A Singular Life

XX.

So Emanuel Bayard entered into his Wilderness. Therein he was tempted like other men of God who renounce the greatest joy of life for its grandest duty. There he thirsted and hungered, and put forth no hand towards the meat or drink of human comfort; there he contended with himself, and hid his face, for he went into solitary places, and prayed apart, asking for that second strength which sustains a man in the keeping of the vow that he has not feared to take upon his soul — not knowing, till God teaches him, how easy it is to recognize, and how hard to hold, "the highest when we see it.”

Winter drew its yoke of ice about the shrinking shoulders of the Cape ; the fleets huddled in the harbor; the fishermen drowned on the Grand Banks; Windover shivered and shriveled, and looked with wincing, winking eyes upon the blinding horizon of the winter sea; the breakers broke in white fire upon the bar ; Angel Alley drank and cursed to keep warm; and the young preacher’s delicate face, patiently passing in and out beneath the white and scarlet lights of the chapel of Christlove, gathered a snowdrift of its own with the whitening of the year. His work, like most service sustained in consecration and in common sense by one pure and strong personality, grew upon his hands ; not steadily, but by means of much apparent failure.

The fame of the heretic missionary had gone abroad, as such things do. It was no uncommon thing for members of the strictest sect of the orthodox churches to stand, half curious, half deferent, and wholly perplexed by what they saw and heard, and calculating the prospects of an experiment which the observer was, as a rule, too wise a man or too good a woman not to respect.

It even happened now and then that some distinguished clergyman was seen jammed between a fisherman and a drunkard in the crush by the door, taking notes of the sermon, studying the man and his methods with the humility characteristic of large men, and seldom imitated by little ones.

The Reverend George Fenton was not, but would have liked to be, one of these eminent and docile clerical visitors at the chapel of Christlove. He dared not leave his congregation, decorously scattered to listen to a sound theology, in the pews of the old First Church, to elbow his unnoticed way among the publicans and sinners who thronged his classmate’s mission, but he often wished he could. He asked himself anxiously, "What is the secret? How does the man do it?” Sometimes he envied his heretic friend the drunkards and sailors, the reckless girls, and, most of all, the fishermen, sacred in the canon and to the imagination of the church — the fishermen, once the chosen friends of our Lord.

Bayard even fancied that Fenton looked at him a little wistfully, and that he spoke with him oftener and lingered longer when they met upon the streets of the sad and tempted town whose redemption both men, each in his own way, desired and sought, with a sincerity which this biography would not intimate was to be found only in the heart of its subject and hero ; for the Reverend George Fenton was no hypocrite or Pharisee, the prevailing qualities of his class not being of this sort. No one rated him more generously than his heretic classmate, or looked more gently upon the respectable, dreary effort to save the world by an outgrown method, which the conformer dutifully and comfortably sustained.

“ I heard a Boston man call you the Father Taylor of Windover,” one day abruptly said the clergyman to the missionary, upon the post-office steps. “ Boston could no farther go, I take it. I hear your audience has outgrown your mission - room. That must be a great encouragement; you must consider it a divine leading.” added Fenton, with the touch of professional slang and jealousy not unnatural to better men than he. “ But you must remember that we too are following the Master in our way; it’s a pretty old and useful way.”

Then up spoke Captain Hap, who stood at Bayard’s elbow : “ It’s jest about here, Mr. Fenton : you folks set out to foller Him, but our minister, he lives like Him. There’s an almighty difference.”

Another day, Fenton, with his young wife on his arm, came down Angel Alley with the air of a tourist inspecting the points of interest in a new vicinity.

“Bayard ! ” he exclaimed, “you look as white as a Cesarea snowdrift. You are overworked, man. What can I do to help you ? If there is anything,” he added, with genuine concern, “ you ’d let me know, would n’t you ? ”

“ Probably not, Fenton,” replied Bayard, smiling.

“I mean it,” urged the other, flushing.

“ If you do, the time may come,” said Bayard dreamily.

He glanced at his old friend — the rosy, well-fed man: at the round face destitute of the carving of great purpose or deep anxiety ; at the pretty girl with the Berkshire eyes who looked adoringly over the sleek elbow to which she clung. These two well-meaning, commonplace people seemed ennobled and beautified, as commoner far than they may be, by their human love and happiness. Bayard, in his shabby clothes, with his lonely face, watched them with a certain reverence.

He thought — but when did he not think of Helen ?

He wrote ; she answered ; they did not meet ; he worked on patiently ; and the winter went. Bayard drowned himself in his work with the new and conscious ardor of supreme renunciation. He thought of the woman whom he loved, as the diver at the bottom of the sea, when the pumps refuse to work, thinks of sky and shore and sun, of air and breath.

One bleak, bright February night, Bayard came out from his mission, and looked about Angel Alley anxiously.

Bob was within, and Tony and Jean were safe ; Job Slip was sober, and Tom, Dick, and Harry were accounted for. But Lena—Lena had not been seen at Christlove for now many weeks.

The waywardness of the girl had long been sore at Bayard’s heart, and the step which he took that night was the result of thought and deliberate purpose. Afterwards he was glad to remember that he had acted on no one of those mere sentiments or impulsive whims which are the pitfalls of a philanthropic life.

The hour was not early : decent people were scattering to their homes, and Windover was giving herself over to the creatures of the night. It was a windy night, and the snow blew in cold, white powder from the surface of drifts called heavy for the coast, and considered a sign of “ a spell of weather.”

There was a full moon, and the harbor, as one looked down between the streets, showed in glints and glimpses bright and uneasy. The bellow of the whistling-buoy, nine miles out, off the coast, was audible at firesides. The wind sped straight from Cape Cod, and was as icy as death.

It was one of the nights when the women of Windover grow silent, and stand at the window with the shade raised, looking out between their hands with anxious, seaward eyes. “ God pity the men at sea ! ” they say who have no men at sea. But those who have say nothing. They pray. As the night wears on and the gale increases, they weep. They do not sleep. The red light on the Point goes out, and dawn is gray. The buoy shrieks on malignantly. It “ comes on thick,” and the fog-bell begins to toll. Its mighty lips utter the knell for all the unburied drowned that are, and have been, and are yet to be. Windover listens and shudders. It is one of the nights when the sheltered and the happy and the clean of life bless God for home, for peace, for fire and pillow. It is one of the nights when the soul of the gale enters into the soul of the tempted and the unbefriended, and with it seven devils worse than the first. It was one of the nights when girls like Lena are too easy or too hard to find.

