initial commit of ebook 32394HEADmain

9 files changed, 19933 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/32394-8.txt b/32394-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..182e4b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32394-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5938 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Torch Bearer, by Reina Melcher Marquis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Torch Bearer
+
+Author: Reina Melcher Marquis
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2010 [EBook #32394]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TORCH BEARER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TORCH BEARER
+
+
+BY
+
+REINA MELCHER MARQUIS
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+
+1914
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
+
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY HUSBAND
+
+
+  FOR WITHOUT HIS HEARTENING FAITH IN MY
+  WORK, HIS GENEROUS SYMPATHY WITH IT,
+  AND HIS DISCERNING CRITICISM OF IT, THIS
+  BOOK WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN WRITTEN.
+
+
+
+
+THE TORCH BEARER
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Peter Burnett stood on the top-most of the broad white steps leading to
+the "Shadyville Seminary for Young Ladies."  He had just closed the
+door of that sacred institution behind him, and with a sigh of relief
+which was incompatible with the honors of his professorship.  But Peter
+had never duly valued his position of instructor to Shadyville's
+feminine youth, though his reverence for scholarship was deep and
+sincere.
+
+It was Friday afternoon, and freed from the chrysalis of his
+bread-winning duties, he was about to spread his wings for the flight
+of his inclination.  He looked out on the April greenery of the town
+with the fastidious gaze of one who has the world to choose from; for
+though he was a poor young school-master, clad in a shirt that had been
+darned too often, he was also a Burnett of Kentucky and born to a
+manner of leisure and arrogance.
+
+Slowly, and with this manner at its best, he began to descend the
+steps.  His whole lax figure assumed an air of indolence that, for all
+his lack of imposing proportions, subtly invested him with distinction,
+and he set a dallying, aristocratic foot upon the quiet street.  In
+that descent he triumphed over the mended shirt--and forgot it.
+
+From Friday afternoon until Monday morning--the brief interval when
+little girls are reprieved from lessons--he had indeed the world to
+choose from; or, to be accurate, the social world of Shadyville, of
+Kentucky, and of the larger south.  Within that radius he might take
+his amusements where he would and it was a matter of some amazement to
+those less privileged than he that he made such unspectacular use of
+his opportunities.  Why, thought they, should Peter Burnett waste his
+holidays over a country walk or a copy of Theocritus when he might be
+fashionably golfing, dancing a cotillion or flirting at a house party?
+Not that Peter neglected these pursuits--being a more astute young man
+than his reserved face and tranquil gray eye would indicate--but that
+he paused occasionally in the round of them for what his admirers
+considered less worthy diversions.
+
+And he was pausing now, as he loitered along the wide, silent street
+with its trees in pale, sweet leafage and its old-fashioned houses
+showing a prim gayety in the bloom of their garden closes.
+
+He loved this street which stretched the length of the town; beginning
+in homes of a humble sort; breaking, a little farther on, into a
+feverish importance as it ran along before the doors of the shops;
+gathering dignity unto itself as it gained the site of the Shadyville
+Seminary; and finally advancing, in the evolution of a social
+consciousness, through the select upper end of town, where it spread
+itself ingratiatingly beneath the feet of the "prominent citizens" and
+clung smugly to well-trimmed hedges instead of skirting shop doors, and
+dingy fences.  Peter called its course its "rise in life"--so obvious
+was its snobbery, its persistent climbing; but his ridicule was the
+tolerant ridicule of affection.  He knew the street like the nature of
+an old friend; he saw it like the face of one; and if he laughed now
+and then at its weaknesses, he was none the less certain to enjoy its
+company.
+
+To walk along _with_ a street--not merely upon it--was one of his
+favorite pastimes, and this afternoon he pursued it in great
+contentment, with no thought of what its end should be, nor any
+definite desire.  For it was his theory that to walk with a street,
+divining its moods and discovering its little dramas, was in itself an
+adventure, and need not lead to one.
+
+But though he was content to stroll with the street, particularly in
+this pleasant neighborhood of its upper end, he soon halted, perforce,
+at the greeting: "Peter, you _won't_ pass me by?"
+
+It was a blithe voice that addressed him, pretty and clear, but it was
+not the voice of youth; and Peter, glancing toward the veranda whence
+it came, saw sitting there an old lady who was like the voice, pretty
+and blithe and brave, though with no affectation of a youth long gone.
+His face lighted at sight of her, and he hastened up her garden path.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Caldwell!" he cried, both hands extended.  And then, with
+pleased alacrity, he settled himself upon the step at her feet.
+
+"It's worth while taking a walk up this way," he remarked
+appreciatively.
+
+"Now confess," laughed the old lady, "confess that _I_ am not the
+adventure you are seeking this afternoon!"
+
+"I wasn't seeking one at all," disclaimed Peter, "but I couldn't refuse
+a divine accident."  And as she shook a chiding head at his flattery,
+he went on firmly: "It's the wayside adventures like this which have
+long since decided me to start out with none in view.  The gods
+presiding over a wayfarer's destiny always offer him something better
+than he could have provided for himself!"
+
+"Oh, Peter!  Peter!" protested the old lady, "what a book of pretty
+speeches you are!"  But the two smiled at each other with the happy
+understanding of friends to whom disparity of years was no barrier.
+
+"And how does your garden grow, Mistress Mary?" Peter presently
+inquired.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell looked out upon her trim flower beds where bloomed tulip
+and crocus in April festival.  "My silver bells and cockle shells grow
+very well," she answered, in the spirit of the rhyme, "but"--and her
+delicate old face quivered into an anxious quickening of life--"but,
+Oh, Peter!  I fear my pretty maid grows too fast for her own good."
+
+"Sheila?  Then you've seen?"  And Peter sat up eagerly, shedding the
+garment of his indolence.
+
+"Then you've seen!" returned Mrs. Caldwell.  "But what have you seen,
+Peter?  What do you think of her?"
+
+"I think," said he slowly, "that she has the most delightful mind I've
+ever encountered."
+
+Pride leapt into Mrs. Caldwell's eyes, but, as if to make quite certain
+of him, she demurred: "She's only a little girl, Peter--only a little
+twelve-year-old girl."
+
+"Yes," he assented.  "That's why I'm so sure of her quality.  At her
+age--to be what she is!  Why, Mrs. Caldwell, her mind is like light!
+And it isn't just a wonderfully acute intelligence either.  She has the
+feeling, the intuition, too.  It's as if she thinks with her heart
+sometimes!"  And his face glowed as it never did save for something
+precious and rare.
+
+"Have you considered her future?" he added.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell smiled: "What do you suppose I'm living for?"
+
+"To make her like you, I hope," answered Peter gallantly.  His
+grandfather had loved Mrs. Caldwell, and his appreciation of her was
+inherited.
+
+"To make her so much wiser!"
+
+"Wiser?"  And Peter looked fondly up at the lovely old face above him.
+For it was lovely, lovely with living, with the very years that might
+have withered and spoiled it.  To him the wisdom of such living was
+beyond compare.
+
+But she insisted: "Yes, so much wiser.  Peter, in my youth it wasn't
+ladylike to be too wise.  I had a few womanly accomplishments.  I
+sewed.  I sang.  I read Jane Austen and Miss Edgeworth and Charlotte
+Brontė.  And I gardened a little--with gloves on and a shade hat to
+protect my complexion.  And sometimes I made a dessert.  Peter dear, I
+was a very nice girl, but--!"  And she flung up her hands with a
+gesture that mocked at her futility.
+
+"Sheila can never be nicer!" he persisted loyally.
+
+"Oh, yes, she can--if some one wiser than I teaches her!"
+
+"I," said Peter importantly, "I teach her rhetoric at the Shadyville
+Seminary.  '"I," quoth the sparrow, "with my little bow and arrow!"'"
+
+Mrs. Caldwell leaned forward and touched his shoulder.  "I'm very
+serious," she said.  "Here's my little orphaned Sheila--my dead boy's
+child--with no near kin in the world but me.  And I'm not fit for the
+task of helping her to grow up.  Oh, Peter, will _you_ help?"
+
+"You know I will!  At least, I'll try."
+
+She smiled at him through her earnestness.  "Your rhetoric isn't
+enough," she warned him.  "All you know isn't enough.  You'll have to
+keep on learning too, Peter, if you're really going to help her."
+
+"I will," he promised again.  "I'm twenty-eight, and a lazy beggar--but
+I can still learn."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell drew a quick breath of relief: "Thank you, Peter.  To
+tell you the truth, I've been really a little frightened lately."
+
+"About Sheila?  But she's so sweet!"
+
+"And so strange!  She isn't like a child.  And it's not because she's
+outgrowing her childhood, for she's not like a young girl either.
+Peter"--and Mrs. Caldwell's voice sank to a whisper now, as if she
+communicated a dangerous thing--"Peter, she's like--_a poet_!"
+
+Peter laughed outright at her timid pronouncement of the word.  "But is
+that so terrible?" he teased.  "All poets are not mad, after all."
+
+"Oh, you may laugh.  I dare say my terror of a thing like genius is
+funny.  But it's genuine terror, Peter.  What should I do with a poet
+on my hands?  I tell you, I'm not wise enough to--to trim the wick of a
+star!"
+
+"Well," he suggested comfortably, "she may not be a poet.  What makes
+you think she's likely to be?"
+
+"You know how she reads--quite beyond the ordinary little girl's
+appreciation?"
+
+"Yes--but she may have an extraordinary mind without being a genius of
+any sort.  And I'm responsible for her reading.  It isn't so precocious
+after all.  I've just given her simple, beautiful things instead of
+simple, silly ones."
+
+"But, Peter, I've another reason besides her reading.  She goes off by
+herself and sits brooding--dreaming--for hours at a time.  I've come on
+her unexpectedly once or twice and she didn't even realize that I was
+there--she was so rapt.  She looked as if she were seeing visions!"
+
+"Perhaps she was," said Peter softly.  "I've seen visions in my time,
+and I'm no poet.  Haven't you--when you were as young as Sheila?
+Confess now--haven't you?"
+
+But Mrs. Caldwell resolutely shook her head: "Not like Sheila does.
+And neither have you, Peter.  Sheila is different from you and me.  You
+know her mother was Irish--full of whimsical fancy and quaint
+superstitions."
+
+"Ah, I had forgotten about her mother."
+
+"Of course.  You were only a boy when she died."  And her eyes filled
+with slow, remembering tears as she went on, "She always believed in
+fairies--even when she was face to face with a reality like death.  And
+Sheila believes in them, too, though her mother didn't live long enough
+to tell her about them.  She never says anything about it, but I know
+that she has a whole world which I can't share--the dream-world her
+mother bequeathed to her."
+
+"But that's beautiful!" cried Peter.
+
+"Yes," she admitted, "it's beautiful.  But, Peter, it's sad for me
+because--because I can't follow her there."
+
+She fell silent for a moment, her eyes wistful and anxious; and
+suddenly he saw the pathos of age in her face as well as its finely
+tempered beauty, the pathos of all the closed doors that would open no
+more--among them the door of fairyland.
+
+"It's true," she said bravely, as if they had looked at those closed
+doors together and she were answering his thought.  "I'm an old woman
+and I've lost the way to fairyland.  So I want you to go with Sheila in
+my place.  I want you to guard her dream--and keep _her_ safe, too.
+I'm afraid for her, Peter--I'm afraid!"
+
+"Dear Mrs. Caldwell, how can I walk where your foot is too heavy?"  And
+Peter's voice was very gentle.
+
+"Ask your poets that.  I was never one for the poets.  I can sew a fine
+seam and make my garden grow--nothing more.  But you have the store of
+poetry--and you have youth."
+
+"There," said Peter, pointing to a lad of fourteen or thereabout who
+was coming toward them, "there is what Sheila calls youth."
+
+"And there," retorted Mrs. Caldwell, "is what _I_ call the heavy foot.
+But Theodore Kent is a good boy.  He's just not good enough for Sheila.
+I can't understand the child's liking him!"
+
+Theodore came up to them briskly, his cap off, his yellow-brown hair
+shining in the sunlight with a vigorous glory, his face ruddy and
+smiling.  His body and his features were alike, strong and somewhat
+bluntly fashioned, the body and the features of the very sturdy,
+closely akin to the earth's health and kindliness.
+
+"Where's Sheila, Mrs. Caldwell?" he asked, happily unconscious of a
+critical atmosphere.
+
+"In the back garden.  What do you want, Ted?"
+
+He lifted a battered volume.  "She promised to help me with this
+rhetoric stuff," he announced, quite unabashed at the admission of
+Sheila's superior cleverness.
+
+"Well, run along and find her."  And Mrs. Caldwell glanced at Peter as
+if to add, "Didn't I tell you he wasn't good enough for Sheila?"
+
+"But what, after all, does an understanding of rhetoric amount to?
+What has it done for _me_?" murmured Peter, answering the glance.  And
+then, as the boy still lingered before them, "I'll go with you, Ted.  I
+must make my bow to Sheila before I leave."
+
+The back garden belied its humble name.  The kitchen windows opened
+upon it, it is true, but they did not discourage its prideful aspect.
+Indeed, it might just as well have been a front garden, for it had
+never been the shelter of the useful cabbage and its homely relations.
+The young grass was close-cropped with the same care that had been
+bestowed upon the front lawn, and simple, gay flowers flourished in
+bright beds and along the smooth walk.  Toward the end of the garden,
+and as if for a charming climax, several cherry trees shook blossoming
+branches to the spring wind.
+
+And beneath those trees lay Sheila, her eyes lifted to their bloom, a
+still, enraptured little figure, quite unconscious that intruders were
+drawing near.
+
+At sight of her, Peter halted and laid a staying hand on Ted's arm.
+"Don't speak to her!" he whispered.
+
+And so the two stood and looked at her, and yet she did not stir nor
+grow aware of their presence.
+
+She was a slender little shape, lying there on the fresh grass--a thin
+child, with a pale face and black hair braided away from it; a child
+who was not actually pretty, nor, to the eyes of the casual observer,
+in any other way remarkable.  But to Peter she seemed touched, for the
+moment, with the glamour of enchantment, this small dreamer communing
+with her fays.
+
+"Don't speak to her!" he said again, as Ted moved restively.  "She's as
+far away as if she were in a different world," he added softly, and
+only to himself.
+
+But Ted, overhearing, nodded comprehendingly.  "Sheila does make you
+feel like that sometimes, even if she _is_ standing right by you all
+the time.  She's queer--Sheila is.  But," and he spoke boastfully,
+though still in the cautious undertone Peter had used, "but I always
+call her back!"
+
+Peter looked down at him, at the frank, wholesome, unimaginative face,
+fatuous now with the vanity of power.
+
+"_I_ always call her back!" the boy repeated proudly.
+
+"Yes," said Peter slowly, "you--and people like you--will always call
+her back.  But not this time, Ted--not this time.  I'll help you with
+your rhetoric myself.  Sheila has better things to think of just now."
+And putting his hands on the boy's shoulders, he turned him about for
+retreat.
+
+It occurred to Peter then that he was fulfilling Mrs. Caldwell's trust,
+but he shook his head dubiously, nevertheless.  He had saved one dream,
+but--the future was long and the people like Ted were many and
+intrepid.  Suddenly he saw what life might do to a being like Sheila
+and something of the fear and tenderness that Mrs. Caldwell had felt
+smote upon his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+It was on a Saturday of late October that it happened--the adventure
+which, in after years, Sheila was to see as so significant.
+
+Sheila and Ted had gone to the woods with a nutting-party--a party too
+merry to do much but frolic, and eat as they gathered.  By afternoon
+their baskets were not nearly full, and Ted surveyed his own with
+chagrin.  He liked to accomplish what he set out to do, not because he
+was particularly industrious, but because a sense of power within him,
+partly sheer physical vigor and partly a naturally dominant will,
+demanded deeds for its satisfaction.  If he could stay an hour longer,
+if he could go a little deeper into the woods, he could fill his
+basket, he reflected; whereas now--and he looked with contempt and a
+genuine distress at his meagre store of hazel nuts.
+
+In his discontent he had already lagged behind his companions.  The
+other children had set their faces homeward; Sheila walked just ahead
+of him, her arm around the waist of Charlotte Davis, a girl of her own
+age whom she had taken, with solemn vows, for her dearest friend.  He
+might call the two girls, he thought, and together they could soon have
+a fine harvest, but his inclination rejected Charlotte almost as
+quickly as the idea occurred to him.  For Charlotte, with her pert
+little freckled nose and her shrewd blue eyes, was not a comrade to
+Ted's taste.  She had never shown him a proper reverence, and he was at
+the stage when a boy desires feminine tribute even while he affects to
+scorn it.
+
+Charlotte had never understood him.  Or was it what he did not
+suspect--that she had always understood him too well?  At any rate she
+had a disconcerting way of gazing at him, her head cocked impudently on
+one side, her eyes half speculative, half amused.  And her sharp,
+teasing tongue was even more disconcerting than her naughty, quizzical
+stare.  He could imagine, from past experience at her hands, what would
+happen now if he included her in his plan.
+
+"What do you want of more nuts?" she would ask, with the inquiring
+innocence that he had learned to distrust.  "Haven't you got all you
+can eat?"
+
+"Yes, but--" he would begin to explain.
