow some at the farm—and they were the poorest scratch lot you ever saw. Why, everybody in Canada has tools.'

He held her with a shaking hand, still looking intently at her bright face.

'Did you like Canada?'

She smiled.

'Why, it's lovely!'

Then her lips parted eagerly. She would have liked to go on talking, to make acquaintance. But she refrained. This man—this strange new father—was 'sick'—and must be kept quiet.

'Will you help me up to bed?' he murmured—as she was just going away.

She obeyed, and he leant on her shoulder as they mounted the steep cottage stair. Her physical strength astonished him—the amount of support that this child of seventeen was able to give him.

She led him into his room, where she had already brought his bag, and unpacked his things.

'Is it all right, father? Do you want anything else? Shall I send mother?'

'No, no,' he said, hastily—'I'm all right. Tell them I'm all right; I only want to go to sleep.'

She turned at the door, and looked at him wistfully.

'I did make that mattress over—part of it. But it's a real bad one.'

He nodded, and she went.

'A dream!' he said to himself—'a dream!'

He was thinking of the child as she stood bathed in the mingled glory of sunset and moonlight flowing in upon her from the open window; for the long day of northern summer was still lingering in the valley.

'Ah! if I could only paint!—oh, God, if I could paint!' he groaned aloud, rubbing his hands together in a fever of impotence and misery.

Then he tumbled into bed, and lay there weak and passive, feeling the strangeness of the remembered room, of the open casement window, of the sycamore outside, and the mountain forms beyond it; of this pearly or golden light in which everything was steeped.

In the silence he heard the voice of the beck, as it hurried down the ghyll. Twelve years since he had heard it last; and the eternal water 'at its priestlike task' still murmured with the rocks, still drank the rain, and fed the river. No rebellion there, no failure; no helpless will!

He tried to think of Phoebe, to remember what she had said to him. He wondered if he had been merely brutal to her. But his heart seemed a dry husk within him. It was, as it had been. He could neither think nor feel.

Next day he was so ill that a doctor was sent for. He prescribed long rest, said all excitement must be avoided, all work put away.

Four or five dreary weeks followed. Fenwick stayed in bed most of the day, struggled down to the garden in the afternoon, was nursed by the three women, and scarcely said a word from morning till night that was not connected with some bodily want or discomfort. He showed no repugnance to his wife, would let her wait upon him, and sit beside him in the garden. But he made no spontaneous movement towards her whatever; and the only person who evidently cheered him was Carrie. He watched the child incessantly—in her housework, her sewing, her gardening, her coaxing of her pale mother, her fun with Miss Anna, who was by now her slave. There was something in the slight foreignness of her ways and accent, in her colonial resource and independence that delighted and amused him like a pleasant piece of acting. She had the cottage under her thumb. By now she had cleaned all the furniture, 'coloured' most of the walls, and mended all the linen, which had been in a sad condition—Miss Anna's powers being rather intellectual than practical. And through it all she kept a natural daintiness and refinement, was never clumsy, or loud, or untidy. She came and went so lightly—and always bringing with her the impression of something hidden and fragrant, a happiness within, that gave a dancing grace and perfume to all her life.

To her father she chattered mostly of Canada, and he would sit in the shade of the cottage, listening to her while she described their life; the big, rambling farm, the children she had been brought up with, the great lake with its ice and its storms, the apple-orchards, the sleighing in winter, the beauty of the fall, the splendour of the summers, the boom that was beginning 'up west.' Cunningly, in fact, she set the stage for an actor to come; but his 'cue' was not yet.

It was only from her, indeed, that he would hear of these things. If Phoebe ventured on them his manner stiffened at once. Miss Anna's strong impression was, still, that with his wife he was always on his guard against demands he felt himself physically unable to meet. Yet it seemed to her, as time went on, that he was more and more aware of Phoebe, more sensitive to her presence, her voice.

She too watched Phoebe, and with a growing, involuntary respect. This changed woman had endured 'hardness,' had at last followed her conscience; and, rebuffed and unforgiven as she seemed to be, she was clothed none the less in a new dignity, modest and sad, but real. She might be hopeless of recovering her husband; but all the same, the law which links that strange thing, spiritual peace, with certain surrenders, had already begun to work, unknown even to herself.