Bayard sought her everywhere. She was not to be seen in Angel Alley, and he systematically and patiently searched the town. With coat-collar turned up and hat turned down, he tried to keep warm, but the night was deadly bleak. It came on to be eleven o’clock ; half past; and midnight approached. He was about to abandon his quest when he struck a trace of her, and with redoubled patience he hunted it down. He had taken no one with him in his search for Lena; in truth, he knew of no person in all that Christian town who would have wished to share that night’s repulsive errand, if he had asked it. He recognized this fact with that utter absence of bitterness which is the final grace and test of dedication to an unselfish end.

“ Why should I expect it? ” he thought gently. “ Duty is not subject to a common denominator. This is mine, and not another’s.”

A policeman gave him, at last, the clue he needed, and Bayard, who had returned on his track to Angel Alley, halted before the door of a house at the end of a dark court, within a shell’s-throw of the wharves. His duty had never led him before into precisely such a place, and his soul sickened within him. He hesitated, with his foot on the steps.

“ Better stay outside, sir,” suggested the policeman.

Bayard shook his head.

“ Shan’t I go with you, sir ? You don’t know what you ’re about. Better have an officer along.”

“Stay here, within call, will you?” answered Bayard. “ That will do. The law can’t do my errand.”

“ Nor nothin’ else in this town but that,” returned the officer, touching his helmet.

He pointed up the alley where the large letters of the solemn white and scarlet sign blazed all night before the chapel of Christlove. The fishermen could see it from their schooners’ decks as they dropped anchor, and it shone strangely in their weather - beaten faces as they pushed past, or sank into, the doors of the dens that lined the street.

Bayard’s eye followed the officer’s finger, lighting with that solemn radiance peculiar to himself ; and with this illumination on his face he entered the place whose ways take hold on death.

The officer waited without. In an incredibly short time the minister reappeared. He was not alone. Lena followed him, with hanging head.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” said Bayard quietly, touching his hat, “ I shall need you no longer.”

He turned, with the girl beside him, and crossed the alley. The officer, with a low whistle, lingered a moment, and watched the astounding pair. In the full moonlight, in the sight of all whom it did or did not concern, Bayard walked up and down the street with Lena. It was now near to the stroke of midnight. The two could be seen conversing earnestly. Lena did not raise her eyes. The minister watched her eagerly. They paced up and down. Men staggering home from their sprees stood stupidly and stared at the two. Old Trawl came to his door and saw them, and called Ben, who looked, and swore the mighty oath of utter intellectual confusion. The minister nodded to Ben, and spoke once or twice to some sailor who awaited salutation ; but he suffered no interruption of his interview with the girl. In the broad moonlight he continued quietly to walk up and down Angel Alley, with the street girl at his side.

“ Lena,”Bayard had begun, “ I have been trying to help the people in this alley for almost a year and a half, and I have met with nothing to discourage me as much as you do. Some men and women have grown better, and some have not changed at all. You are growing worse.”

“That’s so.” assented Lena. “It’s as true as hell.”

“ I begin to think,” replied the minister. “ that it must be partly my fault. It seems to me as if I must have failed, somehow, or made some mistake, or you would be a better girl, after all this time. Do you think of anything — come, Lena ! give your best attention to the subject — do you think of anything that I could do, which I have not done, to induce you to be a decent woman ? ”

“ I tried, for you ! ” muttered Lena. “ I tried ; you know I did ! ”

“ Yes, I know you did ; and I appreciated it. You failed, that was all. You are discouraged, and so am I. Now tell me! What else can I do, to make a good girl of you ? For it’s got to be done, you see,” he added firmly. “ I can’t have this any longer. You disgrace the chapel, and the people, and me. It makes me unhappy, Lena.”

“ Mr. Bayard ! Mr. Bayard ! ” said Lena, with trembling lip, “ I ’ll go drown in the outer harbor. I ain’t fit to live ... if you care. I did n’t suppose you cared.”

“You are not fit to die, Lena,” returned Bayard gently. “ And I do care.

I have always thought you were born to be a fine woman. There’s something I like about you. You are generous, and brave, and kind-hearted. Then see what a voice you have ! You might have been a singer, Lena, and sung noble things — the music that makes people purer and better. You might have ”...

“ Oh, my God ! ” cried Lena, “ I was singin’ in that — in there — to-night. They ’re always after me to sing ’em into damnation.”

“ Lena.” said Bayard in a thrilling tone, “ look into my face ! ”

She obeyed him. High above her short stature Bayard’s delicate countenance looked down at the girl. All the loathing, all the horror, all the repulsion that was in him for the sin, he suffered the sinner to see for the first time. His tender face darkened and quivered, shrinking like some live thing that she tormented.

“ Oh! ” wailed Lena, “ am I like that — to you ? Is it as bad as that ? ”

“ It is as bad as that,” answered the minister solemnly.

“ Then I ’ll go drown,” said Lena dully ; “ I might as well.”

“ No,” he said quietly. “ You will not drown. You will live, and make yourself a girl whom I can respect.”

“ Would you ever respect me — respect ME, if I was to be — if I was to do what you say ? ” asked Lena in a low, controlled tone.

“ I should respect you from my soul,” said Bayard.

“Would you — would you be willing to — would you feel ashamed to shake hands with me, Mr. Bayard — if I was a different girl ? ”

“ I will shake hands with you now,” returned the minister quietly, “ if you will give me your word of honor that you will never, from this hour ” —

“ I will never, from this hour, so help me, God ! ” said Lena solemnly.

“ So help her, God ! ” echoed Bayard.

He lifted his hand above her head, as if in prayer and blessing; then gently extended it. The girl’s cold, purple fingers shook as he touched them. She held her bare hand up in the moonlight, as if to bathe it in whiteness.

“ Mr. Bayard, sir,” she said in her ordinary voice, “it is a bargain.”

Bayard winced, in spite of himself, at the words, but be looked at Lena’s face, and when he saw its expression he felt ashamed of his own recoil.

“ Very well,” he answered, adopting her businesslike tone, “ so it is. Now, then, Lena ! what next ? What are you going to do ? Have you any home — any friends — anywhere to turn ? ”

“ I have no friend on all God’s earth but you, sir,” said Lena drearily, “but I guess I ’ll manage, somehow. I can mostly do what I set out to.”

“ Your mother ? ” asked Bayard gently.

“ She died when my baby was born, sir. She died of the shame of it. I was fifteen year old.”