+
+And she would interrupt him in the middle of his sentence with:
+
+"Oh, I see!  You just want to do more than anybody else, don't you?
+Theodore Kent always does more than anybody else!  Don't he, Sheila?"
+And this with a great show of admiration.  Yet even to Sheila, whose
+loyal mind conceived with difficulty of any disrespect to him, the
+mockery of the apparent admiration would be obvious.
+
+Yes, that was what would happen if he invited Charlotte to stay, and he
+felt himself flush at the fancied conversation.  But he would ask
+Sheila.  She really admired him!  She appreciated him!  If she was
+sometimes queer, she was a nice little thing in spite of that.
+
+"Sheila!" he called.
+
+She paused and looked back at him.
+
+"Come here a minute," he urged.  "I want to tell you something."  And
+when she would have drawn Charlotte with her, he added: "It's a secret."
+
+At which transparent hint, Charlotte flung off Sheila's arm and marched
+on, singing maliciously:
+
+  "Ted has got a secret--secret--secret!
+  Like a little gir-rul--gir-rul--gir-rul!"
+
+
+And hearing himself thus effeminized, Ted winced and wondered if he had
+not better have asked her after all.
+
+Sheila came up to him with a troubled face.  The feud between him and
+Charlotte always hurt and bewildered her.  "You've made Charlotte feel
+bad," she chided reproachfully.
+
+But with Charlotte's taunt still ringing in his ears, Ted was ruthless:
+"Fiddlesticks!  If she feels bad about that, she's silly.  And I can't
+tell secrets to silly girls."
+
+Sheila was sorry for Charlotte, but she began to feel vaguely flattered
+on her own account: "What's the secret?"
+
+"I know a place--just a little way back yonder--that's _fat_ with nuts!"
+
+Sheila looked disappointed.  It seemed, at this hour, rather a poor
+secret.  But Ted, still with the air of honoring her above all others
+of her sex, went on: "I'm going back and get some.  And"--this
+impressively--"I'm going to let you come with me!"
+
+Sheila brightened at the magnanimous offer, but a moment later grew
+uneasy: "Grandmother would be scared if I didn't come home with the
+others."
+
+"How'd she find it out?  Your house is farthest.  She won't see the
+rest of 'em."
+
+"But--but when I tell her--" said Sheila uneasily.
+
+"You _needn't_ tell her!  Don't you understand?  She'll never know you
+_didn't_ come home with the others!"
+
+Ted had a scrupulous personal honor, a pride, as it were, in his
+integrity.  He told the truth about his own transgressions and paid the
+piper without complaint.  But for others his truth was sometimes
+equivocal, his morality comfortably lax.  And these lapses from grace
+on his part always filled Sheila with a shocked dismay.
+
+"Oh," she protested, "I couldn't do that!  Why, it would be _lying_!"
+
+"Fiddlesticks!  Where's the lie?  You wouldn't _tell_ one!"
+
+"It _would_ be a lie," persisted Sheila.  "It would be a lie if I let
+her think what wasn't so."
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" he pronounced again.  But he looked at her approvingly,
+nevertheless.  Sheila was always "square," and he liked her the better
+for it.  "Well, you go along with Charlotte, then," he added
+regretfully.
+
+But he had tempted her more successfully than he knew, and her mind was
+busily working toward some compromise with her conscience.  She cast an
+eye in the direction Charlotte had taken, and that glance decided her.
+"Charlotte's out of sight," she said.  "I--I believe I'll stay,
+Ted--_but I'll tell when I get home_!"
+
+It was late afternoon when they did at last start homeward--with
+baskets as full as Ted had predicted.  Going through the bright-hued
+woods, where the scarlet and burnished yellow of long-lived leaves
+still flaunted ribbons of flame and the dead and dun-colored broke
+crisply beneath their feet, they fell amicably silent, trudging briskly
+along with the impetus of health and hunger.  Ted's silence was the
+content of a body drenched all day in sunshine and clean, cold air, and
+now deliciously placid; but Sheila's quiet was of a different quality.
+For her the woods were full of mysteries and miracles; she was sure
+that little people, as quick and elusive as shadows, darted hither and
+thither at her very feet, and that enchantment was spread there like a
+fine-spun web.  As she walked onward, brooding over things unseen and
+yet so surely true for her, there recurred to her a dream of the night
+before, and so vivid was her remembrance of it that she seemed to be
+dreaming a second time.
+
+In the dream, oddly enough, she had been walking through these same
+woods.  Here and there she had seen a bright leaf blowing; she had
+heard her own footsteps on the brittle leaves beneath; a slender shaft
+of sunlight--the last of the day--had stolen downward and touched her
+like a long finger.  Then, suddenly, the golden finger had withdrawn
+and the dusk had fallen, not gradually, but in swift, downward billows
+of mist that flooded upon her and blinded her.  She had closed her eyes
+against them for a moment, and when she opened them again, the mist had
+disappeared, leaving her in a space of clear gray light.  Through this
+light some one had come toward her, a shape at first vague and
+ethereal, as if it were a lingering spirit of the mist, but gathering
+substance and definite outline as it advanced until it became the
+figure of a woman with arms that reached toward her for embrace.
+Involuntarily Sheila's own arms had reached forth in answer; she had
+taken a stumbling step forward; through the pale light there had
+glimmered on her, for an instant of revelation, the shadow's face.
+
+_And she had wakened with the cry: "Mother!"_
+
+A strange dream, especially for a little girl whose mother had died
+soon after her birth.  But that dead mother had always been a dear
+familiar of Sheila's thoughts; her picture had been like a living
+companion.  And though the sleeping vision of her had driven the child,
+startled to the very soul, to her grandmother's bed, now, as she trod
+the woods that had been the scene of the dream-miracle, she remembered
+it without fear.
+
+"What if, after all, dreams sometimes came true?"  The thought
+quickened her breath, but not her feet.  In the night she had fled from
+a dream too poignant, but now she felt no impulse for flight.  Rather,
+she delayed her steps, thrilling as she recognized about her the
+dream's landmarks.
+
+For now there arose before Sheila's dazed eyes that rare and marvellous
+phenomenon of a dream reproduced, at least in its physical aspects, by
+reality.  And in such an experience, given perhaps to one in a
+thousand, it is the reality that seems to tremble--threatened by some
+older and stronger truth--beneath one's feet.  So it trembled now for
+Sheila as she saw again those features in the face of the woods that
+had impressed her sleep.
+
+Here were the few rich leaves, fluttering lightly in the evening wind
+as they had fluttered in her dreaming vision of them!  And now her
+heart fluttered with them, so much stranger than the dream itself was
+its incredible repetition.
+
+There--just ahead--yes, surely! there was the same long finger of pale
+sunlight striking downward through the stripped trees!  Presently she
+would pass beneath its touch, feeling it faintly warm upon her
+cheek--as she had felt it in her dream!
+
+Afterwards would be the dusk.  And then--_what if dreams came true_?
+
+She was not afraid, but instinctively she drew nearer the boy beside
+her.  "Ted," she breathed, in an awed whisper.
+
+"Huh?" he asked, roused from his own silent well-being.
+
+But she did not answer, and he strode cheerfully on without troubling
+himself to question her again.  "What if dreams come true?" she was
+saying within herself, but she could not, after all, put the thought
+into words for Ted to scoff at.
+
+And then, before she reached it, the finger of sunlight vanished and
+the dusk was upon her, not swiftly billowing, but slipping softly
+downward like a silken veil.  She was not afraid, she told herself, but
+the dusk chilled her and she shivered.
+
+After the dusk--if dreams came true!--would be--  And then her heart
+seemed to stop its beating.  For dim in the distance, but coming toward
+her through the trees, there walked a shadow.  And even while she
+watched, it gathered shape and substance unto itself; it ceased to be a
+floating fragment of mist and became a woman!
+
+But now Sheila's heart began to beat again--riotously.  Her
+hesitations, her unacknowledged fears, were succeeded by a sense of
+exquisite exultation.  The miracle was at hand--and she rushed upon it.
+
+"Ted!"  It was not a whisper this time, but a cry, and the boy turned
+sharply.  But Sheila had already started forward, calling wildly:
+"_Mother!  Mother!  Mother!_"
+
+And though the woman was still but a distant figure, she heard that
+piercing call and answered it with one as clear and passionate:
+
+"_My little girl!  I'm coming!  I'm coming!_"
+
+For an instant Ted stood motionless, struck to the earth by that simple
+horror of the unusual, the abnormal, which the very sane and
+unimaginative always feel.  Then, with a single bound, he overtook
+Sheila and laid a detaining hand on her shoulder: "Sheila, _stop_!
+It's Crazy Lisbeth!  I know her voice!"
+
+He was right.  The advancing figure was not the beautiful mother-spirit
+of Sheila's dream, but a flesh and blood mother who, years before, had
+lost her husband and only child, and become crazed by her grief.  Ever
+since then her heart had been wandering on a piteous quest for her
+dead, and her wits with it.  And because she was very poor and quite
+harmless, suffering only the illusion that she would sooner or later
+find her husband and little daughter, the town was kind to her; set her
+to work when she would; fed her when she would not work; and left her
+free for her sad and futile search.
+
+Sheila and Ted knew her well and no fear of her had ever touched them
+before, but now, as she came onward with her insanity strong upon her,
+both terror and repugnance seized on Ted.
+
+"She thinks you're her child," he said angrily.  "And no wonder!  What
+made you do such a thing?"
+
+Sheila turned to him with her explanation on her lips--the whole
+confession of her dream and her momentary belief that it had come
+true--but at sight of him looking at her so protectingly and yet so
+severely, her impetuous words faltered and grew cold.
+
+"I--I was thinking of my mother," she stammered shyly.
+
+The unexpected reply embarrassed him.  He wanted to scold her, but at
+this mention of her dead mother he could not.  So he only dug his foot
+into the ground and gazed toward Lisbeth, who was now almost upon them,
+stumbling in her happy haste.
+
+"We can't run away from her," said Sheila.
+
+"She thinks you're her child!" he protested again, but less harshly.
+
+"Yes," admitted Sheila gently, "like I thought she--"  And then, at
+some sudden counsel of her heart, she exclaimed: "You stay here.  I'll
+know what to do!"
+
+It seemed to Ted an unbelievable thing that he saw happen before him
+then.  For Sheila stepped quickly forward to meet the hurrying, pitiful
+creature who sought her; stepped forward and straight into the woman's
+arms.  As he stared, a shudder of disgust shook Ted from head to foot.
+"It's horrible!" he muttered to himself.  "It's horrible for Sheila to
+let Crazy Lisbeth hug her!"  But he could not go and draw Sheila away.
+His repulsion would not permit him to approach the spectacle that
+excited it.
+
+And meanwhile the little girl was murmuring, still in the fold of
+Lisbeth's arm, words that he could not understand, but that drifted to
+him with the soft sounds of pleadings and promises.
+
+"Sheila!" he called peremptorily.
+
+She did not reply, but talked on to Lisbeth, interrupted now and then
+by the latter, but evidently not discouraged in her purpose of
+persuasion.
+
+"Sheila!" Ted called again, and this time uneasily.
+
+And now she answered, over her shoulder, and with a motion that held
+him back: "We're going home!"
+
+At that he understood what she was bent upon.  She had been coaxing
+Lisbeth to go home.  But why should she concern herself about one who
+was used to roam the whole countryside at any hour of the day or night,
+walking unmolested in the desolate safety of her affliction?  Why,
+above all, should Sheila go home _with_ her?
+
+For that, apparently, was what Sheila meant to do.  She had already
+started onward with her self-appointed charge, and though the woods had
+grown more shadowy, Ted could see the two figures plainly, walking
+close together and linked by the woman's arm.  That arm about Sheila's
+shoulder--Crazy Lisbeth's arm!--set him shuddering again as violently
+as the first embrace had done.  It was an affront to every fiber of his
+thoroughly normal being.  But still he could not go nearer to remove
+it; by the law of his own nature he had to stay outside the circle of
+Lisbeth's madness and Sheila's folly.  And his sense of responsibility
+had, perforce, to appease itself with his following them at a discreet
+range--a distant and sulking protector.
+
+It seemed to him, as he strode on behind them with irate steps, that
+they would never get out of the woods.  Little woodland sounds, a
+snapping bough, a breaking leaf, a scurrying squirrel, sounds that he
+would not ordinarily have noticed, now startled him into fright.  The
+gradual failing of the light oppressed him almost to panic; and when
+the early twilight settled somberly over the woods, such weird, moving
+shadows rose up all around him that he would fain have taken to his
+heels had he not feared what lay before him more.
+
+Crazy Lisbeth scrubbing his mother's kitchen floor was only a harmless
+"innocent," the pensioner of his condescending pity; but Crazy Lisbeth
+in the woods at nightfall--Ah, then she became a different and a
+dreadful creature, one to shake the heart and alarm the nerves of the
+bravest.
+
+Sheila appeared to think otherwise and to find Lisbeth docile enough,
+for despite Ted's conviction that the homeward way was interminable,
+these two went steadily onward and at a fair pace.  And after no long
+interval their attendant knight had the satisfaction of following them
+from the covert of the woods into the open spaces of the town.
+
+Here Ted's alarms left him, abruptly and completely.  He could have
+laughed aloud at the bogies he had escaped.  His self-respect came
+swaggering back, and with it the determination to assert a belated
+mastery of Sheila.  She was not a block ahead, and now he hailed her.
+
+But as she had done in the woods, she merely called to him over her
+shoulder: "We're going home!"
+
+Crazy Lisbeth lived on the other side of the town, in a mean little
+cottage that more fortunate householders had deserted.  It was a long
+walk there and the hour was already late, seven at the least.  A vision
+of Mrs. Caldwell watching for Sheila flashed across Ted's mind and
+strengthened his resistance against this further perversity.
+
+"You must go with me right away!" he exclaimed, hastening after Sheila.
+"Your grandmother'll be scared to death!"
+
+"Oh," cried Sheila, stopping now, but with her hand still resolutely
+gripping Lisbeth's, "Oh, I know it, Ted!  But I can't help it!"  And
+though her tone was sharp with distress, she turned obstinately on.
+
+There was nothing for him but to follow her to the end of her
+adventure.  Ted knew it from experience.  Sheila in one of her moods,
+obsessed by some "queer notion," was immovable, though sweetly
+reasonable at all other times.  So with a bad grace he went on in her
+wake, beset now, not by fear, but by keen resentment of the whole
+absurd situation.
+
+Thus they came at last, the ill-assorted trio, to Lisbeth's cottage,
+sitting lonely and unlit by lamp or fire upon a bare hillside.  Sheila
+and Lisbeth paused, and Ted stopped, too, still a few yards from them,
+but expectant of some further freak and ready to spring forward with a
+rebuke that would end the mad episode on the spot.  But just then the
+moon swung slowly out from some prisoning cloud, flooding the hillside
+with light, and as Ted saw Lisbeth's face, he forgot his intention of
+remonstrance and could but stand and gaze.
+
+For a moment he thought that the woman before him could not be Crazy
+Lisbeth at all, and then he thought that the moonlight tricked him.
+But of one thing he was sure; be the cause what it might, he saw a
+Lisbeth magically and beautifully changed.  Foolish and pathetic and
+middle-aged she had been only yesterday, but to-night love and joy had
+had their way with her for a little while and had transformed her
+almost into youth and comeliness again.  Unconscious of Ted's watchful
+and hostile presence, as she had been from the first, she turned to
+Sheila with a simple and moving tenderness:
+
+"Come," she said, opening her gate.
+
+But Sheila stood motionless, her face soft with a pity that could no
+longer protect.
+
+"Come," urged Lisbeth, "come, darling precious!  This is home!"
+
+But Sheila did not stir.  "I--I can't," she answered gently.
+
+"You can't?  _You can't_?  Oh, it's been a dream!--a dream!--a dream!
+You're not real--you're never real!  I see you--and see you--and see
+you!  _But when I reach you, you're not real--not real_!  I believed it
+was different this time--but it's always the same!  _You're not real_!"
+
+And with that despairing cry, the Lisbeth whom Ted knew so well stood
+there before him again, old and foolish and piteous, whimpering softly
+and plucking at her ragged dress.
+
+Sheila put her hand on the bent shoulder--bent to its long burden.  "I
+_am_ real," said the child in a clear, steadfast voice that somehow,
+penetrated Lisbeth's sad whimsies, "I _am_ real!--and I'll come back!"
+
+"You'll come back?"  And Lisbeth ceased her whimpering and laid
+pleading hold on her.  "You'll come back?  I don't believe you're real
+now--I _can't_ believe it any more!  But I don't mind that if you'll
+come back anyway.  You will?  You promise?"
+
+"I promise," answered Sheila.  "If you are good--if you go straight
+into the house--I'll come back."
+
+Lisbeth looked at her for an instant with an odd shrewdness in her poor
+foolish face.  Then she nodded, evidently satisfied with what she saw.
+"I'll be good," she agreed.  "I'll go in.  Oh, my pretty darling!  My
+dearest precious!  Lisbeth will be good!"  And after a quick clasping
+of Sheila, she went obediently into the mean little house and, without
+even a backward glance, closed the door behind her.
+
+Sheila stepped toward Ted.  "I'll go home now," she said wearily.  Then
+she added, as if she were stretching out a wistful hand to his
+sympathy: "Oh, Ted, she thought--until the last--that I was her little
+girl!"