As she moved about the cottage and garden, indeed, new contacts, new relations, slowly established themselves, unseen and unexpressed, between her and the man who scarcely noticed her in words, from morning till night. 'I should offend you twenty times a day,' he had said to her—'and perhaps it might be the same with me!' But they did not offend each other!—that was the merciful new fact, asserting itself through this silent, suspended time. She was still beautiful. The mountain air restored her clear, pure colour; and what time had robbed her of in bloom it had given her back in character—the artist's supreme demand. Self-control, bitterly learnt—fresh capacities, moral or practical—these expressed themselves in a thousand trifles. Not only in her tall slenderness and fairness was she presently a challenge to Fenwick's sharpening sense; she began, in a wholly new degree, to interest his intelligence. Her own had blossomed; and in spite of grief, she had brought back with her some of the ways of a young and tiptoe world. Soon he was, in secret, hungry for her history—the history he had so far refused to hear. Who was this man who had made love to her?—how far had it gone?—he tossed at nights thinking of it. There came a time when he would gladly have exchanged Carrie's gossip for hers; and through her soft silence, as she sat beside him, he would hear suddenly, in memory, the echoes of her girlish voice, and make a quick movement towards her—only to check himself in shyness or pride.

Meanwhile he could not know that he too had grown in her eyes, as she in his. In spite of all his errors and follies, he had not wrestled with his art, he had not lived among his intellectual peers, he had not known Eugenie de Pastourelles through twelve years, for nothing. Embittered he was, but also refined. The nature had grown harsher and more rugged—but also larger, more complex, more significant, better worth the patiences of love. As for his failure, the more she understood it, the more it evoked in her an angry advocacy, a passionate championship, a protesting faith—which she had much ado to hide.

And all this time letters came occasionally from Madame de Pastourelles—indifferently to her or to him—full of London artistic gossip, the season being now in full swim, of sly stimulus and cheer. As they handed them to each other, without talking of them, it was as though the shuttle of fate flew from life to life—these in Langdale, and that in London—weaving the three into a new pattern which day by day replaced and hid away the old.

The days lengthened towards midsummer. After a spell of rain, June descended in blossom and sunshine on the Westmoreland vales. The hawthorns were out, and the wild cherries. The bluebells were fading in the woods, but in the cottage gardens the lilacs were all fragrance, and the crown-imperials showed their heads of yellow and red. Each valley and hillside was a medley of soft and shimmering colour, save in the higher, austerer dales, where, as in Langdale, the woods scarcely climb, and the bare pastures have only a livelier emerald to show, or the crags a warmer purple, as their testimony to the spring.

Fenwick was unmistakeably better. The signs of it were visible in many directions. His passive, silent ways, so alien to his natural self and temperament, were at last breaking down.

One evening, Carrie, who had been to Elterwater, brought back some afternoon letters. They included a letter from Canada, which Carrie read over her mother's shoulder, laughing and wondering. Phoebe was sitting on a bench in the garden, an old yew-tree just above her on the slope. The heads of both mother and child were thrown out sharply on the darkness of the yew background—Phoebe's profile, upturned, and the abundant coils of her hair, were linked in harmonious line with the bending figure and beautiful head of the girl.

Suddenly Fenwick put down the newspaper which Carrie had brought him. He rose, muttered something, and went into the house. They could hear him rummaging in his room, where Phoebe had lately unpacked some boxes forwarded from London. He had never so far touched brush or crayon during his stay at the cottage.

Presently he returned with a canvas and palette.

'Don't go!' he said, peremptorily, to Carrie, raising his hand. 'Stand as you were before.'

'You don't want me?' asked Phoebe, startled, her pale cheeks suddenly pink.

'Yes, yes, I do!' he said, impatiently. 'For God's sake, don't move, either of you!'

He went back for an easel, then sat down and began to paint.

They held themselves as still as mice. Carrie could see her mother's hands trembling on her lap.

Suddenly Fenwick said, in emotion:

'I don't know how it is—but I see much better than I did.'

Miss Anna looked up from the low wall on which she was sitting.

'The doctor said you would, John, when you got strong,' she put in, quickly. 'He said you'd been suffering from your eyes a long time without knowing it. It was nerves like the rest.'

Fenwick said nothing. He went on painting, painting fast and freely—for nearly an hour. All the time Phoebe could hardly breathe. It was as though she felt the doors opening upon a new room in the House of Life.