“ Oh ! And the — the man ? The father of your child ? ”

“ He was a gentleman. He was a married man. I worked for him, in a shop. He ain’t dead. But I’d sooner go to hell than look to him.”

“ I ’d about as soon you would,” the minister said in his heart; but his lips answered only, “You poor girl! You poor, poor, miserable girl ! ”

Then for the first time Lena broke down, and began to cry — there, on the streets, in the sight of every one.

“ I must find you work — shelter — home — with some lady. I will do whatever can be done. Rely on me ! ” cried Bayard helplessly.

He began to realize what he had done in undertaking Lena’s “case” without the help of a woman. Confusedly he ran over in his mind the names of the Christian women whom he knew, to whom he could turn in this emergency. He thought of Helen Carruth ; but an image of the Professor’s wife, her mother, being asked to introduce Lena into the domestic machinery of a Cesarea household half amused and half embittered him. He remembered the wife of his church treasurer, a kindly woman, trained now to doing the unexpected for Christ’s sake.

“ I will speak to Mrs. Bond. I will consider the matter. Perhaps there may be some position — some form of household service,” he ventured, with the groping masculine idea that a domestic career was the only one open to a girl like Lena.

Then Lena laughed.

“Thank you, sir. But I ain’t no more fit for housework than I be for a jeweler’s trade, or floss embroidery, or a front pew in heaven. There ain’t a lady in Christendom would put up with me. I would n’t like it, either,” said Lena candidly. “ There ’s only one thing I would like. It’s just come over me, standin’ here. I guess I ’ll manage.”

“ I shall wish to know,” observed Bayard anxiously, “ what you are going to do, and where you will be.”

“ I ’ll take a room I know of,” Lena answered. “ It ain’t in Angel Alley. It’s a decent place. I ’II get Johnny’s mother to come along o’ me. She’s dead sick of the Widders’ Home. She’s kinder fond of me, Johnny’s mother is, and she can take in or go out, to help a bit. Then I ’ll go over to the powder factory.”

“ The powder factory ? ” echoed the puzzled pastor.

“The gunpowder factory, over to the Cut. They ’re kinder short of hands. It ain’t a popular business. The pay’s good, and Lord ! I should n’t care ! The sooner I blow up, the safer I ’ll be. I guess I ’d like it, too. I always thought I should.”

“ Very well,” said the minister. “ That may answer till we can find something better.”

It was now past twelve o’clock, and the night was growing bitterly cold. Bayard said good-night to Lena, and they separated opposite Trawl’s door.

He went shivering home, and stirred up his fire. He was cold to the heart. That discreet afterthought, which is the enemy of too many of our noble decisions, tormented him. He turned to his books, and, taking one which was lying open upon the study-table, read : —

“ He spoke much about the wrongs of women ; and it is very touching to know that, during the last year of his life, he frequently went forth at night, and endeavored to redeem the fallen women of Brighton.”

It was not three days from this time that Captain Hap approached the minister on the alley, with a sober and anxious face. He held in his hand a copy of the Windover Topsail. His rough finger trembled as it pressed the paragraph which he handed in silence for Bayard to read: —

“ We regret to learn that a certain prominent citizen of this place, who has been laboring among the sailors and fishermen in a quasi-clerical capacity, is so unfortunate as to find his name associated with a most unpleasant scandal arising out of his acquaintance with the disreputable women of the district in which he labors. We wish the reverend gentleman well out of his scrape, but may take occasion to suggest that such self-elected censors of our society and institutions must learn somehow that they cannot touch pitch and not be defiled, any more than ordinary men who do not make their pretensions to holiness.”

“ Well ? ” said Bayard, quietly returning the paper.

Job Slip had joined them, and read the paragraph over the captain’s shoulder. Job was white to the lips with the virile rage of a man of the sea.

“ I’ve shipped here, and I’ve coasted there, and I ’ve sailed eenymost around the world,” slowly said Captain Hap. “ I never in my life — and I’m comin’ on seventy-five year old — I never knew no town I would n’t d’ruther see a scandal a-goin’in than this here. It’s hell let loose on ye,” added the captain grimly.

“ Find me the fellar that put up that job ! ” roared Job Slip, rolling up his sleeves.

“ He ain’t fur to seek,” answered the captain, with a short laugh.

“ He’s the devil and all his angels smithered into one ! ” raved Job.

“That’s drawrin’ of it mild,” said Captain Hap.

“This — low — matter does not trouble me,” observed Bayard, smiling with genuine and beautiful remoteness.

“ Excuse me, sir,” said Captain Hap ; “ that’s all you know ! ”

XXI.

Captain Hap was wiser in his generation than the child of light. Before a week had gone by, Bayard found himself the victim of one of the cruelest forms of human persecution — the scandal of a provincial town.

Its full force fell suddenly upon him.

Now this was the one thing for which he was totally unprepared : of every other kind of martyrdom, it seemed to him, he had recognized the possibility ; this had never entered his mind.

He accepted it with that outward serenity which means in a man of his temperament the costliest expenditure of inward vitality, and, turning neither to the right nor to the left, kept on his way.

Averted looks avoided him upon the streets. Cold glances sought him in Angel Alley. Suspicion lurked in eyes that had always met him cordially. Hands were withdrawn that had never failed to meet his heartily. His ears quivered with comments overheard as he passed through groups upon the business streets. The more public and the more respectable the place, the worse his reception. He came quickly into the habit of avoiding, when he could, the better portions of the town.

Before he had time to determine on any given course of conduct, he felt himself hunted down into Angel Alley, like other outcasts.

The Reverend Mr. Fenton, in this crisis, did what appealed to him as a praiseworthy deed. He came down to the chapel, and, in the eyes of Angel Alley, sought his classmate boldly. Give him the credit of the act; it meant more than we may readily distinguish.

Men who conform, who live like other men, who think in the accustomed channels, are not to be judged by the standards which we hold before our heroes. He held out his hand to Bayard with some unnecessary effusion.

“My dear fellow !" he murmured, “ this is really — you know — I came to — express my sympathy.”

“Thank you, Fenton,” said Bayard quietly.

He said nothing more, and Fenton looked embarrassed. He had prepared himself at some length to go into the subject. He felt that Bayard’s natural indiscretion needed the check which it had probably now received, for life. But he found himself unable to say anything of the kind. The words shriveled on his tongue. His own eyes fell before Bayard’s high look. A spectator might have thought their positions to be reversed : that the clergyman was the culprit, and the slandered missionary the judge and patron. Fenton was uncomfortable, and, after a few meaningless words, he said good-morning, and turned away.