+
+"Yes," he said, all his resentment returning, "and you let her!  You
+_let_ her, Sheila!  How could you do such a thing?"
+
+"But it comforted her.  It comforted her to think so, Ted."
+
+"She wasn't comforted when she thought you weren't real!"
+
+"Yes, she was--even then.  She was when I promised to come back."
+
+"You can't keep your promise."
+
+"Why can't I?"
+
+"Your grandmother won't let you.  You know that as well as I do.
+'Tisn't your place to comfort Crazy Lisbeth, and Mrs. Caldwell will
+tell you so.  Her troubles aren't any of your business."
+
+"They are!" cried Sheila, with an anger now that matched his own, "they
+are--because I understand how she feels!  I haven't any mother--and
+Lisbeth hasn't any child.  Don't you see that it's just the same for
+both of us?  And _her_ little girl may be comforting _my_ mother up in
+heaven right now!"
+
+"And she may _not_!" he retorted,
+
+"I believe it!" she proclaimed, carried away by the imaginary scene she
+had evoked.
+
+"Well," said Ted, with his most exasperating tone of superior
+intelligence, "_I_ don't!"
+
+She glanced up at him as he trudged beside her, his face firm with his
+substantial beliefs, his feet sturdily treading a very solid earth.
+And though she was only a little girl, unlearned in the finger-posts of
+character, Sheila felt what she could not name nor analyze.  She
+remembered that she had almost told him her dream, and she shivered at
+the thought.
+
+"No," she remarked ruefully, "you don't believe anything that you can't
+_see_, do you, Ted?"
+
+"I don't believe lies!" he replied crisply, "not even when I tell 'em
+myself."
+
+"_Lies_?" she repeated in astonishment.
+
+He stopped and faced her.  "Look here!  You said you couldn't let your
+grandmother think you came home with the rest of 'em when you didn't
+because that would be lying."
+
+"Yes," agreed Sheila with conviction.
+
+"But you let Lisbeth think what wasn't so!"
+
+The words flashed their accusation at her with unmistakable clarity.
+"Yes," she assented once more, slowly, "I did."  And then, with pained
+surprise, "Why, that _was_ a lie, wasn't it?"
+
+"And now," finished Ted ruthlessly, "you're making up lies about heaven
+for yourself!  What's the matter with you, Sheila?"
+
+They had reached Mrs. Caldwell's gate, and for a moment they stood
+staring at each other, the question hanging in the air between them.
+Then there came to Sheila a swift, inward vision of the contradictions
+of her own temperament, a vision untempered by the merciful knowledge
+that, in the final analysis, all human nature is very much alike.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "what _is_ the matter with me?"
+
+And with a sob, she fled up the path to the house, leaving Ted
+frightened, ashamed, and more bewildered than ever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The moment when Sheila had that terrifying inward vision of her own
+inconsistencies marked the beginning of her self-consciousness.  For a
+while this was acute and painful.  She was always afraid of finding
+herself, quite unintentionally, involved in a labyrinth of untruth, and
+her conscience, which passionately rejected any dishonesty that it
+perceived, was continually occupied in analyzing her emotions and
+impulses, her most guileless thoughts and her simplest actions.
+
+"I am naturally a liar," she told herself solemnly.  "I must watch
+myself all the time--because I am naturally a liar!"
+
+But she said nothing of her self-revelation and ensuing struggles to
+Mrs. Caldwell.  It was a thing to be overcome in shame and silence, and
+alone, this innate wickedness of hers.
+
+Her shame was indeed so genuine that she met Ted, for the first time
+after he had shown her failing to her, with deep reluctance.  He must
+have been thinking of her awful tendency ever since they had parted--as
+she had been.  And he could not possibly respect her!  But to her
+amazement, he greeted her with his usual manner of untroubled good
+fellowship.  Clearly, she had not sunk in his estimation.  She was
+astounded, and shocked at him as well as at herself, until it occurred
+to her that he might have forgotten the matter altogether.  This was
+incredible, but more honorably incredible than that he should remember
+and not care.  And if it were the case, she must not take advantage of
+his forgetfulness; she must not unfairly keep his esteem.
+
+"Ted," she said, with an effort worthy of a more saintly confessor,
+"Ted, I reckon I ought to remind you about the way I acted with
+Lisbeth."
+
+"What about it?  Did your grandmother scold you much?"
+
+"Why, no.  Don't you understand what I mean?"  It was too painful to
+put her sin into words.
+
+"Has Lisbeth been after you again?"  But the question was obviously not
+one of sympathy, for Ted's voice was sharp now.  At the mention of
+Lisbeth he had recalled his grievance.
+
+"No," repeated Sheila.  "I meant I ought to remind you about--_me_."
+
+And as Ted stared at her with no gleam of comprehension in his eyes,
+she was forced to become explicit: "I mean--the way I let Lisbeth
+believe what wasn't so."
+
+Ted looked at her speculatively for a moment, wondering if he had
+better rebuke her again for her folly, so that she should not commit it
+a second time.  She would be capable of doing the whole thing over,
+under the impression that she was benefiting Lisbeth.  She was so queer!
+
+"You were very silly," he said finally.
+
+"I was wicked!" she exclaimed in a fervor of repentance.
+
+Ted continued to regard her with that speculative gaze.  "Well, you
+_are_ a queer one!" he ejaculated slowly.
+
+Sheila flushed.  She had abased herself in penitence, and he only
+thought her queer.  He _always_ thought her queer!  She turned on him
+with a flare of temper that burned up her humility so far as he was
+concerned:
+
+"How _dare_ you call me queer?  How _dare_ you call me silly?  I hate
+you, Theodore Kent!  I never want to see you again as long as I live!
+You're--_you're an abomination in the eyes of the Lord_!"
+
+And with this scriptural anathema, plagiarized from the Presbyterian
+minister's latest sermon, she flung away from him in a fit of wrath
+that did much to restore her normal self-respect.
+
+However, though she felt no further uneasiness in the presence of
+Ted--whom she forgave the next day with the readiness that is the
+virtue of a quick temper--she continued her vigil over herself until
+time softened her impression of her iniquity.  And even then, when her
+self-criticism had relaxed, her consciousness of her individual
+temperament remained.  She had discovered herself, and this self, like
+her shadow which she had discovered with wild excitement in her
+babyhood, would be her life companion.  After she ceased to fear it, as
+a possible moral monster, she began to take a profound interest in it
+and its behavior.
+
+"What will you be doing next?" she would inquire of it quaintly, "what
+_will_ you be doing next, Other-Sheila?"
+
+She did in fact credit this newly realized self of hers with a very
+distinct and separate personality.  All her caprices, her unexpected
+and unexplainable impulses, her mystic imaginings, she laid at its
+door, and in her fantastic name for it--"Other-Sheila"--she probably
+found the true name for something that the psychologists define far
+more clumsily.
+
+But stung into sensitiveness by Ted's taunt about her queerness, she
+kept her discovery of Other-Sheila to herself.  Not even to Mrs.
+Caldwell, who was a friend as well as a grandmother; not even to Peter,
+who was all the while feeding her eager young mind with food both
+wholesome and stimulating, and becoming, in his task, a comrade who
+rivalled Ted in her affections, did she confide the existence of this
+other self.  With self-consciousness came the instinct of reserve--not
+a lack of frankness, but a kind of modesty of the soul.
+
+She had passed her fifteenth birthday before Other-Sheila roused her to
+unrest.  Until that time, the shadowy self dwelling deep within her,
+and every now and then flashing forth elusively just long enough to
+manifest its reality, had been a secret and delightful companion, one
+with whom she held animated conversations when alone, and from whose
+acquiescence to all her wishes and opinions she extracted considerable
+comfort.
+
+"Other-Sheila," she would say to herself, "is the only person who
+always agrees with me."  And then she would add, with a glint of
+whimsical humor in her gray eyes, "I reckon that's what an Other-Sheila
+is _for_!"
+
+But after a while Other-Sheila became less acquiescent and more
+assertive.  And for the first time in her life, Sheila felt within her
+the troubling spirit of discontent.  She wanted something, wanted it
+desperately as the very young always do, but she did not know what that
+something was.  It was a tantalizing experience, and she saw no end to
+it.
+
+"If I could only find out _what_ I want, I might get it," she mused.
+And then, "Don't you know what it is, Other-Sheila?"  But Other-Sheila
+was provokingly unresponsive, though it was probably her desire that
+fretted the objective Sheila's mind.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell saw the unrest in the young girl's face and recognized it
+for what it was--the unrest of growth.  It was a look of unborn things
+stirring beneath the surface, stirring and quivering as flowers must
+stir and tremble beneath the ground before they break their way through
+to the sun.  But though she watched eagerly from day to day, ready to
+do her part when the hour for it should come, Mrs. Caldwell was too
+wise a gardener to hasten bloom.
+
+"Peter," said she one day, when he had paused in an indolent stroll to
+chat with her over her garden hedge, "Peter, it's a terrible thing to
+be young!"
+
+"Is it?" he laughed.  "Why?"
+
+"So many things have to happen to you!"  And out of the security of her
+placid years Mrs. Caldwell spoke with an earnest pity.
+
+Peter laughed again.  "Well, I'm young--at least, I suppose I would be
+so considered.  And _nothing_ ever happens to me!"
+
+Mrs. Caldwell surveyed him with mischievous eyes.  "No, Peter," she
+contradicted, "you're not young--yet.  You're not even alive yet.
+You're too lazy to really live!  But you'll have to come to it some
+day.  We all have to be born finally."
+
+He chuckled at her comprehension of him.  Then a disturbed look
+fluttered across his face: "Do you actually mean that there's no
+escape?"
+
+"None!  It's better to yield gracefully--and have it over.  And if you
+don't hurry a bit, Sheila will be through her growing pains while yours
+are still before you!"
+
+"Little Sheila?  The master's star pupil?"
+
+"Yes," she insisted, "little Sheila.  You'll be taking her to parties
+in a long frock before you know it.  She graduates from the Seminary
+next year."
+
+But Peter was nearer to meeting Sheila in a long frock than either he
+or Mrs. Caldwell dreamed.  For at that moment Sheila was planning to
+wear one before she was a week older.
+
+She and Charlotte Davis were in the latter's dainty room, and spread on
+the bed before them was Charlotte's new party frock.  Charlotte's
+father was the wealthiest man in Shadyville, and both she and her frock
+did his wealth justice.  She was now at home, for the Easter vacation,
+from a fashionable boarding-school in Baltimore, the Shadyville
+Seminary not satisfying Mr. Davis's requirements for his youngest and
+favorite daughter.  Her absence from the little town during the greater
+part of the past two years had enabled her to erase its traces.  She
+had become a typical city-bred girl and she appeared pert, smartly
+dressed and, for her sixteen years, amazingly mature.  She had always
+been prettier than Sheila, though no one had ever realized it and
+probably no one ever would.  For her prettiness was so informed with
+sharp intelligence that her face had a challenging and almost
+aggressive quality.  Boys had never admired her, and men were not
+likely to do so either, so lacking was she in the softer and more
+appealing charms of her sex.  Even at sixteen her bright blue eyes were
+a trifle hard, not because of what they had seen--for she was, in
+experience, still the nice little ingénue--but of what they had seen
+_through_.  The veil of credulity never dimmed her clear, bold glance.
+But for Sheila she was always gentle, so strong in this shrewd,
+fastidious young creature was her one deep and uncritical affection.
+
+As the two girls examined the frock on the bed--a rose chiffon over
+silk that fairly shrieked of expense--Sheila sighed.  "Will you wear it
+Friday night?" she inquired wistfully.
+
+For on Friday night Charlotte was to give a party--a real evening party
+to which the debutantes and even the older set were coming, as well as
+the school-girls and boys.  It would be Sheila's first grown-up
+party--and she had only a white muslin and a blue sash to make herself
+fine with.  Thus Mrs. Caldwell had dressed for parties until her
+marriage, and it had never occurred to her to provide any other costume
+for Sheila, who was not yet quite sixteen.  Besides, in Mrs. Caldwell's
+opinion--and even in the exquisite Peter's--there was no sweeter sight
+than a young girl in white muslin and blue ribbons.  But to Sheila, in
+comparison with Charlotte's splendor, the white muslin seemed
+unspeakably dowdy.  And so, when she asked Charlotte about her toilette
+for the great occasion, it was with a heart of unfestive heaviness.
+
+"Of course I'll wear this.  That's what I got it for.  Oh, Sheila,
+aren't the little sleeves cunning?  Just half way to the elbow--it's
+lucky my arms aren't thin!"
+
+But Sheila only sighed again in response to Charlotte's enthusiasm, and
+now Charlotte heard the sigh and glanced at her with sudden
+attentiveness.  "What will you wear?" she demanded.
+
+"I'll have to wear my white muslin.  I haven't anything else."
+
+"Oh, Sheila, that's too bad!"
+
+"I wouldn't mind so _very_ much except for--"  And Sheila's eyes,
+wandering sadly toward Charlotte's chiffon, finished the sentence.
+
+But Charlotte's dismay had already vanished.  "You won't have to wear
+your white muslin either," she announced in her positive, capable way.
+"You can wear one of my frocks, Sheila.  You must!  Why"--this in a
+burst of generosity--"why, you can wear this one!"
+
+"Oh, no, I couldn't do that.  Not your new frock, Charlotte!  But
+you're a dear to offer it!"  And Sheila gave her friend a grateful hug,
+though Charlotte never encouraged caresses.
+
+"Well, then, perhaps not this one," agreed Charlotte, to whom, used
+though she was to her pretty clothes, it would have been something of a
+hardship to surrender the first wearing of them to anyone else,
+"perhaps not this one--rose is more my color than yours.  But
+another--a blue silk mull that will be lovely with your blue-gray eyes
+and black hair.  I've worn it only two or three times, and never in
+Shadyville."
+
+"No, I couldn't," said Sheila again.  "Grandmother wouldn't let me.
+I'm sure she wouldn't."
+
+"I don't see why."
+
+"She wouldn't," persisted Sheila regretfully.
+
+"Now look here, Sheila.  She wouldn't _know_.  You're going to spend
+the night with me and dress after you get here.  And _she's_ not coming
+to the party."
+
+It was the same form of temptation which Ted had offered Sheila in the
+woods three years before, but now it was tenfold stronger.  Then a mere
+good time was at stake; now the gratification of her young vanity, of
+her first girlish desire to make herself charming, was to be gained.
+And as she had hesitated that day in the woods, for the sake of the
+fun, she hesitated now for the sake of this new, clamoring instinct.
+
+"I'd have to tell her," she temporized.
+
+"Then tell her," assented Charlotte impatiently, "but don't tell her
+until afterwards."
+
+It was Sheila's own method of that earlier time--a middle path between
+conscience and desire, and lightly skirting both.
+
+"I might do that," she remarked thoughtfully.  "If I told her--even
+afterwards--it wouldn't be quite so wicked.  And I _want_ to wear the
+frock dreadfully!"
+
+"Just tell her as if it's nothing at all," advised Charlotte cleverly,
+"as if we never even thought of it until after you got here that
+evening.  Then she won't mind it a bit.  You'll see she won't!"
+
+"Yes, she will.  She won't like my wearing your clothes.  She won't
+think it's _nice_.  And when I tell, I'll tell the whole thing--the way
+it really happened.  But"--and Sheila's full-lipped, generous mouth
+straightened into a thin line of resolution--"I'm going to do it
+anyway, Charlotte!"
+
+Three days intervened before the party, and they were not happy days
+for Sheila.  Her sense of guilt depressed every moment of the time,
+especially when she was in Mrs. Caldwell's trusting presence.  For
+Sheila was not equipped by nature to sin comfortably.
+
+But when the eventful night arrived, and she beheld herself at last in
+Charlotte's blue silk mull, with its short sleeves and little round
+neck frothy with lace, and its soft skirt falling to her very feet, she
+forgot every scruple that had been sacrificed to that enchanting end.
+
+Charlotte, gay as a bright-hued bird with her blue eyes and yellow hair
+and rose-colored gown, and her mother and young Mrs. Bailey, her
+married sister, all stood around Sheila in an admiring circle, every
+now and then breaking out anew into delighted exclamations over their
+transformed Cinderella.
+
+"Isn't she too sweet?"
+
+"And look at her eyes--as blue as Charlotte's, aren't they?"
+
+"And what a young lady she seems!  Isn't that long skirt becoming to
+her?" cried Charlotte.
+
+Charlotte had worn her party frocks long for the last year, and she
+approved emphatically of the dignity thus attained for a few hours.  It
+gave her a delicious foretaste of the real young ladyhood to come, when
+she meant to be very dignified and very brilliant indeed.
+
+But to all their pleased outcry, Sheila said nothing at all.  She
+merely stood, radiant and silent, before them until they had to leave
+her for a last survey of the rooms downstairs, the flowers and the
+supper.  Then, sure that she was quite alone, Cinderella stole to the
+mirror.
+
+For a long time she gazed at the girl in the glass; a straight, slim
+girl in a delicate little gown that somehow brought out fully, for the
+first time, the charming delicacy of her face--not the delicacy of
+small features, of frail health, nor of a timid temper, but of an
+exceeding and subtle fineness, partly of the flesh, partly of the
+spirit, like the fineness of rare and gossamer fabrics.  Sheila, of
+course, did not perceive this, which was always to be her one real
+claim to beauty, but she saw the frock itself, and white young
+shoulders rising from it, and above it a pair of shining eyes.  And
+suddenly an ache came sharply into her throat and the shining eyes
+filled with tears.