Then the artist threw his canvas on the grass, and stood looking at it.

'By Jove!' he said, presently. 'By Jove!—that'll do.'

Phoebe said nothing. Carrie came up to him and put her hand in his arm.

'Father, that's enough. Don't do any more.'

'All right. Take it away—and all these things.'

She lifted the sketch, the palette and brushes, and carried them into the house.

Then Fenwick looked up irresolutely. His wife was still sitting on the bench. She had her sewing in her hands.

'Your hair's as pretty as ever, Phoebe,' he said, in a queer voice. Phoebe raised her deep lids slowly, and her eyes spoke for her. She would offer herself no more—implore no more—but he knew in that moment that she loved him more maturely, more richly, than she had ever loved him in the old days. A shock, that was also a thrill, ran through him. They remained thus for some seconds gazing at each other. Then, as Carrie returned, Phoebe went into the house.

Carrie studied her father for a little, and then came to sit down on the grass beside him. Miss Anna had gone for a walk along the fell.

'Are you feeling better, father?'

'Yes—a good deal.'

'Well, then—now—I can tell you my news.'

And she deliberately drew out a photograph from her pocket, and held it up to him.

'Well'—said Fenwick, mystified. 'Who's the young man?'

'He's my young man'—was Carrie's entirely self-possessed reply. 'I'm going to marry him.'

'What?' cried Fenwick. 'Show him to me.'

Carrie yielded up her treasure rather timidly.

Fenwick looked at the picture, then put it down angrily.

'What nonsense are you talking, Carrie! Why, you're only a baby. You oughtn't to be thinking of any such things.'

Carrie shook her head resolutely. 'I'm not a baby. I've been in love with him more than a year.'

'Upon my word!' said Fenwick; 'who allowed you to be in love with him? And has it never occurred to you—lately—that you'd have to ask my leave?'

Carrie hesitated. 'In Canada I wouldn't have to,' she said, at last, decidedly.

'Oh! they've abolished the Fifth Commandment there, have they?'

'No, no. But the girls choose for themselves!' said Carrie, tossing back her brown curls with the slightest touch of defiance.

Fenwick observed her, his brow clouding.

'And you suppose that I'm going to say "Yes" at once to this mad proposal?—that I'm going to give you up altogether, just as I've got you back? I warn you at once, I shall not consent to any such thing!'

There was silence. Fenwick sat staring at her, his lips moving, angry sentences of authority and reproach forming themselves in his mind—but without coming to speech. It was intolerable, inhuman—that at this very moment, when he wanted her most, this threat of fresh loss should be sprung upon him. She was his—his property. He would not give her up to any Canadian fellow, and he altogether disapproved of such young love-affairs.

'Father,' said Carrie, after a moment, 'when George asked me—we didn't know—'

'About me? Well, now you do know,' said Fenwick, roughly. 'I'm here—and I have my rights.'

He put out his hand and seized her arm, looking at her, devouring her, in a kind of angry passion.

Carrie grew a little pale, and, coming nearer, she laid her head against his knee.

'Father, you don't understand what we propose.'

'Well, out with it, then!'

'We wouldn't think about being married for three years. Why, of course we wouldn't! I don't want to be all settled that soon. And, besides, we're going abroad—you and mummy and I. I'm going to take you!' She sat up, tossing her pretty head, her eyes as bright as stars.

'And be thinking all the time of the Canadian chap?—bored with everything!' growled Fenwick.

Carrie surveyed him. A film of tears sparkled.

'I'm never bored. Father!'—she held herself erect, throwing all her soul into every word—'George is—awfully—nice!'

Ah! the 'life-force'! There it was before him, embodied in this light, ardent creature, on whose brown head and white dress the June sun streamed through the sycamore-leaves. With a groan—suddenly—Fenwick weakened.

'What's his horrid name?—who is he?—quick!'

Carrie gave a little crow—and began to talk, sitting there on the grass, with her hands round her knees. The interloper, it appeared, had every virtue and every prospect. What was to be done? Presently Carrie crept up to him again.

'Father!—he wants to come to Europe. When you've found a plan—if we let him come and hitch up alongside of us somewhere—why, he wouldn't be any trouble!—I'd see to that! And you don't know whether—whether a son—mightn't suit you! Why!—you've never tried!'