“ Of course,” he observed, as he went down the long steps of the mission, "you will meet this slander by some explanation or change of tack? You will adapt your course hereafter to the circumstances ? ”

“ I shall explain nothing, and change nothing,” answered Bayard calmly. “ I should do the same thing over again tomorrow, if I had it to do. I have committed no imprudence, and I shall stoop to no apology. I doubt if there are six civilized places in this country where an honest man in my position, doing my work, would have been subjected to the consequences which have befallen a simple deed of Christian mercy such as has been done by scores of better men than I, before me. Why, it has not even the merit — or demerit — of originality ! I did not invent the salvation of the Magdalene. That dates back about two thousand years. It takes a pretty low mind to slander a man for it.”

This was the only bitter thing that he was heard to say. It may be pardoned him. It silenced the Reverend Mr. Fenton, and he departed thoughtfully from Angel Alley.

As Bayard looked back upon these lonely days, when the fury of the storm which swept about his ears had subsided, as such social tornadoes do, he perceived that the thing from which he had suffered most keenly was the disapproval of his own people. Wrong him they did not, because they could not. They might as easily have smirched the name and memory of the beloved disciple. But criticise him they did, poor souls! Windover gossip, the ultimatum of their narrow lives, seemed to them to partake of the finalities of death and the judgment. The treasurer of the society was troubled.

“We must reef to the breeze! we must reef to the breeze ! ” he repeated mournfully. “ But, my dear sir, you must allow me to say that I think it would have been better seamanship to have avoided it altogether.”

What would you have had me do, Mr. Bond?” asked Bayard, looking rather pale. “ I am sorry to disappoint you. The love and trust of my own people are all I have,” he faltered.

“ Some witness, for instance,” suggested Mr. Bond. “ To be sure, you did call on the police, I am told.”

“ All Angel Alley was my witness,” returned Bayard, recovering his self-possession.

“ Some woman, then — some lady ?”

“ Name the woman. I thought of summoning your wife. Should you have let her go on such an errand, on such a night, at such an hour, and under such conditions ? ”

“ I ought to have let her go,” answered the officer of the heretic church honestly. “ I’m not sure that I should.”

He looked perplexed, but none the less troubled for that, and sighed as he shook hands with his pastor. Mrs. Bond took her husband’s arm, and walked away with him. “ I would have done it, John,” she said. But she was crying ; so was Mrs. Granite. Jane’s face was white and scared. Captain Hap was very sober. Job Slip was significantly silent. Rumor had it that a fight was brewing between Job and the Trawls. Job’s anger, if thoroughly aroused, was a serious affair. Bayard felt the discomfort and annoyance of his people acutely. He went away alone, and walked up and down the winter coast, for miles and hours, trying to regain himself in solitude and the breath of the sea. For some time he found it impossible to think coherently. A few words got the ring of his mind and shook it: —

“ From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.”

Usually, in such a situation, some one trivial occurrence fixes itself upon the sore imagination of a man, and galls him above all the really important aspects of his misfortune. This trifle came to Bayard in the reception of a letter from the girl herself : —

DEAR SIR, MR. BAYARD : My hart will brake to think I cause you shame for savin of a poor girl. I see that peece in the paper. It aint far to gess who done it. If it wasnt for disgrasin you Ide kill Ben Trawl tonite. I wouldnt mind hangin. I know how Ide do it too. But don’t you trubble I won’t shame you no more. I ’ll clare out alltogether. So good-bye and God bless you Sir.

This is from,

Yours respietfully,

LENA.

Bayard’s reply to Lena’s note was to go straight to the gunpowder factory and speak with the girl. The superintendent stood by, and overheard him say in a commanding tone : —

“ Lena, you will not leave this town. You will come to the chapel as usual. You will sing with us next Sunday. You will pay no attention to anything that you hear or see. You will never suffer yourself even to suppose that any base, low mind or tongue can injure your pastor. You will do as I bid you, and you will become the woman you promised to. You will do this with my help or without it. Anything may happen to a person. Nothing can undo a promise.”

“ Mr. Bayard, sir,” said Lena, forcing back her tears, for she was not a crying girl, “ I’m a girl of my word, and I ain’t going hack on you. But there’s one thing I ’ve got to say. Mebbe I should n’t have another chance, bein’ things are as they be. I did want to ask you, Mr. Bayard, sir, if I was to be a good girl long enough — as long as you should set the time to make me fit— do you suppose, Mr, Bayard, you would ever feel so as if you could touch your hat to me same as you do to decent girls ? ”

The superintendent of the powder factory brushed his hand across his eyes. Bayard was much moved.

The dark little figure of the girl, in her working-clothes, standing stolidly at her post in the most dangerous of the deadly trades, wherein no “ hand ” can insure his life, blurred before the minister. He thought how little life could mean to Lena, at its kindest and best.

“When the time comes,” he said gently, “ I shall lift my hat to you.”

“ That ’s worth while,” said Lena in her short, forcible way. She turned and went back to the workroom.

The factory seemed to throb with the struggle of imprisoned death to burst its bars. Bayard came out into the air with the long breath which the bravest man always drew when he left the building.

These incidents (which are events to the solitary, missionary life) were but two days old when Joey Slip climbed the minister’s stairs, sobbing dolorously.

Rumor was running in Windover that Job was drunk again. Neither the child nor the wife could say if truth were in it, for neither had seen the man since yesterday. But Mari had dispatched the boy to the minister with the miserable news. With a smothered exclamation which Joey found it impossible to translate, Bayard snatched the child’s hand and set forth. His face wore a terrible look. He reached the wharves in time to come directly upon Job, the centre of a ring of jeering roughs. Muddy, wet, torn, splashed with slime from the docks, hatless, and raving, Job was doing his maudlin best to fight Ben Trawl, who stood at a safe distance, smiling with the cynicism of a rumseller who never drinks. Job, poor Job, the “ reformed man ; ” Job, who had fought harder for his manhood than most sober men ever fight for anything, from the baby’s crib to the broadcloth casket; Job, the “pillar" of Christlove mission, the pride and pet of the struggling people ; Job, the one sure comfort of his pastor’s most discouraged hour — Job stood there, abased and hideous.

He had lived one splendid year; he had done one glorious thing; he had achieved that for which better men than he should take off their hats to him. And there — Bayard looked once, and covered his face.