+
+"Oh," she whispered, leaning to the figure in the mirror, "Oh, _this_
+is what I wanted!  _I wanted to be beautiful_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The evening was half over when Sheila, still up-borne on the tide of
+her feminine exultation, glanced across the room to find that Peter
+stood there quietly regarding her.  Straightway she forsook the youth
+who was administering awkward flattery to her new-born vanity, and
+hastened to the side of her old friend.
+
+"Oh, Peter, don't I look nice?" she demanded eagerly.
+
+But Peter ignored the frank appeal for a compliment.  "I think you'd
+better call me Mr. Burnett," said he.  And his tone was so serious that
+she failed to catch the banter of his eyes.
+
+"Why, I've always called you Peter, just like grandmother does--always!"
+
+"Yes," admitted Peter, "and it's been very jolly and friendly.  But,
+Sheila, I must have _something_ to remind me that you're still a little
+girl and my pupil.  There's nothing in your appearance to suggest it,
+but perhaps--if you will address me with a great deal of respect----"
+
+At that, Sheila laughed and patted her frock: "Oh, I understand you
+now!  Do I really seem so grown-up?"
+
+"So grown-up that I can't understand how Mrs. Caldwell came to let you
+do it."
+
+"Oh, Peter!  _Oh, Peter_!"
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" he asked, surprised at the poignant
+exclamation.  But she turned abruptly away from him, and presently he
+saw her blue gown flutter through a distant doorway.
+
+"Now I wonder," he pondered, "what in the world I've done.  Offended
+her by appearing to criticize Mrs. Caldwell, I suppose."
+
+But Peter had done a much graver thing than that.  Unconsciously, he
+had summoned Sheila's conscience to its deserted duty; and already,
+like any well-intentioned conscience that has taken a vacation, it was
+making up for lost time.
+
+With that comment of Peter's--"I can't understand how Mrs. Caldwell
+came to let you do it"--Sheila's little house of pleasure suddenly
+tumbled to the ground.  She had not meant to be sorry about the
+deception of the frock until _after_ the party, and until her encounter
+with Peter she had been successful enough in holding penitence at bay.
+That vision of herself in the mirror, seeming to answer some longing of
+her very soul, had indeed kept her forgetful of everything but a sense
+of fulfillment and triumph.  But now, reminded of her grandmother, she
+began to be sorry at once--impatiently, violently sorry.
+
+"I must go home," she murmured to herself distressfully, as she slipped
+unobserved through the crowded rooms.  "I must go home.  I can't wait
+until morning!  I must tell grandmother _now_!"
+
+And so it happened that Mrs. Caldwell, looking out from her
+sitting-room window into the early spring night, saw a slim figure
+speed up her garden path as if urged by some importunate need; and the
+next moment Sheila was kneeling before her, with her face hidden upon
+her shoulder.
+
+"Why, Sheila!--dear child!"
+
+"Oh, grandmother, will you forgive me?"
+
+"What should I forgive you?  I'm sure you've done nothing wrong this
+time!"  And Mrs. Caldwell, who was accustomed to the rigors of Sheila's
+conscience, smiled above the face on her breast with tender amusement.
+
+But Sheila sprang to her feet and stepped back a pace or two.  "Don't
+you _see_?" she cried tragically.
+
+And then Mrs. Caldwell discovered the transformation of her Cinderella.
+No demure little maiden this, in the white muslin and blue ribbons of
+an ingenuous spirit, but a fashionably clad "young lady," who appeared
+to have grown suddenly tall and rather stately with the clothing of her
+slim body in the long, soft gown.
+
+"Sheila!" exclaimed Mrs. Caldwell involuntarily.  And then, with her
+hands outstretched to the impressive young culprit, "Tell me all about
+it, dear."
+
+And sitting on the floor at her grandmother's feet, regardless of
+Charlotte's crushed flounces, Sheila poured out her impetuous
+confession, from the first moment of temptation and yielding to the
+final one of Peter's awakening words.
+
+"And when he spoke of you, grandmother, I just couldn't _bear_ it!  I
+wondered how I could have been happy at all--I wondered how I could
+have forgotten you for a minute!  I hated the frock!  I hated the
+party!  And I hated myself most of all!  I had to come home and ask you
+to forgive me right away!"
+
+And down went her head into Mrs. Caldwell's lap.  "Do you---think--you
+can forgive me?" came the muffled plea.
+
+For answer Mrs. Caldwell bent and kissed the prostrate head, and it
+burrowed more comfortably against her knee.  But Mrs. Caldwell did not
+speak.  She was waiting for something, and when Sheila continued to
+burrow, in the contented silence of a penitence achieved, she inquired
+quietly: "Well, dear?"
+
+Sheila lifted her head at that, and looked straight into the wise,
+sweet eyes above her: "I wanted something!  I wanted something
+dreadfully!  And I didn't know what it was.  And then, when I saw
+myself in Charlotte's frock--and so changed--I thought I'd found what I
+wanted.  I thought--I thought I'd wanted to be beautiful!"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Caldwell gently, "I used to think that, too."
+
+"Oh, grandmother, did you?  Then you understand how I felt!  But--but,
+you see, it didn't last.  I wanted to be good _more_.  That's what made
+me come home.  Grandmother, do you suppose _that's_ what I've wanted
+all the time, without knowing it--to be good?"
+
+At the question, Mrs. Caldwell, wise gardener that she was, realized
+that one of the flowers which she had divined, stirring in the depths
+of Sheila's being, was pushing its way upward to the light, and that
+the moment had come for her to help it.  She slipped her arms around
+the girl kneeling before her, as if seeking in love's touch inspiration
+for love's words.
+
+"I think you will always want to be good," she said, "and I think you
+will always want to be beautiful.  Women do, Sheila dear--even the
+women who are least beautiful and least--good.  It's part of being a
+woman--just like loving things that are little and helpless.
+
+"But, Sheila, being beautiful isn't enough!  Even being good isn't
+enough, though of course it ought to be.  It's essential, but it isn't
+enough.  Every woman must have something else besides to make her
+happy--something that is hers, _her own_!  She must have that to be
+beautiful _for_, and to be good for--she must have that to live for!
+
+"And that is what you want, dear--the thing that is your own.  You have
+been born for that--you cannot be complete or content without it."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell's voice rose, grave and rich with the harmonies of life,
+through the peaceful room, and Sheila quivered responsively in the
+circle of her arms.  To the young girl, womanhood, that only yesterday
+had been so far away, now seemed to be drawing thrillingly near with
+all its attendant mysteries.  And in her next question she took a step
+to meet it:
+
+"Grandmother, what is it?--the thing that will be mine?"
+
+"Dear, how can I tell?  It isn't the same for us all.  For one woman it
+is love; for another it is work; for some it is, blessedly, both work
+and love.  For me--now--it is _you_!  How can I tell what it will be
+for my little girl?"
+
+"I want it!" whispered Sheila.  "I want it!"
+
+"You must wait for it, dear.  You must wait for it to come to you.  You
+can't hurry life."
+
+"But can't I do _anything_?"
+
+"You can be good, and you can be beautiful, so that you'll be ready for
+it when it comes.  But"--and now Mrs. Caldwell smiled, and with her
+smile the stress of the moment passed--"but not in Charlotte's frock!
+It wouldn't be fair to make yourself beautiful with borrowed plumage,
+would it, little bird of paradise?  You'd only get a borrowed happiness
+out of that--one that you hadn't a right to, and couldn't keep."
+
+Sheila rose from her knees, smiling, too.  "I'll go right upstairs and
+take it off," she declared.  "I want to play fair from the start--I
+only _want_ what's really mine!"
+
+And so, coming back, under Mrs. Caldwell's tactful guidance, from the
+deep waters to the pleasant, shallow wavelets that lap the shores of
+commonplace life, she began to busy herself with the small duties of
+the night, closing the windows and putting out the lamps.  Then, with
+bed-time candles after the fashion of Mrs. Caldwell's own girlhood, the
+two started up the stairs, Sheila leading and lighting the way--as
+youth always will, despite the riper wisdom of age.  Once she smiled
+over her shoulder; and before they had gained the top of the flight,
+she paused and reached back her hand to help her grandmother up the
+last few steps.  There was something gracious and strong in the
+gesture--something that had not been in the nature of the Sheila who
+had bent her head to Mrs. Caldwell's knee an hour before.  It was as if
+the womanhood of which Mrs. Caldwell had spoken had already awakened in
+her and with it, not only the longing for something of her own, but
+that kindred tenderness for things little and helpless--or helpless and
+old.
+
+"Take my hand," she said sweetly, and there was in her voice the lovely
+gentleness that young mothers use toward their children.
+
+
+The next day, when Charlotte came to inquire why her guest had flown,
+without warning and apparently without cause, she found a Sheila who,
+though garbed once more in her own short frock, seemed in some
+mysterious way more grown-up than she had in the trailing splendor of
+the night before.
+
+"What's happened to you?" demanded Charlotte shrewdly, when the two
+girls were shut into the privacy of Sheila's little white bedroom, a
+room that resembled the despised white muslin and blue sash which had
+been discarded for Charlotte's furbelows.  "I know _something's_
+happened to you.  You're--different.  Did somebody make love to you?"
+
+"Goodness, no!" denied Sheila in a horrified tone, and the alarmed
+young blood rose in a slow, rich tide over her neck and face and
+temples.
+
+"Oh, you needn't be so shocked.  Somebody will some day!"  And
+Charlotte laughed lightly out of her own precocious experience.
+
+Of the two girls, Sheila was the one to be loved, but Charlotte was the
+one to be made love to--if the love-making were only the pastime of the
+hour.  Charlotte was clever and daring and cold, and could take care of
+herself.  She knew, even at sixteen, all the rules of the game: when to
+advance, when to retreat, and, most important of all, when to laugh.
+But Sheila would never be able to laugh at love or love's counterpart.
+
+"Somebody _will_ make love to you some day!" repeated Charlotte
+teasingly.
+
+"Well, nobody has yet!" Sheila assured her crossly.  "And what's more,
+I hope nobody will!  _That_ isn't what I want!"
+
+"What do you want?" asked Charlotte curiously, detecting the underlying
+earnestness of the words.  But she received no response, and so, bent
+upon an interesting topic, she harked back to Sheila's flight from the
+party: "If nobody made love to you, why did you run away?  Did your
+conscience hurt you, Sheila?"
+
+"Yes," admitted Sheila, "that was what made me come home.  But I stayed
+home because of something else."
+
+"What?"
+
+Sheila groped for the language of Mrs. Caldwell's lesson: "Because I--I
+didn't want to be pretty in somebody else's clothes.  I was happy for a
+little while, but it didn't last.  You see, I'd borrowed that--the
+happiness--along with the frock.  And of course I couldn't keep it.  I
+just want what belongs to me after this, Charlotte.  It isn't fair to
+take anything else--and it isn't any use either."
+
+Charlotte stared at her with puzzled eyes.  "You _are_ queer," she
+remarked reflectively.  "You _are_ queer, Sheila.  Theodore Kent always
+said so, and he was right.  I wonder what he'll think of you when he
+gets back from college."
+
+But Sheila, who had blushed painfully at the suggestion of a lover who
+did not exist, heard Ted's name without a flush or a tremor; and in
+despair of any conversation about dress or beaux, the guest presently
+took her departure.
+
+A few days later Charlotte went back to her city school for further
+"finishing," though she had already been sharpened and polished to a
+bewildering edge and brilliancy.  And left to herself, Sheila resumed
+her unsophisticated, girlish life.
+
+"We aren't going to have any young ladies at our house after all,
+Peter," Mrs. Caldwell announced triumphantly over her teacup one
+afternoon.
+
+And Peter, lounging on the leafy veranda and appreciatively sipping
+Mrs. Caldwell's fragrant amber brew, lifted a languidly interested
+face: "How are you going to stop time for Sheila?  Of course you've
+done it for yourself, but not even you, fairy godmother, can do that
+for other people."
+
+"I don't intend to try.  I don't want to try.  Because--when my little
+girl goes--it's time that will bring me some one better."
+
+"The young lady, dear Mrs. Caldwell.  The young lady--inevitably."
+
+"No, Peter--the woman!"  And Mrs. Caldwell's voice rang with pride and
+confidence.  "There's the making of one in Sheila, Peter--of a real
+woman!"
+
+"What's become of the poet you used to see in her?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, you've shut that safely into a cage of books.  I'm not afraid of
+it any more."
+
+"It can still sing behind the bars, you know," he warned her.
+
+"No," she said, growing serious again, "it wouldn't--in Sheila's case.
+At least it wouldn't unless it got into just the right cage, hung in
+the sunshine and the south wind.  That's what I'm afraid of,
+Peter--that Sheila herself will be snared into the wrong cage!"
+
+But even while Mrs. Caldwell spoke, Sheila was standing at the open
+door of the right cage, gazing in with illumined eyes.
+
+The spring was at its height, as warm and ripely blooming as early
+summer, and Sheila had slipped away to her favorite haunt of the back
+garden.  She had taken a book with her, one of Peter's recommendation,
+and as she lay on the soft, fresh grass, she idly turned the pages, not
+from any desire to read, but for the pleasure of touching the leaves
+and knowing that, if she liked, she had only to look within for words
+that would create a fairyland as easily as the fingers of the spring
+had done.
+
+But presently, sated with mere earth-sweetness, she lifted herself on
+her elbow and opened the book widely where her hand had finally rested.
+It was the choice of chance, that page; but, as happens every now and
+then, chance and the Shaping Power were at that moment one.  For
+shining on the white leaf, as if written in silver, were the lines that
+have stirred every potential poet to rapture and self-knowledge:
+
+  --magic casements opening on the foam
+  Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
+
+
+Sheila read them with no fore-warning of their moving music.  They
+flashed, winged, into her tranquil world--and shook it to its
+foundations.  For the first time the full sense of beauty rushed upon
+her, and she caught her breath with the keen, aching ecstasy of it:
+
+  --magic casements opening on the foam
+  Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
+
+
+She read the lines again, and now aloud, softly, with a beauty-broken
+breath.  She had wanted something, and all the while this--_this_--had
+been waiting for her.  Compared to the joy of it, what was the joy of
+looking into a mirror and finding oneself fair?  What was any other
+beauty beside this beauty of words, of subtle harmony and exquisite
+imagery?
+
+And then there came to her the thought that some one--some one just
+human like herself--yes, human and young--had written these lines, had
+drawn them from the treasure house of himself.
+
+"Oh," she whispered, "how happy he must have been!  How happy!  To have
+written this!  If I had done it----"
+
+She paused and sat up straight and still, the book falling unheeded
+from her hand.  Slowly her eyes widened, filled first with light and
+then with tears.
+
+"If I had written this!  If I could write _anything_!"
+
+And suddenly, for that moment and for life, she knew!
+
+"_That_ is what I want--to _write_!--to _make_ something beautiful!"
+
+And then her guardian angel should have pushed her into the cage and
+fastened its door.  For the sun was shining and the south wind was
+blowing--and it was the right cage!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+One September afternoon, Peter lingered in his class-room after his
+duties were done and his pupils had departed.  He usually lost no time
+in shaking the dust of academic toil from his feet--and from his
+mind--but to-day an unwonted longing for some steadying purpose, some
+_raison d'źtre_, made him remain to dally with the tools of his
+occupation, perhaps in a wistful hope that he might discover a hitherto
+unsuspected charm in the teaching of rhetoric to reluctant young girls.
+
+"If they only cared," he thought, "if they only cared a little for the
+English language, it wouldn't be such a deadly grind to teach I them.
+But _they'll_ never 'contend for the shade of a world.'  It's just a
+dull necessity to them--this business of learning how to use their
+mother tongue--except, of course, to Sheila.  And next year she won't
+be here to help me endure it.  Oh, how I wish I could get away--to
+something better, something bigger!"
+
+But with the wish, there came to him also the certainty of its
+futility.  He wouldn't get away; the next year, and the year following,
+and the year after that would find him still at his uninspiring post in
+the Shadyville Seminary, teaching bored pupils the properties of
+speech, and inwardly cursing himself for doing it.
+
+For Peter knew that he would always be the victim of his own laziness;
+that every impulse toward a broader life and its achievements would be
+checked and overcome by what he termed his "vast inertia."  In spite of
+his mental capacity, his social gifts, his assets of birth and
+excellent appearance, he would go through all his years without
+attaining either honors or profits--merely because, in his
+unconquerable languor, he would not exert himself to the extent of
+reaching out his hand for them.
+
+He taught in the seminary because he must; because, otherwise, his
+bread would go unbuttered, or rather, there would be no bread to
+butter.  For he was the last of a family whose fortune had been their
+"blood" and their brains, and not their material possessions.  Nothing
+had been left to him but the prestige of his birth and his inherited
+intellect, and the connections which they opened to him.  And these
+connections were rosebuds for him to wear in his buttonhole rather than
+beefsteak to swell his waistcoat.  They entitled him to lead a
+cotillion, but not to direct a bank.