He made an effort, and held her at arm's length.

'I tell you, I can say nothing about it—nothing—till George has written to me!'

'But he has—this mail!' And in triumph she hastily dragged a letter out of the little bag at her waist, and gave it him. 'It came this afternoon, only I didn't know if you might have it.'

He laughed excitedly, and took it.

An hour later Fenwick rose. The day had grown cool. A fresh breeze was blowing from the north down the fell-side. He put his arm round Carrie as she stood beside him, kissed her, and in a gruff, unintelligible voice, murmured something that brought the tears again to her eyes. Then he announced that he was going for a short walk. Neither Phoebe nor Miss Anna were to be seen. Carrie protested on the score of his health.

'Nonsense! The doctor said I might do what I felt I could do.'

'Then you must say good-bye to me. For Miss Anna and I are going directly.'

Fenwick looked scared, but was soon reminded that Miss Anna was to drive the child that evening to Bowness, where Carrie was to be introduced to some old friends of Miss Anna's and stay with them a couple of days. He evidently did not like the prospect, but he made no audible protest against it, as he would perhaps have done a week before.

Carrie watched him go—followed his figure with her eyes along the road.

'And I'm glad we're off!'—she said to herself, her small feet dancing—'we've been cumbering this ground, Miss Anna and I—a deal too long!'

He was soon nearly a mile from home; rejoicing strangely in his recovered power of movement, and in the freshness of the evening air. He found himself on a hill above Elterwater, looking back on the lake, and on a wide range of hills beyond, clothed, in all their lower slopes, with the full leaf of June. Wood rose above wood, in every gradation of tone and loveliness, creeping upwards through blue haze, till they suddenly lost hold on the bare peaks, which rose, augustly clear, into the upper sky. The lake with its deep or glowing reflexions—its smiling shore—the smoke of its few houses—lay below him; and between him and it, glistening sharply, in a sun-steeped magic, upon the blue and purple background of the hills and woods—a wild cherry, in its full mantle of bridal white.

What tranquillity!—what colour!—what infinite variety of beauty! His heart swelled within him. Life of the body—and life of the soul—seemed to be flowing back upon him, lifting him on its wave, steeping him in its freshening strength. 'My God!' he thought, remembering the sketch he had just made, and the mastery with which he had worked—'if I am able to paint again!—if I am!'

An ecstasy of hope arose in him. What if really there had been something wrong with his eyes!—something that rest might set right? What if he had wanted rest for years?—and had gone on defying nature and common sense?

And in a moment, as he sat there, looking out into the evening, the old whirl of images invaded him—the old tumult of ideas—clamouring for shape and form—flitting, phantom-like, along the woods and over the bosom of the lake. He let himself be carried along, urging his brain, his fancy, filled with indescribable happiness. It was years since the experience had last befallen him! Did it mean the return of youth?—conception?—creative power? What matter!—years, or hardship?—if the mind could still imagine, the hand still shape?

He thought of his own series of the 'Months'—which he had planned among these hills, and had carried out perfunctorily and vulgarly, in the city, far from the freshness and infinity of Nature. All the faults of his designs appeared to him, and the poverty of their execution. But he was only exultant, not depressed. Now that he could judge himself, now that his brain had begun to react once more, with this vigour, this wealth of idea—surely all would be well.

Then for the first time he thought of the money which Phoebe had saved. Abroad! Italy?—or France? To go as a wanderer and a student, on pilgrimage to the sources of beauty and power. What was old, or played out? Not Beauty!—not the mind within him—not his craftsman's sense. He threw himself on the grass, face downwards, praying as he had been wont to do in his youth, but in a far more mystical, more inward way; not to a far-off God, invited to come down and change or tamper with external circumstance; but to something within himself, identified with himself, the power of beauty in him, the resurgent forces of hope—and love.

At last, after a long time, as the summer twilight was waning, there struck through his dream the thought of Phoebe—alone in the cottage—waiting for him. He sprang up, and began to hurry down the hill.

Phoebe was quite alone. The little servant who only came for the day had gone back to the farm where she slept, and Carrie and Miss Anna had long since departed on their visit.

Carrie had told her mother that 'father' had gone for a walk. And strangely enough, though he was away two hours, and she knew him still far from his usual strength, Phoebe was not anxious. But she was mortally tired—as though of a sudden a long tension had been loosened, a long effort relaxed.