Job recognized him, and, frenzied as he was, sunk upon his knees in the mud, and crawled towards the minister, piteously holding up his hands. One must have been in Job’s place, or in Bayard’s, to understand what that moment was to these two men.

In the paltry scenes of what we call the society of the world, there are no actors who should criticise, as there are few who can comprehend the rôles of this plain and common tragedy.

With the eyes of a condemning angel, Bayard strode into the group, and took Job home.

“ It’s clear D. T.,” said Captain Hap between his teeth.

Bayard sent for a doctor, who prescribed chloral, and said the case was serious. Mari put on a clean apron, and dusted up the rooms, and reinforced the minister, who proceeded to nurse Job for thirty-six hours. Captain Hap went home. He said he’d rather tie a slip-knot round the fellar’s neck and drawr it taut.

But when Job came to himself, poor fellow, the truth came with him. Job had been the blameless victim of one of those incredible but authenticated plots which lend blackness to the dark complexion of the liquor trade.

Job was working ashore, it seemed, for a week, being out of a chance to ship ; and he had been upon the wharves, salting down fish, and came out at his nooning, with the rest, for his lunch. There was a well, in a yard, by the fish-flakes, and a dipper, chained, hung from the pump.

It came Job’s turn to drink from the dipper. And when he had drunk, the devil entered into him : for the rim of the dipper had been maliciously smeared with rum. Into the parched body of the “ reformed man ” the fire of that flavor ran, as flame runs through stubble in a drought.

The half-cured drunkard remembered putting down his head and starting for the nearest grog-shop on a run, with a yell. From that moment till Bayard found him, Job remembered nothing more. Such episodes of the nether world are not rare enough to be doubted, and this one is no fiction.

“ I’m in for it now,” groaned Job.

“ Might as well go to hand done with it.”

Then Bayard, haggard from watching, turned and looked on Job. Job put his hands before his face.

“ Oh, sir ! ” he cried. “ But you see there ain’t a wharf-rat left in Windover as ’u d trust me now ! ”

“ Take my hand. Job,” said the minister slowly.

Job took it, sobbing like a baby.

“ Now climb up again, Job ! ” said Bayard in a strong voice. “ I ’m with you ! ”

Thus went the words of the shortest sermon of the minister’s life. To the end of his days, Job Slip will think it was the greatest and the best.

Captain Hap, penitent, but with no idea of saying so, came up the tenement stairs. Mari and Joey sat beside the fire. Mari was frying chunks of haddock for supper. Joey was singing in a contented little voice something that he had caught in the mission : —

“ Hear the boy ! ” cried Mari, laughing for the first time for many black days.

“ What in the world is he singin’ ? ” asked Joey’s father.

“ Why, I’m sure it’s as plain as can be,” said Joey’s mother.

Then he says : —

Oh, ain’t he the clever boy ? ”

“ Well see,” said Job unexpectedly, putting his feet to the floor. “ I ain’t a-goin’ to have the little foliar ashamed of his father, see if I be !”

“ All the same,” observed Captain Hap dryly, “ I would n’t go on the street to-night, if I was you. I’ll stay along of you a spell. The minister ’s beat out. There’s enough goin’ on yet to capsize a soberer man than you be, Job. The fellar that did this here ain’t a-goin’ to stop at rims of dippers. No, sir! . . . Job Slip! don’t you tech nothin’; not nothin’ outside of your own house, this six month to come! Not a soda, Job! Not a tumbler o’ milk ! Not a cup o’ coffee ! Not a swaller o’ water ! No, nor a bite of victuals. You '11 be hunted down like a rat. There ’s bread buttered with phosphorus layin’ round loose for ye ’most anywheres. Everybody knows who done this. ’T ain’t no use to spile good English callin’ bad names. He won’t stop at nothin’ partikkelar to drawr you under.”

“ But why ? ” asked Bayard. “ Why should he hound down poor Job so ? ”

“To spite you, sir,” replied the captain without hesitation.

In the dead silence which followed the captain’s words, Joey’s little voice piped up again: —

Joey stole up merrily, and patted out the tune with his little fingers on the minister’s pale cheek.

“ He says,” began Mari proudly,

But Captain Hap, who was not in a pious mood, interrupted the maternal translation : —

“ Folks say that they’ve got into their -heads their license is in genooine danger. Confine yourself to prayin’ an’ singin’, an’ they don’t deny that ’s what you ’re hired for. Folks say if you meddle with city politics, there ain’t an insurance company in New England ’u ’d take a policy on your life, sir. You might as well hear what ’s goin’ on, Mr. Bayard. I don’t suspicion it ’ll make no odds to you. I told ’em you would n’t tech the politics of this here town with a forty-fathom grapplin’-iron — no, nor with a harbor-dredger ! ”

“ You ’re right there, Captain,” returned Bayard, smiling.

“ Then’t ain’t true about the license? ” asked the captain anxiously.

“ I have nothing to conceal in the matter, Captain,” answered Bayard, after a moment’s silence. ” There are legalized crimes in Angel Alley which I shall fight till I die. But it will be slow work. I don’t do it by lobbying. I have my own methods, and you must grant me my own counsel.”

The dawn that rises on the Trawls without their license,” slowly said the captain, “ that day, sir, you may as well call on the city marshal for a body-guard. You ’ll need it! ”

“ Oh, you and Job will answer, I fancy,” replied Bayard, laughing.

He went straight home and to bed, where he slept fitfully till nearly noon of the next day. He was so exhausted with watching and excitement that there is a sense of relief in thinking that the man was granted this one night’s rest before what was to be befell him.

For at midnight of the succeeding night he was awakened by the clang of the city bells. It was a still night, there was little wind, and the tide was calm at the ebb. The alarm was quite distinct and easily counted. One ? two ? three ? Six ? One — two — three. Six. Thirty-six. Thirty-six was the call from the business section of the town. This alarm rang in for the Board of Trade, Angel Alley, the wharves, and certain banks and important shops.

“A fire on the wharves, probably,” thought Bayard ; he turned on his pillow. “ The fire-boat will reach it in three minutes. It is likely to be some slight affair.”

One — two—three. Six. One — two — three. Six. One-two. One-two. The sounding of the general alarm aroused him thoroughly. He got to the window and flung open the blinds. In the heart of the city, two miles away, a pillar of flame shot straight towards the sky, which hung above it as red as the dashed blood of a mighty slaughter.

At this moment a man came running, and leaned on Mrs. Granite’s fence, looking up through the dark.

“ Mr. Bayard ! Mr. Bayard! ” he called loudly.