+
+His natural parts, as he fully realized, would at any time have secured
+a career to him, if he had had the industry to use them assiduously.  A
+little enterprise, a little initiative would long since have despatched
+him to the opportunities and successes of a city.  But, always defeated
+by the "inertia" which he regarded as a fatal malady of his
+temperament--and also, perhaps, by a native distaste for the vulgar
+scramble and unsavory methods of the modern business world--his fine
+intelligence wasted itself in small tasks and his ambitions dissolved
+like dream-stuff in the somnolent atmosphere of Shadyville.
+
+The only success available to him under such conditions was an
+advantageous marriage.  This he could more than once have accomplished,
+for it cost him no effort to practice the abilities of the lover, and
+he had, indeed, a reputation for gallantry that invested him with a
+dangerous glamour as a suitor.  But here he was thwarted each time by a
+quality that dominated him as ruthlessly to his undoing as did his
+laziness--and this quality was fastidiousness.  For him only the
+exquisite was good enough.  He wanted a woman with a face like an angel
+or a flower, and a soul to match it.  And this the eligible girl had
+never had.  So, although he had several times reached the verge of a
+leap into matrimonial prosperity, he had always drawn back before the
+crucial moment.  A laugh--just a note too broad and loud--had once
+restrained him from the easy capture of half a million.  He could not
+live with a woman who laughed like that, he told himself!
+
+And on the other hand, though marriage appealed to him, he could not
+accept the exquisite in poverty.  A few years before, he had spent a
+summer in courting a girl whose profile had enchanted him.  In
+imagination he saw it always against a background of dull gold--the
+pure, slender throat; the sweet, round chin; the delicate, proud lip
+and nostril; the dreaming eye.  But in fact, there was no background of
+gold, dull or otherwise; and when Peter reflected on the size of his
+salary and the shifts to which poverty must needs resort--the shabby
+clothes, the domestic sordidness, the devastating finger-marks of
+weariness and anxiety upon even the fairest face--his courage failed
+him, and he surrendered the profile to one who could give her a
+Kentucky stock farm, a town house in New York and a box at the opera
+there.
+
+After that episode, he resigned his hope of romance.  Fate was perverse
+and offered him impossible combinations, and he had not the energy to
+seek and seize for himself.  So love, like the other big prizes of
+life, eluded him, and at thirty-three he was a confirmed bachelor as
+well as a professional idler.  He still pursued the graceful, aimless
+flirtations that are the small change of intercourse at dances and
+dinners--just as he still read Theocritus--but neither his heart nor
+his mind engaged in any more serious endeavor.
+
+And yet, every now and then, he felt a faint desire for something more,
+for something that should not be a pastime, nor a mere bread-and-butter
+chore--something that would demand and exhaust the best of him and give
+him in return the pride of work worth the doing and doing well.
+
+This afternoon the desire was more than usually persistent, and it had
+held him at his desk long after school hours were over, fingering his
+pen and ink bottle, glancing through the weekly essays which had that
+day been handed in for criticism, and turning the leaves of a history
+of English literature with which he had vainly striven to awake
+enthusiasm in the minds of his class.
+
+The school-room was a pleasant place, as school-rooms go.  There were
+potted plants on the window sills and a few good engravings on the
+walls, and the afternoon sunshine was streaming gaily in.  But to Peter
+the room was the disillusioning scene of unwilling labors--both on the
+part of his pupils and himself--and its chalky atmosphere was heavy and
+depressing.
+
+"What's the use of pretending that _this_ is a 'life-work'--a 'noble
+profession'?" he muttered, after his casual examination of a
+particularly discouraging essay.  "They don't _want_ to learn.  They
+only want to get through and away.  After Sheila graduates, I'll he
+without a single responsive pupil.  For I won't get another like
+her--not in years, and probably never.  Why don't I chuck it all?  Why
+_don't_ I go away?  There's nothing to _stay_ for!  But my confounded
+antipathy to a tussle in the hurly-burly of my fellow-men----"
+
+At that moment a tap sounded upon the door panel.
+
+"Come in," called Peter carelessly, supposing that a pupil had returned
+for some forgotten possession.  And he did not even look around until
+an amused voice inquired: "So absorbed, Professor Peter?"  Then he
+turned to see Mrs. Caldwell, an old-fashioned picture in silvery gray,
+smiling at him from the doorway.
+
+"I've come for a serious talk," said she, when he had seated her beside
+the sunniest window and established himself close by.
+
+"Well," he answered ruefully, "you've come to the right place and the
+right person.  I was just considering--in these scholarly
+surroundings--how I am wasting my life!"
+
+"Really?"  And she beamed on him hopefully.  "Because that's the
+beginning of better things.  You _could_ amount to so much, Peter!"
+
+But he shook his head: "Not here.  And I'm too lazy to leave
+Shadyville."
+
+"Why not here?  I don't want you to leave Shadyville.  I can't do
+without you!  But I want you to do something splendid here.  Peter, why
+don't you write a book?"
+
+He laughed: "Dear Mrs. Caldwell, to write a book requires more than the
+determination or the wish to write one."
+
+"Genius?"
+
+"Not necessarily.  But at least a special kind of ability.  The divine
+fire has never burned on my hearth--not even a tiny spark of it!"
+
+"Then you think it's rather a great thing to be able to write?"
+
+"I do indeed!"  And the reverence of the book-lover thrilled through
+his tone.
+
+"I'm glad you feel that way about writers, Peter," she remarked archly,
+"because--we have one up at our house."  And she extended a note-book
+to him, a thin, paper-backed book such as his class used for
+compositions.
+
+"You mean--Sheila?"  For he had expected this.
+
+"Yes.  It's happened!--as I told you it would."  And her voice was very
+grave now.
+
+He opened the book--and discovered that Sheila's efforts were poems.
+"I'll read them to-night," he said cautiously.
+
+But Mrs. Caldwell would not let him escape so easily: "No, Peter,
+please.  If you have the time, read them now.  There are only a few,
+and I can't go home without a message from you about them.  Sheila's
+waiting up there--and she's simply tense!"
+
+"Then she knows you've brought them to me?"
+
+"Of course.  Do you think I'd have done it without her permission?
+Peter, don't neglect your manners with your grandchildren."
+
+"I deserve the rebuke, Mrs. Caldwell.  But if Sheila wants me to see
+her poems, why hasn't she brought them to me herself?"
+
+"Too shy!  Peter, poets are _very_ sensitive.  It's an awful thing to
+have one in your family!"
+
+"Oh, you won't find it so bad."
+
+"Yes, I shall.  I always told you it would happen.  And I always told
+you, too, that I couldn't cope with such a--calamity."
+
+"Well, there's still hope that this may be a case of 'sweet sixteen'
+instead of genius.  I'll take a peep and give you a verdict."
+
+"She's a _poet_," insisted Mrs. Caldwell, obstinately convinced of the
+worst.  And she fixed her eyes on Peter's face, as he read, with an
+eagerness that, save for her lamentations, might have seemed anxiety to
+have her opinion confirmed.
+
+Presently Peter chuckled.
+
+"What are you laughing at, Peter?"
+
+"Have you read the 'Ode to the Evening Star'?"
+
+"Yes, I've read them all."
+
+"Well, then----"
+
+"Well, then--_what_?"
+
+"You know why I'm laughing."
+
+"You think it's _funny_?"  And there was an unmistakable note of
+indignation in the question.
+
+"Of course I think it's funny!  Don't you?"
+
+There was no reply, and Peter looked up from the note-book.  "_Don't_
+you think it's funny?" he repeated.  And then he stared at her.  Her
+cheeks were pink with excitement, her eyes were glittering with angry
+tears.  "Why, I thought--" he began.
+
+But she interrupted him: "I certainly don't think it's funny.  I think
+it's a _lovely_ poem!  I think they're _all_ lovely poems!  I expected
+you to appreciate them, but as you don't--"  And she put out a
+peremptory hand for the book.  But as Peter continued to stare at her,
+she perceived his amusement, and her resentment gave way to mirth.
+
+"Oh, Peter, do forgive me for being cross to you, but you see----"
+
+"I see that you're proud of these poems!" he exclaimed, his own eyes
+twinkling merrily.
+
+"Yes," she admitted, "I am proud of them.  I really do think they're
+the loveliest poems ever written!"  And she met his laughing gaze quite
+shamelessly.
+
+"And you're glad--yes, _glad_--that she's turned out a poet!" he
+accused.
+
+"Yes," confessed Mrs. Caldwell again, "I'm glad!"  And she leaned
+earnestly toward him: "_Oh, Peter, isn't she wonderful_?"
+
+But Peter regarded her severely.  "Ah, the deceit of woman!  And I
+believed you when you claimed to be distressed!  I sympathized with
+you!"
+
+But Mrs. Caldwell was not to be abashed: "I've been a shocking
+hypocrite, haven't I?  But you're so clever, Peter, that I expected you
+to see through me."
+
+"I trusted you!" he mourned.
+
+"Oh, Peter!  Peter!  That's the way a man always seeks to excuse his
+stupidity when a woman gets the best of him!  But you can trust my
+sincerity now.  And you can sympathize with me if Sheila's _not_ a
+poet.  You seem to doubt her being one!"
+
+"She isn't a poet--yet.  She may become one.  I can't tell about that.
+What I am sure of is that she has a remarkable mind--as I told you long
+ago.  She has things to express, and evidently the time has come when
+she wants to express them.  That's the hopeful point."
+
+"Then she is promising--for all your laughter?"
+
+"Indeed she is!  These poems are funny--but every now and then there's
+a flash of light through them.  Mrs. Caldwell, I believe in the
+_light_.  I don't know what Sheila will do with it, but it's there--and
+it's wonderful!"
+
+The tears were in Mrs. Caldwell's eyes again, not the bright tears of
+anger, but the soft mist that rises from a heart profoundly moved.  As
+Peter spoke, the drops overflowed and rolled slowly down her cheeks,
+but she was unconscious of them.  "You don't know what this means to
+me!" she said.
+
+"I didn't know you would feel like this about it.  You deceived me so
+thoroughly!  But now I wonder why I didn't realize, in spite of all
+your protestations, that you'd care just this deeply.  I should have
+understood what things of the mind are to you--you were my
+grandfather's friend!"
+
+"Yes, I was your grandfather's friend.  And he was a marvellous man,
+Peter.  It's the proudest thing I can say of myself--that I was his
+friend."  Then, quickly, as if she had closed a treasure box, she
+turned from the subject of her old friendship--which Peter knew might
+have been more--to that of Sheila.
+
+"What shall I do with my poet, Peter?  I'm as much afraid of her as I
+said I should be--and as unfit to help her."
+
+"Let me help her!  Will you let me train her?"
+
+"Oh, my dear, I hoped you'd ask to do it!"
+
+"Then it's a bargain--not only for the present, but for the
+future--after she graduates--as long as she needs me?"
+
+Mrs. Caldwell flashed a keen glance at him: "As long as you will,
+Peter!  I'll trust her to you gratefully."
+
+But if there was any deeper significance in her words than her
+acceptance of the present compact, Peter failed to catch it.  As he
+stood in the seminary doorway a few moments later, watching Mrs.
+Caldwell's retreating figure up the shady street, there came to him,
+however, a sense of having something to work for at last.
+
+"What was it Mrs. Caldwell once said?" he murmured to himself.  "That
+she wasn't wise enough to 'trim the wick of a star'?  Yes, that was it.
+Well," he added whimsically, "I don't suppose I'm fit for the job
+either, but I'm going to undertake it.  It'll be worth while staying
+here--it'll be worth while living--if I can trim the wick of a star and
+help it to shine!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+There was nothing spectacular or startlingly precocious about Sheila's
+development during the next few years.
+
+On her seventeenth birthday, her frocks were lowered to her slender
+ankles; on her eighteenth, she permanently assumed the dignity of full
+length skirts; on her nineteenth, she lifted her hair from its soft,
+girlish knot on her neck to a womanly coronet upon the top of her head.
+But despite her regal coiffure, she remained very much of a child.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell had achieved the apparently impossible; she had
+eliminated the rōle of the "young lady" from Sheila's _repertoire_.  At
+nineteen the girl was ready, at the touch of fate, to merge the child
+in the woman; but there was nothing of the conventional young lady
+about her, though she led the same life as other girls in Shadyville, a
+life that abounded in parties---in town through the winter and at the
+country houses in the summer--and little sex vanities and love affairs.
+
+Sheila herself had never had a love affair.  She was a charming young
+person--not quite pretty, but more alluring in her shy, wistful
+fashion, than handsomer girls--so it followed that susceptible youths
+sued for her favor.  But they sued in vain.  She smiled upon them until
+they said some word of love, and then she was on the wing like a wild
+bird.
+
+Whatever ardor there was in her she had expended thus far upon her
+ambition to write.  Under Peter's restraining tutelage, she had long
+since foresworn odes to the evening star for prose fantasies, and these
+were in turn being superseded by what promised to become a clean-cut,
+brilliant gift for narrative.  She had a rich imagination, an unusual
+facility for characterization, a certain quaint, whimsical humor--that
+she never displayed in her speech; all of which raised her work, crude
+though it still was, distinctly above the level of the commonplace.
+
+She had recently sold a little sketch, in her later and better manner,
+to an eastern magazine with a keen eye for young talent, and the event
+had been to her as truly the pinnacle of romance as a betrothal would
+have been to another girl.  It had shed a veritable glory over life for
+her, and all her dreams were now of further triumphs, of approving
+editors and an applauding public.  She would be a famous woman, she
+told herself, with the naļve assurance of youth.  That was her destiny!
+
+So it was small wonder, after all, that Shadyville lads had not induced
+her to regard them seriously.  She would marry some time, of course.
+Everyone married--at least in Shadyville, where the elemental
+simplicities of existence prevailed for very lack of its complexities.
+There was really nothing to do in Shadyville except to participate, in
+one capacity or another, in birth, marriage and death.  Sheila
+therefore considered marriage an inescapable end, but she thought very
+little about it along the way thither.
+
+And yet, when the hour of sex romance finally struck for Sheila, when,
+for the first time, she realized love's moving power and beauty, her
+surrender to it was tenfold quicker and more unquestioning than would
+have been that of a girl who had dallied with sentiment from the days
+of her short frocks.  Her very years of indifference were her undoing.
+Owing to them, love came to her with the shock of an instant and
+supreme revelation; she who had been blind suddenly beheld a whole
+undreamed of world, as it were, and the vastness of the vision
+inevitably dazed her to a degree that made clear perception of it
+impossible.
+
+Perhaps Sheila would have been less ingenuously innocent, and more
+effectually prepared for this crisis, had Charlotte Davis been at hand
+during the formative period of her girlhood.  But Charlotte had been
+traveling in Europe for a couple of years, and her letters--clever,
+witty, worldly-wise--were too infrequent to equip Sheila for the
+defense of her heart.  So she went forward--profoundly unconscious,
+pitifully unready--to capture.
+
+She was nineteen years old, and the season was summer, and the moon was
+shining--when it began.  And summer is an opulent thing in Kentucky; a
+blue and golden thing by day; a thing of white witchery by night; and
+whether in the burnished glamour of the sun, or the pallid glamour of
+the moon, too sweet, too full-blooded, too poignant with the forces and
+the purposes of nature to leave the pulse unstirred.
+
+Sheila, restless with this earth-magic, was standing at the garden gate
+one evening, when a young man came up and paused, smiling, before her.
+At first glance, and in the uncertain moonlight, she thought him a
+stranger, but a second look revealed his sturdy identity.
+
+"Why, _Ted_!"
+
+And Ted he was; a Ted grown to a fine, vigorous manliness--the
+manliness of a thoroughly healthy body and a cheerful, literal mind.
+It was obvious at once that there was not a subtlety in him; that, in
+his early maturity, he was of the same substantial quality that he had
+been as a child.
+
+Sheila had not seen him for a long time--as time is measured at
+nineteen--for during his first year at college, his family had removed
+to Lexington, and neither they nor he had ever returned.  But it seemed
+as natural to her to have him there as if they had parted only
+yesterday, as natural to have him, and as natural to admire him.  She
+had admired him devoutly when she was a little girl, though she had
+sometimes had disconcerting glimpses of his limitations.  And she
+admired him now.  Instantly she felt that splendid, radiant materialism
+of his as a charm.
+
+She walked up the path to the house at his side, in a flutter of
+girlish delight--all sex, all softness, the weaker, the submissive
+creature.  So he had dominated her in the past--except in her rare,
+"queer" moments when the wings of her quick fancy had lifted her on
+some flight beyond his reach.  Her wings did not lift her now, however;
+they were folded so meekly against her shoulders that they might as
+well not have been there at all.
+
+They sat down on the veranda together, and a climbing rose shook down a
+shower of night fragrance upon them, and the moonlight streamed over
+their faces as if with the intent to glorify each to the other.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell was playing whist at the house next door, so Sheila and
+Ted were there alone, save for the cook's tuneful presence in the
+kitchen.  Her song floated out to them in her warm, caressing negro
+voice--"Weep no mo', my lady!  Oh, weep no mo' to-day!"  And suddenly
+Sheila felt that she would never weep again--life was such a joyous
+thing!
+
+Ted sat on a step at her feet, and he leaned his head back against a
+pillar of the veranda as he talked.  She noticed how crisp and strong
+his fair hair was, and the sense of his vitality weighed upon her like
+a compelling hand.