So she had gone upstairs to bed. But she had not begun to undress, and she sat in a low chair near the window, with the casements wide open, and the twin-peaks visible through them under a starry sky. Her head had fallen back against the chair; her hands were folded on her lap.

Then she heard Fenwick come in and his step coming up the stairs.

It paused outside her door, and her heart beat so that she could hardly bear it.

'May I come in?'

It seemed to her that he did not wait for her low reply. He came in, and shut the door. There was a bright colour in his face, and his breath came fast, as he stood beside her, with his hands on his sides.

'Are you sure you like my coming?' he said, brusquely.

She did not answer in words, but she put out her hand, and drew him towards her.

He knelt down by her, and she flung an arm round his neck, and laid her fair head on his shoulder with a long sigh.

'You are very tired?'

'No. I knew you would come.'

A silence. Then he said, waveringly, stooping over her:

'Phoebe—I was very hard to you. But there was a black pall on me—and now it's lifting. Will you forgive me?—my dear—my dear!'

She clung to him with a great cry. And once more the torrent of love and repentance was unsealed, which had been arrested through all these weeks. In broken words—in mutual confession—each helping, each excusing the other—the blessed healing time passed on its way; till suddenly, as her hand dropped again upon her knee, he noticed, as he had often bitterly noticed before, the sham wedding-ring on the third finger.

She saw his eyes upon it, and flushed.

'I had to, John,' she pleaded. 'I had to.'

He said nothing, but he thrust his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat, and brought out the same large pocket-book which still held her last letter to him. He took out the letter, and offered it to her. 'Don't read it,' he said, peremptorily. 'Tear it up.'

She recognised it, with a sob, and, trembling, did as he bade her. He gathered up the small fragments of it, took them to the grate, and lit a match under them. Then he returned to her—still holding the open pocket-book.

'Give me your hand.'

She held it out to him, bewildered. He slowly drew off the ring, put it aside; then from the inmost fold of the pocket-book he took another ring, slipt it on her finger, and kissed the hand. After which he knelt down again beside her, and they clung to each other—close and long.

'I return it'—he murmured—'after twelve years! God bless you for Carrie. God bless you for coming back to me. We'll go to Italy. You shall do that for me. But I'll repay you—if I live. Now, are you happy? Why, we're young yet!'

And so they kissed; knowing well that the years are irreparable, and yet defying them; conscious, as first youth is never conscious, of the black forces which surround our being, and yet full of passionate hope; aware of death, as youth is never aware of it, and yet determined to shape something out of life; sad and yet rejoicing, 'cast down, but not destroyed.'



EPILOGUE

Of Eugenie, still a few words remain to say. About a year after Fenwick's return she lost her father. A little later Elsie Welby died. To the end of her life she had never willingly accepted Eugenie's service, and the memory of this, alack, is for Eugenie among the pains that endure. What influence it may have had upon her later course can hardly be discussed here. She continued to live in Westminster, and to be the friend of many. One friend was tacitly accepted by all who loved her as possessing a special place and special privileges. Encouraged and inspired by her, Arthur Welby outlived the cold and academic manner of his later youth, and in the joy of richer powers, and the rewards of an unstained and pure affection, he recovered much that life seemed once to have denied him. Eugenie never married him. In friendship, in ideas, in books, she found the pleasures of her way. Part of her life she spent—with yearning and humility—among the poor. But with them she never accomplished much. She was timid in their presence, and often unwise; neither side understood the other. Her real sphere lay in what a great Oxford preacher once enforced at St. Mary's, as—'our duty to our equals'—the hardest of all. Her influence, her mission, were with her own class; with the young girls just 'out,' who instinctively loved and clung to her; with the tired or troubled women of the world, who felt her presence as the passage of something pure and kindling which evoked their better selves; and with those men, in whom the intellectual life wages its difficult war with temperament and circumstance, for whom beauty and truth are realities, and yet—great also is Diana of the Ephesians! Thus in her soft, glancing, woman's way, she stood with 'the helpers and friends of mankind.' But she never knew it. In her own opinion, few persons were so unprofitable as she; and but for her mystical belief, the years would have brought her melancholy. They left her smile, however, undimmed. For the mystic carries within a little flame of joy, very hard to quench. The wind of Death itself does but stir and strengthen it.

THE END