“ Bob ! Is that you ? What is it ? Where is it ? ”

“ It’s Angel Alley, sir.”

“ Be there in a minute, Bob.”

“ But, Mr. Bayard, sir — there’s them as think you ’re safer where you be. Job Slip says you stay to home if you love us, Mr. Bayard ! ”

“ Wait for me, Bob ! ” commanded Bayard. "I’m half dressed now.”

“ But, Mr. Bayard, Mr. Bayard — you ain’t got it through your head — I said I would n’t be the man to tell you, and I wish to gollyswash I ’d stuck to it.”

“ Bob ! It is n’t the Mission ? ”

“Oh, sir — yes! They’ve set us afire! ”

“ Now, Bob,” said the minister, suddenly shooting up in the dark at Bob’s side, with coat and vest over his arm, “ run for it! Run ! ”

The building was doomed from the first. The department saw that at a glance, and concentrated its skill upon the effort to save the block.

The deed had been dexterously done. The fire sprang from half a dozen places, and had been burning inwardly, it was thought, for an hour before it was discovered. The people had been too poor to hire a night-watchman.

“We trusted Providence,” muttered Captain Hap. “ And this is what we get for it! ”

The crowd parted before the minister when he came panting up, with Bob a rod behind. Bayard had got into his coat on the way, but he had not waited for his hat. In the glare, with his bared head and gray-white face, he gathered an unearthly radiance.

He made out to get under the ropes, and sprang up the steps of the burning building.

“ No, sir ! ” said the chief respectfully ; “you can’t get in now. We’ve saved all we could.”

“There are some things I must have. I can get at them. I ’ve done this before. Let me in ! ” commanded the minister.

All the coherent thought he had at that moment was that he must save some of the pictures — Helen’s pictures that she had given to the people. In that shock of trouble they took on a delirious preciousness to him.

“ Let me into my own chapel! ” he thundered.

But the chief put his hand upon the preacher’s breast, and held it there.

“Not another step, Mr. Bayard. The roof will fall in five minutes. Get back, sir!”

He heard his people calling him ; strong hands took hold of him ; pitying faces looked at him.

“ Come, Mr. Bayard,” some one said gently. “Turn away with us. Don’t see it go.”

He protested no more, but obeyed quietly. For the first time since they had known him, he faltered, and broke before his people. They led him away, like a wounded man. He covered his face when the crash came. The sparks flew far and hot over the wharves, and embers followed. The water hissed as it received them.

At the first gray of dawn the minister was on the grounds again. Evidently he had not slept. There was a storm in the sky, and slow, large flakes of snow were falling. The crowd had gone, and the alley was deserted. Only a solitary guardian of the ruins remained. Bayard stood before them, and looked up. Now a singular thing had happened. The electric wire which fed the illuminated sign in front of the mission had not been disconnected by the fire ; it had so marvelously and beautifully happened ; only a few of the little colored glass globes had been broken, and four white and scarlet words, paling before the coming day, and blurring in the snow, but burning steadily, answered the smothered tongues of fire and lips of smoke which muttered from the ruins.

As day opened, the people began to collect upon the spot. Expressions of awe or of superstition were heard, as they looked up and read, serene and undisturbed against the background of the rising storm,

THE LOVE OF CHRIST.

XXII.

Immediately upon the destruction of the chapel two things happened. The first was a visit from Mr. Hermon Worcester. Nothing could have been more unexpected; and when Bayard, coming into his lodgings one dreary afternoon, found his uncle in the bony rocking-chair, the young man was much moved.

Mr. Worcester, not untouched by the sight of his nephew’s emotion, held out an embarrassed hand. Bayard took it warmly. He had learned the lesson of loneliness so thoroughly that he was ill prepared for the agitation of this little, common, human incident.

“ You are ill, Manuel ! ” cried the elder man. “ Good heavens, how you have changed! I had no idea—You should have told me ! ” he added, with the old autocratic accent. “ I ought to have been informed. . . . And this is how you live ! ”

Hermon Worcester looked slowly about him. His eye fell on the paper screen, the mosquito-net portière, the iron angel on the stove, the hard lounge, the old carpet, the stained wall-paper ; he scrutinized the bookcase, he glanced at the St. Michael. When he saw the great Christ, he coughed, and turned his face away ; got up uneasily, and went into the bedroom, where he fell to examining the cotton comforters.

“ At least,” he said sharply, “ you could have sent for your own hair mattress ! Nobody has slept on it since ” —

He broke off, and returned to the skeleton rocking-chair, with an expression of discomfiture so serious that Bayard pitied him. He hastened to say : —

“ Oh, I have done very well, very well indeed, Uncle. A man expects to rough it, if he chooses to be a home missionary. Give yourself no concern —now.”

If there were an almost uncontrollable accent on the last word, Mr. Hermon Worcester failed to notice it. Something in that other phrase had arrested his orthodox attention. A home missionary ? A home missionary. Was it possible to regard this heretic boy in that irreproachable light ?

To the home missions of his denomination Mr. Worcester was a large and important contributor. Now and then an ecclesiastical Dives is to be found who gives a certain preference to the heathen of his own land before those of India, Africa, and Japan: Mr. Worcester had always been one of these illuminated men. Indeed, Japan, Africa, and India had been known to reflect upon the character of his Christianity for the reason that his checks were cashed for the benefit of Idaho, Tennessee, and the Carolinas.

To this hour it had not occurred to Mr. Worcester that the heathen of Windover could be properly rated as in the home missionary field. Even the starving pastors in the northern counties of Vermont might have gratefully called for yearly barrels of his old clothes ; but Windover ? Why, that was within two hours of Boston ! And ah, the Vermont ministers were always "sound.” In Idaho, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, where was a corrupt theology to be found ?

But that phrase had lodged in some nick of Mr. Worcester’s mind; and he could no more brush it off than one can brush away a seed out of reach in the crevice of a rock. He regarded his nephew with a certain tolerance, warmly tinged by compassion.

“The boy is a wreck,” he said to himself. “ Manuel will die if this goes on. He might have expected it. And so might I.”

The old man’s face worked. He spoke, crossly enough. Bayard remembered that lie always used to be cross when he was touched.

“What’s to happen now ? Ready to give it up, Manuel ? ”

“ I am ready to begin all over again,” replied Emanuel, smiling.

His voice had the ring that his uncle knew too well; when he was a little fellow, and bound to do a thing whether or no, he spoke in that tone, and always with that engaging smile.