+
+He was telling her what had brought him back.  The editorship of the
+_Shadyville Star_, the town's semi-weekly paper--the editorship and
+part ownership in fact--was open to him, and, alert as ever, he was
+seizing the opportunity.
+
+"It's a chance--a good chance--to go into the newspaper game as my own
+boss, or as part proprietor anyhow," he explained.  "Mr. Orcutt is
+making the _Star_ into a daily, and he wants a live man--a young
+man--to take charge of it.  Father's let me have a couple of thousand
+dollars, and I've borrowed three thousand more, and I'm going in with
+Mr. Orcutt as a partner.  It's a big thing for me if I can pull it
+through.  And I _will_ pull it through.  I was editor of our college
+magazine, and I've worked on one or another of the Louisville papers
+every summer, so I know a little about the game--and I like it
+tremendously.  Oh, I'll succeed all right!"
+
+"Of course you will!" she agreed heartily.  At the mere sound of his
+bright, confident voice she believed in his ability to succeed in
+anything whatever.
+
+"Yes, of course I will.  And it's nice to have _you_ say so.  The only
+question about it," he pursued, "is whether it's a big _enough_
+opportunity for me.  But I'll _make_ it big enough.  I'll make the
+paper grow--and the paper will make the town grow.  See?  All
+Shadyville needs is enterprise--enterprise and advertising."
+
+"Yes," she agreed again.  An hour earlier she would have been ready to
+protect Shadyville's sacred precincts from the vandals of "enterprise"
+and "advertising" with her own slim fist, but here she was handing over
+the keys of the town to modern commercialism without a qualm of
+hesitation.  "_You're_ just what Shadyville needs, Ted," she added
+earnestly.
+
+"I thought you'd feel that way about it!"  And his voice was exultant.
+"You always were a good pal, Sheila!"
+
+And at the tribute Sheila had a swift conception of woman's mission as
+the perfect comrade.  Oh, that was a mission to thrill and inspire one,
+to move one to high and selfless endeavor!  And she dedicated herself,
+in the secrecy of her own mind, to the cause of Ted and the _Shadyville
+Star_.
+
+Throughout the next few weeks she was, indeed, the perfect comrade.
+She who had never before been interested in the spectacle of actual,
+contemporary life, flung herself now, with a fervor which not even her
+personal ambitions had excited, into the business of life's presentment
+through the daily press, and in particular through the medium of the
+_Shadyville Star_.  She read newspapers avidly; she suggested subjects
+for editorials to Ted; she came down to the office of the _Shadyville
+Daily Star_--under Mrs. Caldwell's reluctant chaperonage--to see the
+linotype machine which had been installed in honor of Ted's reign.  She
+even read proof on the tumultuous day which preceded the transformed
+_Star's_ first appearance.
+
+Peter watched her in amazement.  "But I thought newspapers bored you!"
+he exclaimed one afternoon when, coming to read his beloved Theocritus
+with her, he found Sheila immersed in a whirlwind of New York papers,
+from which she was industriously clipping items for reprint in the
+_Star_.
+
+"Oh," she cried, in the rapturous voice of the devotee, "I didn't
+understand how wonderful newspaper work could be!  Why, Peter--I've got
+my finger on the pulse of the world!"
+
+At which Peter put his Theocritus back into the safety of his pocket
+lest even its tranquil spirit be corrupted by the fever of journalism.
+
+To Ted Sheila's magnificent energy in his behalf, her unflagging
+comprehension and sympathy, were steps by which he mounted blithely to
+his goal.  How _could_ he fail with Sheila to stimulate him, to assist
+him, to believe in him?
+
+And indeed, the _Star_ did reward the efforts of both its new editor
+and his silent partner.  It made a triumphant debut, and it continued
+daily to fulfill the expectations which that debut had aroused.
+
+Toward the end of the summer, Ted at last drew a breath of complete
+security.  He was on Mrs. Caldwell's veranda at the time, and he and
+Sheila were alone together.  It was just such a night as the first one
+of his return to Shadyville; the moonlight poured prodigally downward
+upon them, showing to each the other's face, silver-clear; the scent of
+the climbing roses stole to them on the light wind; from kitchenward
+came the soft notes of black Mandy's song as she finished her evening
+tasks--"Weep no mo', my lady!"
+
+Everything was as it had been on that first night two months
+before--and yet everything was different.  Within those two months Ted
+had proved himself as a man--a man who could do his chosen work.  And
+Sheila--Ah, what had she not taught him--what had she not taught
+herself--of the woman's part in a man's work--a man's life?  The same?
+No, everything was different!
+
+Ted was sitting at Sheila's feet, in what had become his accustomed
+place.  He glanced up at her, sweet and serene in the moonlight, and
+something rose within him as resistlessly as a mighty tide.
+
+"I'm winning!" he said triumphantly, "I'm winning!  But I couldn't have
+done it without you.  Oh, Sheila, you've been the making of me!  What a
+girl you are!--what a woman!  _You'd_ always back a man up in his
+undertakings--if you loved him--wouldn't you?"
+
+"Oh--if I loved him!--"  And she looked past him with dreamy eyes.  She
+had never looked like that before, though love had been named to her by
+others and in more persuasive language.  To back up a man in his
+undertakings--because she loved him--  Why, that would be _life_!
+
+Ted had never had the superfine discernment of natures more delicately
+wrought than his, but he had the discernment of sex--as all young and
+healthy creatures have.  He saw her dreaming look, and he knew
+something of the kindred thought.
+
+"Sheila"--and his voice was less sure and bold--"Sheila, have you ever
+been in love?  Is there--anybody else?"
+
+"No," she answered simply.  And she drew her gaze down from the stars
+to his upturned face.  That which was in her eyes made him catch his
+breath and close his own for an instant; but she was unaware of the
+shining thing he had seen--the soul, not only of one woman, just
+awakening, but of all womanhood, at once innocent and passionate, brave
+and piteous.  He had not needed any subtlety to perceive that--so frank
+and beautiful was its betrayal.
+
+"Sheila"--and he fixed his eyes upon her now--"Sheila, maybe the town
+does need me--as you said when I first came back.  I'll do my best to
+make it need me.  Because--because I want to earn the right to a home.
+I want to be able to--marry!"
+
+"To--_marry_?" she whispered.
+
+He leaned forward and laid his hands upon her wrists--importunate hands
+that sent the blood swirling through her veins.
+
+"Oh, Sheila--don't you understand?  _I_ need _you_!"
+
+For a moment the world swayed around her.  Her heart was beating, not
+in her bosom, but in her throat--up, up to her dry and quivering lips.
+To back up a man in his undertakings--because she loved him!--that was
+what Ted was asking her to do for him--to do for him always.  Yes--and
+that was life!
+
+Then, slowly, the world grew still once more; the night wind blew down
+the fragrance of climbing roses; again she heard the familiar
+refrain--"Weep no mo', my lady!  Oh, weep no mo' to-day!"--and now it
+seemed tender with the tenderness of insistent and protective love.
+
+And all the while Ted's hands were on her wrists, silently imploring.
+This was life!  Oh, she would never weep again--never again in her joy!
+
+"Sheila?"
+
+She bent toward him--as irresistibly as the rose above her head was
+drawn to the wind--and smiled.
+
+"Oh, Sheila!--_when you look at me like that_!"
+
+And then Ted's face was against her breast, his arms around her.  She
+would never weep again--for _this_ was _life_!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Sheila had been married several months before she ceased to expect a
+miracle.
+
+She had believed that moment of high rapture when, with Ted's face
+hidden against her breast, she had seemed to grasp life itself in her
+ardent young hands, to be but the forerunner of greater moments--of
+raptures and fulfillments compared to which the first awakening would
+appear no more than a pale shadow of joy.
+
+Marriage, in some way mysterious and beautiful, would surely alter the
+world for her; nay, more, would transmute her own nature into something
+stronger, richer, happier, a wedded nature, wedded in its lightest
+moods, its deepest fastnesses.  She would wear Ted's ring upon her very
+soul, and her soul would thereby be changed and glorified.
+
+Other wives--all wives, indeed, who marry at the dictates of their
+hearts--expect as much.  It is the way of women to dream and hope above
+the earth's level, and now and then, in a rarely perfect mating or in
+motherhood, their dreams come true.  But oftenest they wait as Sheila
+waited--unrewarded.  And after awhile they return contentedly to the
+lowland of everyday reality--where many paths are pleasant and their
+fellow travelers, though not knights errant, are usually faithful and
+kind.
+
+This, after a few months, Sheila did, too.  By that time she had begun
+to regard the first moment of acknowledged love as unique, one from
+which she had no right to ask more than itself.  It was enough to have
+had it.  It _had_ been life--of that she was still convinced--but life
+at its high tide.  And the very existence of every day--of tranquil
+affection and homely duty--was none the less life, too, and good after
+its own fashion.
+
+So, missing the miracle, she set to work to discover a miracle in what
+she had; to find exquisite meanings in the fire upon her wedded hearth
+while her wedded soul remained cold and virginal.  And she had the
+better chance to warm herself beside that fire because it never
+occurred to her that Ted might be in the least responsible for its
+limitations.
+
+About her choice of a husband--or rather, her acceptance of the husband
+whom fate had chosen for her--she had no misgivings.
+
+"Oh, Sheila, are you sure?"  Mrs. Caldwell had inquired again and again
+in that heart-searching hour which had preceded her sanction of the
+engagement.  "Are you _sure_?"
+
+And Sheila had been sure, triumphantly sure.  Even then, with the
+girl's rhapsodies ringing in her ears, Mrs. Caldwell had insisted upon
+an engagement of six months--"To give the child an opportunity to break
+it," she had confided to Peter.  But the delay had proved unnecessary.
+At the end of the period imposed Sheila had been as sure as ever, and
+she was sure still.  Ted loved her.  Ted needed her.  Of course he was
+the right man for her!
+
+If she had thought to receive more than marriage had given her, the
+fault was hers, she loyally decided.  She had always anticipated
+miracles.  She had always seen life as an enchanting fairy tale, with a
+marvellous climax hidden somewhere in the chapters yet unread.  But
+life wasn't a fairy tale; it was merely a bit of cheerful realism, with
+a happy, commonplace climax in accord with realistic standards.  It
+hadn't been fair to demand princes and palaces and winged delights of a
+bit of realism!  She knew now that her expectations had been childish
+and absurd; that she had asked for more than life had to give; that the
+joys of this world were simple, home-abiding things, without the wings
+for heavenly flights.  Not even love itself was winged, and it was
+better so--for thus she need not fear lest it fly away as winged things
+are wont to do.  She had prayed for ecstasy--which, at best, is
+fleeting.  Instead she had been granted a safe and quiet happiness.
+Was not destiny wiser than she?
+
+But though she reconciled herself to the realities of life and of
+marriage, she could not reconcile herself to her own unchanged spirit.
+She had looked to find Sheila Kent a new being, serene, complete--and
+Sheila Kent was neither.
+
+"I'm just myself!" she admitted at last, when neither faith nor desire
+had availed to transform the fiber of her soul.  "I'm just myself
+still.  Ted used to think me a queer little girl--and I'm the same
+queer self now.  Other married girls are satisfied with their husbands
+and their houses and--their babies--and I believed I would be, too.
+But I'm not.  Marriage hasn't made me over--and it isn't enough for me.
+I want something wonderful--I want to _do_ something wonderful.  I
+want--why, I want to _write_!"
+
+It seemed a solution of her perplexity--the conclusion that she still
+wanted to write--and she seized upon it with reviving fervor.  Her
+gift, singling her out from other girls, was the explanation of those
+unconquered spaces in her soul, spaces never destined for the foot of
+any man, however dear.  Genius, she had heard, was always celibate, and
+her genius, or talent, lived on in her inviolate, a thing yet to be
+reckoned with, yet to be appeased.
+
+She had not written during her engagement, nor since her marriage.  Not
+that she had deliberately renounced her ambitions, but that her days
+had been crowded with other things, with things that, for the time, she
+thought more vital.  Peter had remonstrated with her once or twice, but
+to no avail, and when she went from the flurry of trousseau and wedding
+to the more serious business of keeping house in the traditional
+vine-clad cottage--Mrs. Caldwell having persisted in the wisdom of
+separate establishments--he no longer protested at all.  An industrious
+young housekeeper and a blooming wife was obviously not to be condoled
+with over thwarted aspirations.  So certain unfinished manuscripts lay
+forgotten in the bottom of Sheila's bridal trunk--forgotten, or at
+least ignored--until the day when she fixed on them as the reason of
+her vague discontent.  Then she brought them forth with an eagerness
+that was, perhaps, the best answer to her self-analysis.  Of course she
+had wanted to write; without knowing it, she must have wanted, for
+months, to write!  Oh, life _wasn't_ a bit of dull realism!  It was a
+fairy tale after all--a fairy tale of poems and novels, of gracious
+publishers and an appreciative public!
+
+She had never talked to Ted about her writing.  Somehow she had always
+been absorbed in his work, his ambitions.  He had all the initiative
+and enterprise that Shadyville, prior to his arrival, had lacked, and
+his labors and successes had consumed not only his own time and
+thoughts, but Sheila's as well.  She admired his energy; she was
+dazzled by the juggleries of his mediocre cleverness; she was proud to
+help him.  Like a strong, fresh wind he filled her world--and,
+incidentally, he was a wind that blew away all the delicate cobwebs,
+the gossamer filaments of her finer gift.
+
+But now, for the first time since Ted's return to Shadyville, Sheila's
+individuality rose up within her and claimed something for itself.  She
+had wanted to write--and she _would_ write.  There was no reason why
+she should not.  Women, nowadays, were wives and artists also.  Married
+women had "careers" as often as the unmarried.  In short, fame was
+still hers to conquer!
+
+She set about conquering it at once--that was Sheila's way--and when,
+in the middle of a busy morning, some one tapped imperiously on her
+closed door, she went to answer the summons with an inky finger and
+dream-laden eyes.  But she opened the door to a vision that dispelled
+dreams by its more charming substance--a young woman whose smart,
+slender figure was clothed in a mode that had not yet reached
+Shadyville, and whose alert and smiling face seemed as unrelated as her
+garments to the sleepy little provincial town.
+
+"Charlotte!"
+
+"Yes," said the vision gaily, "yes--_Mrs. Theodore Kent_!"
+
+And then the two girls were in each other's arms, laughing and
+chattering, and weeping a little, too, after the manner of
+girls--especially when there has been marriage and giving in marriage
+since their last meeting.
+
+They had not seen each other for more than three years, for although
+Charlotte had been in America several times during that period, she had
+merely joined her family in New York for brief reunions, and had then
+hastened back to Paris where she was studying singing.  They looked at
+each other curiously after that first embrace, and, when they were
+seated in Sheila's sunny sitting-room, they fell at once into
+confidences covering those three separated years.  It was Charlotte, of
+course, who had food for conversation, but Sheila, as the bride, was
+the heroine of the occasion, even to Charlotte's broader mind.
+Marriage may not fulfill the ideals of high romance, but it can always
+cast a halo.
+
+"Well," said Charlotte at last, when she had heard the tale of Ted's
+perfections and achievements, "well, I'll wait and see what you two
+make of it before I give up my liberty."
+
+"You wouldn't be giving up your liberty if you married the man you
+loved," protested Sheila staunchly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that!  Suppose I married a man who resented my
+music?"
+
+"But he wouldn't--if he loved you!"
+
+"Oh!  Then Ted doesn't mind your writing?"
+
+"Of course not!" Sheila assured her.  "Why, I was writing when you
+came!"  And she held up the inky finger.
+
+Charlotte surveyed the finger with evident respect: "That's right!  I'm
+glad you aren't going to be submerged by marriage.  I was afraid you
+might be.  And really, Sheila, you have talent.  The 'F---- Monthly'
+would never have taken that story of yours if it hadn't been
+exceptionally good.  I know Mr. Bennett, the associate editor, and his
+standards----"
+
+"You _know_ Mr. Bennett?" interrupted Sheila.  And her tone was
+reverent.
+
+"Yes," said Charlotte carelessly.  "I know a lot of writing folks in
+New York.  In fact I've brought one of them home with me--Alice North,
+the novelist.  Maybe you've read something of hers?"
+
+"_Something_?  Why, I've read everything of hers I could lay my hands
+on!  Oh, Charlotte, I _adore_ her!"
+
+"So do I," laughed Charlotte, "not her books, but her.  She writes very
+well, but she's more interesting than her stories.  Now, Sheila, I'll
+tell you what you must do--you must let me have some of your things to
+show her!  She could be such a help to you if she found you worth the
+trouble.  Let me have a story or two now, and come up to-morrow
+afternoon to tea--and to hear what she thinks of them."
+
+Sheila caught her breath.  "Oh, it's too presumptuous," she demurred,
+shyly.  "For _me_ to bother _Alice North_!"
+
+Her eyes were shining, nevertheless, as if at sight of a long-promised
+land, and Charlotte presently departed with a couple of manuscripts for
+the touchstone of Mrs. North's criticism.
+
+When Ted came home that evening, he found a Sheila tremulous with
+excitement, her eyes shining still, her cheeks, which were usually
+pale, flushed to a vivid rose.
+
+"Oh, Ted," she exclaimed at once, "Charlotte is back!"