“Who pays for this phœnix ? ” asked the man of business brusquely. "I passed by your place. It is a fine heap of ashes. A curious sight I saw there, too. That sign you hang out — those four words.”

Bayard nodded. “ It is a pleasant accident. The department says it is almost unprecedented. Oh, we shall crawl up somehow, Uncle ! I don’t feel very anxious. The town hall is already hired for temporary use. There is great excitement in the city over the whole affair. You see, it has reached the proportions, now, of a deadlock between the rum interest and the decent citizens. Our treasurer is circulating some sort of a paper. I think he hopes to collect a few hundreds — enough to tide us over till we can see land. I don’t know just how it is all coming out. Of course we can’t expect the help that an ordinary church would get in a similar trouble.”

“ I ’m glad if you recognize that fact, Manuel,” replied Mr. Worcester uncomfortably. In his heart he was saying, “ The boy has his mother’s splendid Worcester pride. He ’ll perish here, like a starving eagle on a deserted crag, but he won’t ask me ! ”

“ You need a new building,” observed Mr. Worcester, with that quiet way of putting a startling thing which was another Worcester quality. “ You seem to have made — from your own point of view — what any man of affairs would call a success here. Of course, you understand, Manuel, that I cannot approve of your course. It has been the greatest grief of my life.”

Bayard hastened to say that his comprehension of this point was not limited.

“ From your point of view, not mine, Manuel, I should, as a man of business, suggest that a new building —your own property — something to impress business men, you know — something to give material form to that — undoubtedly sincere and — however mistaken — unselfish religious effort that you have wasted in this freezing hole . . . I wonder, Manuel, if you could put the draughts on that confounded box-burner with the angel atop ? I don’t know when I’ve been so chilly ! ”

Bayard hastened to obey this request, without intimating that the draughts were closed to save the coal. This species of political economy was quite outside of his uncle’s experience; and yet, perhaps the man of business had more imagination than his nephew gave him credit for ; he said abruptly : —

“ Look here, Manuel, I’ve got to get the seven-o’clock train home, you know, and I ’d best do the errand I came on, at once. You know those old Virginia mines of your mother’s ? There was a little stock there, you remember ? It went below zero. Has n’t been heard of for twenty years. But it remained on the inventory of the estate, you know. Well, it’s come up. There’s a new plant gone in — Northern enterprise — and the stock is on the market again. There is only a trifle, a paltry two thousand, if well handled. It’s yours, you see, whatever there is of it. I came down to ask if you would like to have me force a sale for you.”

“ Two thousand dollars! ” cried Bayard, turning pale. “ Why, it would almost build me — at least, it would furnish a new chapel. We had about so much of inside property — library, piano, pictures, settees, hymn-books, and all that — it is all a dead loss. Unfortunately, Mr. Bond had never insured it — we were so poor : every dollar tells ! ”

“ Then he was a very bad man of business for a church — for a — missionary officer ! ” cried Mr. Worcester irritably ; “and I hope you’ll do nothing of the kind. You could spend that amount on your personal necessities inside of six months, and then not know it, sir ! You are — I hope, Manuel,” sternly, “ that you will regard my wish, for once, in one respect, before I die. Don’t fling your mother’s money into the bottomless pit of this unendowed, burntout, unpopular enterprise ! Wait awhile, Manuel. Wait a little and think it over. I don’t think, under the circumstances,” added Mr. Worcester, with some genuine dignity, “that it is very much to ask.”

“Perhaps it is not,” replied Bayard thoughtfully. “ At least, I will consider it, as you say.”

Four days after, an envelope from Boston was put into Bayard’s hand. It contained a type-written letter, setting forth the fact that the writer desired to contribute to the erection of the new chapel in Windover known by the name of Christlove, and representing a certain phase of home missionary effort, the inclosed sum. It was a bank draft for twenty-five hundred dollars. The writer withheld his name, and requested that no effort be made to identify him. He also desired that his contribution be used, if possible, in a conditional character, to stimulate the growth of a collection sufficient to put the building, and the mission behind it, upon a suitable basis.

The following day Mr. Worcester sent to Bayard by personal check the remnant of his mother’s property. This little sum seemed as large, now, to the Beacon Street boy, as if he had been reared in one of the Vermont parsonages to which his uncle sent old overcoats ; or, one might say, as if he had never left the shelter of that cottage under the pine grove in Bethlehem, where his eyes first opened upon the snow-girt hills. Self-denial speaks louder in the blood than indulgence, after all ; and who knew how much of Bayard’s simple manliness in the endurance of privation he owed to the pluck of the city girl who left the world for love of one poor man, and to become the mother of another ?

Bayard had scarcely adjusted his mind to these events when he received from Helen Carruth this letter : —

“MY DEAR MR. BAYARD, - My litthe note of sympathy with your great trouble did not deserve so prompt an answer. I thank you for it. I could not quite make up my mind to tell you, in the midst of so much care and anxiety, what I can delay no longer in saying ” —

Bayard laid down the letter. The room grew black before his starting eyes.

“ There is another man,” he thought. “ She is engaged. She cannot bear to tell me.”

Sparks of fire leaped before his eyeballs. Black swung into purple — into gray — light returned ; and he read on :

“ If I flatter myself in supposing that you might mind it a little, why, the mistake hurts nobody, neither you nor me ; but the fact is we are not coming to Windover this summer. We sail for Europe next week.

“ Father has decided quite suddenly, and there is nothing to be done but to go. It is something to do with Exegesis, if you please ! There is a mistake in Exegesis, you know — in the New Version. It seems to me a pretty Old Version by this time, but Father has always been stirred up about it. He has been corresponding with a German Professor for a year or two on this burning subject. I have an inarticulate suspicion that, between them, they mean to write the New Testament over again. Could they do another Version ? How many Versions can he versed ?

“ I never graduated, you know; I never even attended a Cesarea Anniversary in my life (and you can’t think how it shocked the Trustees at dinner, and that was such fun, so I kept on not going !), and I can’t be expected to fathom these matters. Anyhow, it is mixed up with the Authenticity of the Fourth Gospel, and the Effect of German Rationalism upon the Evangelical Faith. It is a reason full of capital letters and Orthodoxy— and go he will. He won’t leave Mother behind, for he is one of the men who believe in living with their wives ; he’s just as dependent on his womenkind when he ’s engaged in a theological row as a boy who’s got hurt at football ; and I’ve got to go to take care of the two of them. So there it is ! I think there is a convention in Berlin — an Exegetical Something—anyhow, there ’s a date, and live up to it we must. He has sublet the Flying Jib to the Prudential Committee of the A. B. C. F. M. — I mean to one of it, with six grandchildren. Think how they ’ll punch their fists through our lace curtains! I wish you’d go down and tell Mr. Salt they shan’t have my dory. Could n’t you manage to use it yourself ? And I — I can’t take Joey Slip to the circus, nor sit down in Sackcloth on the ashes of Christlove Chapel to help you.