+
+"Yes," he assented good-naturedly, "I heard about it this morning and
+gave her a write-up with a picture."  For Ted invariably looked upon
+events in the terms of their newspaper value.
+
+"Did you know that she brought Alice North home with her?"
+
+"Alice North?"
+
+Apparently he had not the slightest idea who Alice North might be.
+
+"Yes--Alice North--the novelist, Ted!"
+
+"Is she anybody special--anything of a celebrity?"
+
+"Is she?  Oh, Ted, you must read something besides newspapers!  Mrs.
+North hasn't been made a celebrity by the papers--somehow she's managed
+to keep clear of cheap notoriety--but there's scarcely a woman writing
+to-day whose work is better than hers.  She is
+really--_really_--distinguished!"
+
+Instantly he was "on the job," as he would have expressed it, at that
+revelation: "Well, she won't keep out of the 'Star'!  I'll have a story
+about her to-morrow.  Confound it!  I wish I'd known to-day!  But the
+Davises never let me know anything.  I found out by accident that
+Charlotte was home.  And such a time as I had getting her photograph.
+I don't believe that family care about their own town's paper!"
+
+Sheila smiled.  She had a pretty accurate conception of the place that
+Shadyville must occupy on Charlotte's horizon--and on Alice North's.
+But she only remarked soothingly, "I can tell you all about Alice
+North.  I've read nearly everything she's written, and a number of
+magazine articles about her, too.  I'll get you up a good story about
+her--the sort of story she won't object to either."  Then her
+enthusiasm swept her from the subject of newspaper values to the true
+value of Mrs. North:
+
+"Oh, Ted, isn't it splendid for a woman to have a talent like that--a
+talent that's made her famous at thirty!"
+
+But there was no responsive enthusiasm in Ted's face, no leap of light
+in the eyes that met the fire of hers.  "I suppose so," he conceded
+grudgingly, "yes, I suppose it is.  But I don't care for that sort of
+woman myself--at least for that sort of married woman."
+
+"But why, Ted?  Why?  Her work doesn't interfere with her loving her
+husband!"
+
+"It interferes with her making a home for him.  And _that's_ a woman's
+work--making a home."
+
+"But, Ted, maybe he doesn't want a home--or maybe they have a
+housekeeper."
+
+Ted shrugged: "Oh, if it suits him to live in a hotel, or at the mercy
+of a hired housekeeper, it's all right.  But in that case, he's missing
+the best thing a man ever gets--I mean the kind of home a woman's
+_love_ makes!"
+
+At those words Sheila would have surrendered the argument--so easily
+was she swayed by a touch upon her heart.  But Ted was not through with
+the subject.  His masculine self-respect was aroused against this woman
+who was succeeding outside the sphere of strictly feminine occupation,
+and he was determined to show her, in her worst light, to Sheila.
+
+"Has she any children?" he demanded belligerently.
+
+"No--at least, I think not."
+
+"Now you see that I'm right!" he exulted.
+
+But the moment for yielding had passed with Sheila.  "I see nothing of
+the sort," she replied with a flare of temper.  "Her having
+children--or not having them--has no bearing whatever on the matter."
+
+"Oh, yes, it has!  You mark my words--she hasn't had any children
+because she's wanted to spend all her time advancing herself--building
+up a tawdry little fame for herself!  I tell you, Sheila, talent's a
+bad thing for a woman--a bad thing!"
+
+"But, Ted--_I_ write."
+
+He stared at her in naļve surprise.  Then his face softened into
+indulgent laughter.  "Why, kitty, so you do!  I'd forgotten that you
+scribble.  But you don't take it seriously.  I don't mind your playing
+at it, so long as you don't get the notion that it's the biggest thing
+in life."  And he laughed again and pinched her cheek--reassuringly.
+
+She didn't laugh in answer, however.  She only gazed at him with an odd
+intentness, as if she were seeing him for the first time.  Then,
+gravely, she inquired: "What would you think the biggest thing in life,
+Ted--if you were a woman--a woman like Alice North?"
+
+He drew her down to his knee and whispered into her ear.  She was very
+still for an instant, her whole body subdued, spellbound, by that
+whispered word.  Then, with a movement singularly untender, she
+withdrew from his arms and stood erect--free--before him.  The rich
+scarlet still flooded her cheek--now like a flag of reluctant
+womanhood--but he searched her eyes in vain for the glow that should
+have matched it.
+
+"Well--you'll think so some day!" he insisted gently.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Sheila was not naturally secretive, and it was a measure of the
+antagonism which Ted had aroused in her that she said nothing to him of
+her projected visit to Alice North.
+
+She had intended to tell him at once of Charlotte's kindly plan to
+interest Mrs. North in her work; she had been impatient to tell him,
+and her announcement of Charlotte's return, and Mrs. North's arrival
+with her, had been meant only as the preface to the confidence.  She
+had been so sure of his sympathy, of his ambition for her and his
+pleasure in this opportunity to test her power.
+
+His real attitude toward the achievements of women she had never
+suspected.  He had so gladly and gratefully accepted her help in his
+own work, he had so generously acknowledged her ability, that she had
+never conceived of any sex distinction in his views.  She had been his
+comrade--now he would be hers.  And oh, she would make him proud of
+her!  She would see his eyes light for her as, sometimes, she had seen
+them light over the story of men's successes.  For Ted loved success.
+
+If she looked forward to triumphs, he was always at the heart of them.
+Whatever she could do would be done more for his honor than for her
+own.  Whatever was rare and fine in her she had come to value first
+because she was his wife--and afterward for her own profit.  She
+imagined herself, crowned by Mrs. North's praise, returning to Ted to
+cry:
+
+"It is the real, the true thing--my gift!  I will do beautiful work.
+Oh, dearest, I have more to bring you than I dared to believe!"
+
+So her impetuous mind had run onward to meet happy possibilities when
+Ted arrested it with the comment, "I don't care for that sort of woman
+myself--at least for that sort of married woman!"  And at the words,
+Sheila's dreams had fallen, like broken-winged birds, to the ground.
+
+For a moment--nay, through all the conversation that followed, a
+conversation that revealed to her with cruel clarity a phase of her
+husband's mind that she had not hitherto encountered--she was wondering
+if those dreams would ever rise again.  Rude and stupid blows from the
+hand she loved best had struck them down.  How could they recover
+themselves?  How could they sing and soar--those fragile, shattered
+things?
+
+But even as she glimpsed them thus, broken, defeated, there surged up
+within her the strength of resistance.  Sweetly compliant in all the
+common affairs of her and Ted's joint life, she had, for this issue so
+vital to her, an amazing obstinacy.  Defeated?  She and her dreams?
+_No_!  Her dreams were her own, born of her as surely as the children
+of her body would be.  They were hers to save--hers to realize.  And
+she was strong enough to do it!
+
+That had been her thought when she withdrew herself from Ted's knee.
+His whisper--"The greatest thing that can happen to a woman is
+motherhood!"--had inspired no tenderness in her.  For at that moment
+there was astir within her, violent and dominant, the impulse that is
+mightier than motherhood itself--the impulse of _creation_.  And it was
+none the less imperative because it demanded to mould with written
+words rather than living flesh.
+
+Ted's last gentle speech, his hurt expression when she turned coldly
+from him, moved her not at all.  For the time, he was not Ted, her
+beloved, but Man, her enemy.  True, she had not regarded man as an
+enemy before.  Peter, for instance, had been an ally without whom she
+could not even have fared thus far.  But Peter was not a husband; his
+masculinity had not been appealed to--nor threatened.  She saw now that
+men would always fight for the mastery of their own women, would always
+seek to impose sex upon them as a yoke.
+
+Ah, that black, bitter gulf of sex!
+
+Sheila, looking into it for the first time, shuddered with revolt and
+rage.  So _this_ was life; this the end of such moments as her
+exquisite awakening to love.  To _this_ the high and heavenly raptures
+lured one at last!  A bird in the wrong cage, impotently beating its
+breast against the bars--Sheila was like enough to such an one in that
+furious, unconsciously helpless hour.
+
+By the next day, however, the fierce whirlwind of her astounded
+resentment had passed.  She began to see that Ted might be the victim
+of his sex as she was the victim of hers; that the real tyranny was not
+that of Ted over her, but of Nature over them both; of Nature who would
+use them each with equal ruthlessness for her own purposes.  But this
+perception did not daunt her.  Unhesitatingly, she arrayed herself
+against Nature now; she would save her dreams even from that!  And as
+Ted was a part of Nature's plan, she said nothing to him of her
+determination to fulfill herself in spite of it.
+
+In the afternoon she set out resolutely for Charlotte's.  It was
+summer, and Shadyville was at its fairest.  As Sheila trod the wide,
+tree-canopied streets, with their old-fashioned houses in fragrant
+garden closes on either side, a hundred tiny voices whispered to her
+messages of peace; of life that goes on from summer to summer; of
+growth, in the dark and choking earth, that springs at last upward to
+the sun.  But she did not hear.  For her there was neither comfort nor
+peace nor any joy in the processes and victories of mere life.
+
+When she reached the Davis house, Charlotte and Mrs. North were on the
+veranda, clad brightly in a summer frivolity, and their air of leisure
+and gayety was oddly unlike the tense and passionate mood of Sheila
+herself.  In fact the whole scene--the porch with its fluttering
+awnings and festive flowers, the dainty tea-table that already awaited
+the guest, the two charming women presiding there--seemed far removed
+from the grave resolve and stormy emotions that Sheila had brought
+thither.  For an instant, as she paused at the gate, she felt herself
+absurd.  She had come to have afternoon tea with two women who were
+obviously of the big, conventional world--and she had brought her naked
+soul to them!  Acutely self-conscious, painfully humiliated, she would
+have retreated if she could, but Charlotte was already hailing her.
+And then--her hand was clasped in Alice North's, her eyes were meeting
+eyes at once so probing and so luminous that they opened every door of
+her nature and flooded it with light.
+
+Sheila had never had a case of hero-worship, but as she put her hand in
+Mrs. North's, she fell, figuratively, upon her knees.  The very
+buoyancy and assurance of the latter's manner, which had, for an
+instant, chilled and rebuffed her, now appeared to her the outward
+manifestation of a brilliant and conquering spirit.  Like a devotee,
+she watched Mrs. North's quick, graceful movements, her vivid,
+changeful face; like a devotee she listened to her sparkling,
+inconsequent chatter.  This woman, handicapped by her womanhood, had
+done big things.  Any word from her lips, any gesture of her hand was
+something to admire and remember.
+
+It never even entered Sheila's head that, although she had done great
+things, Alice North might not be a great woman.  It never occurred to
+her to ask _how_ she had triumphed--at whose or at what cost.  She
+never even dreamed that one's life--just a noble submission to Nature,
+a willing and patient compliance with laws and purposes above one's
+own--might be the final and fullest expression of genius.  Alice North
+had written books--and Sheila was at her feet.
+
+After awhile Charlotte tactfully left her alone with her idol--in whose
+footsteps she meant to walk henceforth--to _climb_!
+
+"I've read your stories," said Mrs. North softly then.  It was the
+first mention of Sheila's work, and the girl quivered from head to
+foot.  She gazed mutely at the oracle--waiting for life, for death.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. North leaned forward and caught Sheila's hands in hers.
+Alice North had never failed to be sensitive to drama; to play her part
+in it with sympathy and effect.
+
+"My dear," she exclaimed, and her voice was clear and thrilling, "my
+dear, you have it--the divine gift!"
+
+And as they looked at each other, the eyes of each filled with tears.
+Alice North was indeed sensitive to drama--so sensitive that her
+counterfeit emotions sometimes deceived even her--and Sheila was shaken
+to the heart, to the soul.
+
+"You mean--you mean--that I--" began the girl brokenly.
+
+"I mean," answered Mrs. North, "that you are already doing remarkable
+work--that you will go far--unless----"
+
+"Unless what?" breathed Sheila.
+
+"Will you let me advise you?"
+
+"Oh, if you only will!  What shall I do?"  And Sheila bent trusting,
+obedient eyes upon her.
+
+"Do?  Dear child, I can tell you in a word.  You must renounce!"
+
+"Renounce?" repeated Sheila vaguely.
+
+"Yes, renounce!"  And Alice North turned a face of pale sacrifice upon
+her--with that inevitable instinct for the dramatic.  Few women had
+renounced less than she--less, at least, of what pleased them--but at
+that moment, in the intensity of her artistic fervor, she believed
+herself an ascetic for her work's sake.
+
+"The common lot of womanhood is not for you," she declared.  "You must
+live for your art!"  And her voice trembled with the touching
+earnestness that she had so easily assumed--and would as easily cast
+off.
+
+To Sheila, however, there never came a doubt of Mrs. North's deep
+sincerity.  She had listened, as if to a priestess, while the novelist
+proclaimed her sublime creed of renunciation, and she now offered the
+obstacle to it in her own situation with a sense of having fallen from
+grace in being thus human:
+
+"But I'm married, you know."
+
+"And so am I.  But I am consecrated, nevertheless, to my art.  And so,
+my dear, must you be.  You must give yourself utterly,--_utterly_--to
+your art!  Art won't take less.  _Your_ husband must live for
+_you_--instead of your living for him after the fashion of most wives.
+And you'll be worth his living for--I'm sure of that."
+
+"I--I don't understand," faltered Sheila.  "I don't understand what it
+is I mustn't do for Ted."
+
+Alice North held her hands more closely and fixed her luminous eyes
+upon her--eyes which, to many before Sheila, had seemed to shine with
+the light of a beautiful soul: "You mustn't do for him the one thing
+that you and he will want most--you mustn't have children for him!  My
+dear, _you_ must be a mother with your _brain_--not with your body.
+You can't do both--at least, worthily--and you must give yourself to
+creation with your mind.  There are women enough already to become
+mothers of the other sort!"
+
+Sheila did not reply.  Slowly the glow faded from her face, from her
+eyes.  Slowly and listlessly she withdrew her hands from Mrs. North's
+fervid clasp and leaned back in her chair.  Clearly the supreme moment
+had passed; the flame of her ardor had flickered out.  Mrs. North
+glanced curiously at her.  An instant before, the girl had been
+radiant, tremulous with aspiration and with hope.  Now she was
+apathetic and cold, her spirit no more than a handful of ashes.
+
+The silence lengthened--grew heavy with meaning.  Alice North put out
+her hand again: "I trust I haven't intruded--offended?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Sheila stiffly, "you have been very kind, and--I am
+sure--very wise."  But her frank gaze had grown guarded; her whole
+manner had become that of defensive reserve.
+
+Yes, clearly, the great moment was over; the drama was ended.
+
+
+"What a queer girl," remarked Mrs. North!  to Charlotte, when Sheila
+had gone.  "I predicted a phenomenal future for her--I had her tingling
+to her finger tips.  Then--quite suddenly--the light, the fire was
+quenched.  And do what I would, I couldn't kindle it again.  It was
+very strange--unless----"
+
+"Unless----?"
+
+"Unless she's going to have a child.  I told her that she mustn't have
+children."
+
+"You mean," cried Charlotte incredulously, "that you advised her to
+shirk the greatest experience possible to a woman?  You advised her to
+forego _that_?"
+
+But Alice North lifted her pretty brows and shrugged her histrionic
+shoulders with an air of fine distaste.  "Really, Charlotte," she
+drawled, "I hadn't suspected you of being so primitive."
+
+
+Walking homeward through the sweet summer dusk, Sheila was far from the
+listless, extinguished creature whom Alice North had described,
+however.  Never in her life had such a tempest of emotion swept through
+her being.  For she was face to face, at last, with life.
+
+The first night of Ted's courtship returned to her now; she smelt the
+fragrance of climbing roses; she felt his head again upon her
+breast--the indescribable first touch of love that is unlike all
+others!--she heard a voice deep within her exulting: "_This_ is
+_life_!"  Ah, how ignorant she had been--how pitifully innocent!  To
+have thought _that_ life!
+
+For life was a thing that laid brutal, compelling hands upon you; that
+destroyed you and created you again; that rent you with unspeakable
+pangs, with unimaginable terrors, with frantic and powerless
+rebellions.  It was not joy; it was not peace; it was not fulfillment.
+It was a _force_.  Merciless, implacable, irresistible, it seized upon
+you and _used_ you.  For that you were put into the world; for that you
+dreamed and hoped and struggled--for that moment out of an eternity,
+that moment of _use_!
+
+As she hurried onward, stumbling now and then with a clumsiness alien
+to her, the sense of lying helpless in the grasp of this force almost
+drove her to cry out.  More than once she lifted her hands to her
+mouth, and even then little shuddering murmurs broke from her.
+
+Helpless?  Oh, yes! yes!  For that had come to her from which there was
+no escape.  She was trapped.  She, too, was to be put to use.  Her own
+work must make way for Nature's.  She saw that now.
+
+Her own work must make way.  For Alice North herself had said that one
+could not serve art and Nature, too--and Nature had exacted service of
+her.  She had been strong enough to defy Ted's tyranny; but, after all,
+she could not defeat Nature's.  Her work must make way.
+
+She let herself noiselessly into the house.  From the kitchen floated
+the sounds of the cook's evening activities, but otherwise the place
+was silent, and Ted's hat was not on its accustomed hook in the little
+hall.  She could be alone a while.