“ Truly, dear friend, I meant to help this summer. And I am disappointed, if you care to know it.

Yours faithfully,

HELEN CARRUTH.

“ I forgot to say that father has doubled up his lectures, and the Trustees have given him the whole summer term. This,

I believe, is in view of the importance of the quarrel over the Fourth Gospel. We sail in the Scythia a week from Saturday,”

It was early afternoon of the next day, when Helen, standing in her window to draw the shades, glanced over automatically at the third-story northwest corner front of Galilee Hall. The room had long since been occupied by a middler with blue spectacles and a peaked beard; a long-legged fellow, who was understood to be a Hebrew scholar and quite Old School, and was expected to fill a large parish without offending the senior deacon. Privately, Helen hated the middler. But the eye that had learned to wander at sunset across the Seminary “ yard ” to the window blazing in gold and glory had slowly unlearned the lesson of its brief and pleasant habit. Even yet, on blue-white winter days, when life stood still to freeze on Cesarea Hill, Helen found herself drearily looking at the glittering glass, as one looks at the smile on a face from which the soul has fled.

It was still many hours to sunset, and the early April afternoon fell gustily and gray upon the snows of Cesarea. It was not a sunny day, and Cesarea was at her worst. Helen idly watched a figure splashing through two feet of slush “ across lots ” over the Seminary grounds from the Trustees’ Hotel.

“ A post-graduate,” she thought, “ back on a visit. Or, more likely, a minister without a pulpit, coming to Cesarea after a parish, or places to supply. Probably he has seven children and a mother-inlaw to support. If he ’s ‘ sound,’ he ’ll come to Father — no — yes. Why, yes ! ” She drew suddenly back from the window. It was Emanuel Bayard.

He waded through the slush as quickly as so tired a man could. He had walked from the station, saving his coach fare, and had made but feint of being a guest at the hotel, where he had not dined. He was not quite prepared to let Helen know that he had lunched on cold jolnny-cake and dried beef, put up by Mrs. Granite in a red cotton doily, and tenderly pinned over by Jane with a safety-pin.

He lifted his eyes to the gloomy landscape for illumination, which it denied him. He knew no more than the snow professor what he should do, what he should say ; no, nor why he had lapsed into this great weakness, and come to Cesarea at all. He felt as if he might make, indeed, a mortal mistake, one way or the other. He pleaded to himself that he must see her face once more, or perish. Nature was mightier than he, and drove him on, as it drives the strongest of us in those reactions from our strenuous vow and sternest purpose, for which we have lacked the simple foresight to provide in our plan of life.

There was a new snow professor, by the way, comfortably melting before the pump beside the Academy commons. He had been considered sounder than any of his predecessors, and had been supplied with a copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions, which he perused with a corncob pipe between his lips of ice. A Westminster catechism ornamented his vest pocket. He was said to have slumped beautifully when the thaw came.

Bayard shot a tolerant smile at the snow professor’s remains, as he came up the steps.

Helen herself answered his ring. Both of them found this so natural that neither commented upon the little act of friendliness.

The Professor was at his lecture, and Mrs. Carruth was making her final appearance at certain local Cesarea charities ; principally, to-day, at the Association for Assisting Indigent Married Students with blankets and baby-clothes. Helen explained these facts with her usual irreverence, as she ushered her visitor into the parlor.

“ If I had a fortune.” she observed, “ I would found a society in Cesarea for making it a Penal Offense for a Married Man to Study for the Ministry without a Visible Income. The title is a little long, don’t you think ? How could we shorten it ? It’s worse than the Cruelty to Animals thing. Mr. Bayard ? — why, Mr. Bayard ! ”

When she saw the expression of his face, her own changed with remorseful swiftness.

“ You are perfectly right,” he said, with sudden, smiting incisiveness. “ You are more than right. It is the greatest act of folly of my life that I am here.”

He stood still, and looked at her. The despair she saw in his eyes seemed to her a measureless, bottomless thing.

“ I had to come,” he said. “ How could I let you go, without — you must see that I had to look upon your face once more. Forgive me — dear ! ”

Her chin trembled, at the lingering of that last, unlooked-for word.

“ I have tried,” said Bayard slowly. “You won’t misunderstand me if I say I have tried to do the best I can, at Windover ; and I have failed in it,” he added bitterly, “ from every point of view, and in every way ! ”

“ As much as that.” said Helen, “happened to the Founder of the Christian religion, You are presumptuous if you expect anything different.”

“You are right,” answered Bayard, with that instinctive humility which was at once the strongest and the sweetest thing about him. “ I accept your rebuke.”

“Oh,” cried Helen, holding out her hands, “ I could n’t rebuke you ! I ” — she faltered.

“ You see,” said Bayard slowly, “that’s just the difference, the awful, infinite difference. All His difficulties were from the outside.”

“ How do you know that ? ” asked Helen quickly.

“ I don t,” replied Bayard thoughtfully. “ I don’t know. But I have been accustomed to think so. Perhaps I am under the traditions yet ; perhaps I am no nearer right than the other Christians I have separated myself from. But mine, you see — my obstacles, the things that make it so hard — the only thing that makes it seem impossible for me to go on—is within myself. You don’t suppose He ever loved a woman — as I — love you ? It’s impossible ! ” cried the young man. “ Why, there are times when it seems to me that if the salvation of the world hung in one scale, and you in the other— as if I ” — He finished by a blinding look. Her face drooped, but did not fall. He could see her fingers tremble. “ It was something,” he went on dully, “ to see you ; to know that I —why, all winter I have lived on it, on the knowledge that summer was coming — that you — Oh, you can’t know ! You can’t understand ! I could bear all the rest!” he cried. “ This — this ” —

His sentence broke, and was never completed ; for Helen looked up into his face. It was ashen, and all its muscles were set like stiffening clay. She lifted her eyes and gave them to him.

“ I do understand. ... I do,” she breathed. “ Would it make you any happier if you knew — if I should tell you — of course, I know what you said ; that we can’t . . . but would it be any easier if I should tell you that I have loved you all the time ? ”

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.