+
+She stole up the stairs to her bedroom, meaning to lie down in the
+quiet darkness, but once there, a panic assailed her, a senseless fear
+of the dim corners, the distorted shadows.  Besides, she wanted to see
+herself; she wanted to see if Ted, promising her beautiful things from
+motherhood the night before, if Mrs. North, warning her against it
+to-day, had known that she--that she was going to have a child.
+
+She turned on the lights and stood in their full glare before her
+mirror.  Searchingly she inspected herself--the slender figure that was
+as yet only delicately rounded, the cheek that showed just a softer
+curve and bloom, the eyes----
+
+And then she caught her breath in a sharp sob and leaned nearer to her
+reflection.  What was it--who was it--that she saw in her eyes?
+
+For something--some one--looked back at her that had not looked back at
+her before; something--some one--ineffably yearning, poignantly
+tender--looked back at her with the gaze of a mystery--of a miracle.
+It was as if, within herself, she beheld another self; and this other
+self was reconciled to life, was in harmony with its divine purpose.
+Strangely enough, at that moment, her childhood's fancy of another self
+recurred to her.
+
+"Other-Sheila," she whispered, "Other-Sheila, is it _you_?"
+
+While she leaned thus, waiting, perhaps, for the answer of that
+reflected self, she saw that Ted had opened the door behind her.  For
+an instant their eyes met in the mirror, and with that gaze Sheila's
+heart suddenly fled home to him.  He was the father of her child!
+
+"Oh," she cried, turning to him with outstretched, shaking hands and
+quivering face, "Oh, tell it to me again!  I _want_ to believe it!
+_Tell me again that motherhood is the greatest thing!_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+In that hour when Sheila, flinging herself into his arms, cried out to
+Ted, "Tell me again that motherhood is the greatest thing.  I want to
+believe it!" she struck a high note that, during the succeeding days
+and weeks and months, she could not always sustain.  And yet, from the
+moment when she attempted to reconcile her will to Nature's, she did
+begin to perceive that her sacrifice would have its recompense.
+
+Perhaps she perceived it the more clearly because it was given to her
+to see what motherhood meant to other women.  For she was enough like
+the rest of humanity to value what others held precious.
+
+On the day after her interview with Mrs. North, Sheila went to confide
+her expectation of maternity to her grandmother.  She found Mrs.
+Caldwell in her sitting-room, a peaceful, lonely figure, lifted, at
+last, above the stress and surge of life--and above all its sweet
+hazards, its young delight.  She turned a pleased face to Sheila:
+"Dear!  Ah, what would I do without my child?"
+
+At the words, Sheila's news rushed to her lips:
+"Grandmother--grandmother--_I_ am going to have a child!"  And then she
+was on her knees, and her face was hidden against Mrs. Caldwell's
+breast.
+
+There was an instant of silence.  Then: "How happy you and Ted must
+be!" murmured Mrs. Caldwell, "how happy!"  And something in her tone
+touched Sheila more nearly than even her close-clinging arms, something
+that was at once joy for Sheila's joy and a measureless regret for
+herself.  Suddenly the girl, trembling in the fold of those gentle old
+arms, realized how far behind her grandmother lay all youth's dear
+hopes and adventures.  And she realized, too, that she herself held
+treasures in her hands--the treasures of youth and youth's warm love.
+After all, even if she must lay her work aside, she was happy.  Youth
+and love were hers--youth and love!
+
+Nor was it only from her grandmother that she received confirmation of
+her fortunate estate.  A few days later came Charlotte, to congratulate
+her upon Mrs. North's belief in her gift.
+
+"Alice North says that you have a wonderful future before you," she
+told Sheila glowingly.  "I'm so glad for you!--so proud of you!"
+
+"Mrs. North said I had a future before me _if I did not have
+children_," corrected Sheila.  "She thinks I can't be a writer and a
+mother, too."
+
+"Ah," remarked Charlotte reflectively, "then that _was_ why--"  She
+paused a moment, leaving the significant sentence unfinished, and then
+went on more earnestly, "Sheila, she was wrong!  Don't be persuaded to
+her views.  She judged you by herself.  Probably she couldn't be both
+writer and mother--she isn't really strong, you know.  But that is not
+true for all women.  Why, there have always been women who have done
+great things intellectually and had children, too!  Don't be
+discouraged; don't let yourself believe that you need lose your art if
+you should have a child.  You'd be all the finer artist for it.
+And--you are going to have a child, aren't you, Sheila?"
+
+Sheila had been passionately shy about her expectancy of motherhood,
+but the grave directness of Charlotte's inquiry disarmed her, and she
+answered as frankly and simply: "Yes, I am going to have a child."
+
+Charlotte looked at her with an expression new to the shrewd blue eyes
+that were habitually so cool and smiling.  Then, with an impetuous and
+lovely gesture, she drew Sheila to her: "I'm so glad for you, dear!--so
+glad!"
+
+A little while before she had been glad for the promise in Sheila's
+work.  Now she used the same word, but how differently!  For her mind
+had spoken before, and now speech leaped from her very heart.
+
+"I have never loved a man," she said presently, in her outspoken way,
+"I have never loved a man, but I hope that I may some day--and that I
+may have a little child for him."
+
+So Mrs. Caldwell was not alone in her attitude toward love's
+consummation!  The desire for motherhood possessed not only the women
+of yesterday, of old-fashioned standards and ideals, but Charlotte,
+too; Charlotte, the "modern" woman incarnate, who had always appeared
+so self-sufficient, so bright and serene and cold, even so hard.  It
+seemed incredible that she should have confessed to the dreams of
+softer women, of women less mentally preoccupied and competent.
+
+Sheila stared at her: "_You_ feel that way?  You--with your music, your
+chances to study, to make a career for yourself?"
+
+"Of course I feel that way!  Every real woman does.  I want my music
+and motherhood, too, but--if I ever have to choose between them--do you
+doubt that I'll take motherhood?"
+
+There was indignation in her tone; evidently she was wounded that
+Sheila had misjudged her--so strong was the mother-instinct, the sense
+of maternity's supreme worth, within her.  Realizing this, it appeared
+to Sheila that no one but herself--no woman in all the world--was
+reluctant for maternity.  After all, Ted had only asked of her that she
+should share the universal hope and joy of wifehood.  It was she who
+had demanded the exceptional lot; not he who had imposed a unique
+obligation upon her.
+
+With this conviction, the last flicker of her resentment toward him was
+extinguished, leaving her gratefully at peace with him, not only in the
+high moments, but even in those occasionally recurrent ones of
+rebellion and fear.  In the latter, indeed, she turned to Ted now for
+courage and strength, and in the fullness and tenderness of his
+response she felt herself more his than she had ever been.  But her
+resolve not to tell him about her talk with Alice North persisted.  It
+had been, at first, the resolution of a determined opposition to his
+views, but it endured through motives more generous.  Ted should have
+his happiness in approaching parenthood unspoiled.  He should not be
+hurt by knowing that she had ever looked forward to it with a divided
+heart.  She could at least conceal that she was unlike other women, and
+perhaps, in time, a miracle might be wrought upon her and she be made
+wholly like her sisters.
+
+Perhaps, too, in the fullness of time, her work and her motherhood
+might be adjusted to each other in her life.  As Charlotte had said,
+there were women--many of them--who were both artists and mothers.  She
+herself might be such a woman--some day.  She might convert Ted to
+this, and go forward to a destiny of complete fulfillment.
+
+But just now, with a sudden and intense accession of conscience, she
+yielded herself entirely to the new life that had sprung up within her.
+The sum of her strength belonged to it, she told herself, and she could
+give herself as completely as other women, whatever the difference
+between her mental attitude and theirs.  All the while, too, she prayed
+for her miracle; prayed that she might become altogether like other
+women, altogether like those glad mothers of the race.
+
+She did not pray in vain.  There came a day when, with her little son
+upon her arms, she whispered, "Oh, I _am_ glad!  I am _glad_--glad!"
+
+Glad?  Ah, that was a poor, colorless word for the rapture that
+descended upon her.  Never was the ecstasy of motherhood granted a
+woman more utterly.  It was like an angel's finger on her lips,
+answering her questionings, satisfying her longings, silencing her
+discontents.  _This_ was life, and it was not cruel and tyrannous, as
+she had thought, but infinitely gracious and benevolent.  It had used
+her, but it had used her for her own happiness.  For upon her arm lay
+her son!
+
+That she ever could have wanted to escape motherhood, that she ever
+could have resented it, now seemed to her unbelievable.  She admitted
+it to be worth any renunciation, and she gave not one regret to the
+renunciation that she had made for it--the temporary renunciation of
+her work.  It absorbed her fully and gloriously; it flowed through her
+with her blood; it was a part of her body and the very fiber of her
+soul.  And it shone through her like a light: it was in the softer
+touch of her hand, the deeper note of her voice, the more brooding
+sweetness of her eyes.  She _was_ motherhood, indeed; a young madonna
+whose halo was visible even to unimaginative Ted.
+
+Had the question occurred to him then, Ted would have said that no
+artist could surrender herself thus to maternity.  Peter Burnett,
+reverently watching, did say, "No one but a poet could be a mother like
+that!"
+
+Sheila had been very ill at the time of the child's birth, and a year
+passed before she regained her natural vigor.  It was, perhaps, the
+happiest year of her life.  Every now and then in the course of a
+lifetime, there come seasons of pure, untroubled joy, when all the
+practical concerns of ordinary existence pause for a little while, and
+the petty cares and worries make way, and even the commonplace
+pleasures stand aside, abashed.  Such a season of joy was Sheila's
+then.  She could never recollect it afterward without a quickening and
+lifting of her heart, and she knew at the time--Oh, very surely--that
+she had drawn down heaven to herself.
+
+Of course it did not last.  As her strength increased and the every day
+business of living became more and more her affair, she dropped to the
+level of a normal contentment, and thus to the interests that had
+occupied her before the miracle was accomplished.
+
+Eric, her little son, was well into his second year, however, before
+she felt the urging restlessness of her gift, and even then she denied
+the creative impulses stirring within her; she put them from her--while
+she longed to yield herself to them instead.  "Go away!" she said to
+them fiercely.  "Oh, go away before you spoil my beautiful peace!"  But
+for every time that she drove them forth, they returned the stronger,
+as if they would proclaim: "You can't be rid of us!  You may narcotize
+us with the sedative of your content.  You may banish us altogether.
+But we'll always waken!  We'll always come back!  For we're a part of
+_you_--just as much a part of you as your son is!"
+
+It was true.  They were, indeed, a part of her.  She would always be
+different from other women after all--because of them.  She would
+always have to reckon with them; to appease them, or to deny them at
+her own bitter cost.
+
+And now there came the question: "Why deny them any longer?"  Eric had
+been a very healthy baby from the first; he had, also, an excellent
+nurse, a young mulatto girl who shared her race's enthusiasm for
+children.  In the kitchen ruled an old cook who brooked no interference
+from "Li'l Miss."  Obviously, neither her child nor her house demanded
+all of Sheila's time.  So in the quiet afternoons, when Eric had been
+taken outdoors, she began to write for an hour or two.  Surely, she
+argued, she now had a right to those two hours out of each twenty-four,
+especially since she did not take them from her husband, her son, or
+her home.  It was her own leisure, her own opportunity for rest, that
+she sacrificed, if sacrifice there was.
+
+But though she justified herself, she somehow said nothing about the
+matter to Ted.  She agreed with him now--Oh, warmly enough!--that
+motherhood was the greatest thing in life for a woman; but she did not,
+she never would, believe with him that it must be the only thing.  Nor
+should he believe it always, she told herself.  She would prove to him
+that a woman could be both mother and artist.  She would prove it to
+him, as she had dreamed of doing--but not just yet.  They loved each
+other so dearly, they were so happy together, that she shrank from
+disturbing their harmony by any discussion or dissension.  And
+discussion and dissension there would be before Ted could be converted.
+Amiable as he was in his healthy, hearty fashion, he would be
+intolerant and irritable about this.  So she worked on in secret; and
+for a couple of months nothing and no one was the worse for it.
+
+Then, when Eric was two years old, he was taken ill; suddenly, swiftly,
+terribly, as a little child can be smitten from rosy vigor to death's
+very brink.  The disease was scarlet fever.
+
+"How can he have gotten it?" Sheila and Ted asked each other,
+bewildered and agonized.  But soon--only too soon--they knew.  Lila,
+the nurse, disappeared directly after the verdict was pronounced.
+"Afraid!" cried Sheila scornfully, "afraid--though she said she loved
+him!"
+
+"Yes'm," agreed old Lucindy, who had come from her kitchen to help
+nurse the boy with a loyalty that was in itself a scathing comment on
+Lila's defection, "yes'm, she's feared all right--but not ob gittin'
+fever."
+
+There was something savage in her tone at sound of which Sheila and Ted
+straightened from their little son's crib and looked to her for
+explanation.
+
+"She's feared," continued Lucindy, "'cause she knows _she_ done gib dat
+chile fever takin' him to dem low-down nigger shanties she's allus
+visitin' at.  Dat's what Lila's feared ob."
+
+"She took the _baby_ to--?"  It was Ted who tried to question Lucindy.
+Sheila could not, though she had opened her dry lips for indignant
+speech.
+
+"Yassah, she sho did--jes befo' he was took sick.  She taken him to 'er
+no 'count yaller sister's--an' 'er sister's chillun's got scarlet
+fever.  I heared it dis mornin'."
+
+"Are you sure, Lucindy?  Are you _sure_?"  It was still Ted who pursued
+the inquiry.
+
+"Deed I'se sho, Marse Ted.  She tole me herse'f whar she'd been when
+she come back wid de baby, an' 'bout how cute an' sweet dey all say he
+is.  Course she didn't know 'bout de fever--it hadn' showed up on dem
+chillun yit--but she knowed mighty well Miss Sheila wouldn' want our
+baby in nigger houses _no-how_.  She knowed she was doin' wrong takin'
+him.  I sho did go fo' dat yaller gal, too!  She wouldn' never do it no
+mo'--not while Lucindy's a-livin'!"
+
+Ted turned to Sheila, and the expression of her white face startled
+him.  Much as he loved her, his heart hardened to her as he
+looked--hardened with a sudden, instinctive suspicion--and when he
+spoke, his voice was stern:
+
+"Did you know where Lila was taking the baby when she had him out?" he
+asked.  "Sheila, did you know?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"Sheila, did you know?" repeated Ted.
+
+Sheila shook her head.  Lila had had orders never to take Eric out of
+the yard without permission.  She had risked the disobedience, only too
+sure of her mistress's absorption.  For Lila knew the secret of those
+afternoons; she had not been a confidante, but she had been a witness.
+Sheila realized all this now, as she faced Ted across the crib of their
+little stricken son.  She realized that she had not known where Eric
+was because she had been engrossed in her work--and that not to have
+known, as things had come to pass, was criminal.
+
+"Oh, how could it have happened?" cried Ted.  And looking into Sheila's
+tortured face, sternness vanished from his eyes for an instant, and
+love and grief yearned toward her from them instead.  In that instant
+speech came to Sheila and the truth rushed out of her.
+
+"It happened because--because I was up in my room and didn't overlook
+Lila.  It happened because I was up in my room, _writing a story_!"
+
+It was as if she had bared her breast to a sword--and he could not
+plunge it in.  In his turn he was silent; but his silence was scarcely
+easier to bear than the harshest upbraiding.  He stood there, gazing at
+her, and she knew all that was in his mind, in his heart.  And then,
+after a moment, he went out of the room, still without a word.  When he
+came back, several hours later, he was very gentle to her, but Sheila
+knew, nevertheless, that his father's heart condemned her, condemned
+her as she condemned herself.
+
+Together they nursed their son, with Mrs. Caldwell and old Lucindy to
+help them.  And as Sheila watched her baby fight for the tiny flame of
+his life, her own heart, so much more burdened than Ted's, broke not
+once, but a thousand times!  He was so small, so weak, so helpless,
+that little son of hers, and he suffered.  That was what she felt she
+could not bear--that he should suffer.  Even his death she could endure
+if she must, she who deserved to lose him.  But his _pain_----!
+
+As she went back and forth upon the ceaseless tasks of nursing,
+apparently so concentrated upon them, she was in reality living over
+days long past, the days before Eric's birth.  Clear and practical as
+was her grasp of the present and all its necessities, she was yet
+obsessed by her memories of that time before her child's coming; by her
+memories of it and her penitence for it.  In the beginning, she had not
+been glad.  It was upon that, quite as much as upon her later
+carelessness in trusting Lila, that her agonized conscience fixed.  How
+could she ever have hoped to keep her child--she who had not been glad
+of his coming?  It all sprang from that.  For if she had been glad
+enough in the beginning, the idea of writing would not have persisted
+with her; would not finally have led her to that negligence for which
+Eric might pay with his life.
+
+She had not been glad in the beginning!  Over and over that sentence
+shrieked through her brain: She had not been glad in the beginning!
+She had not been glad!
+
+She never spared herself by reflecting that she had not been reluctant
+for motherhood until Ted had shown his antagonism to the work that was
+already the child of her brain, and Mrs. North had, from her different
+viewpoint, justified his attitude.  She never conceded in her behalf
+that it had not even occurred to her, until then, to regard motherhood
+and art as conflicting elements, and that it was the shock of seeing
+them thus in her own life that had made her temporarily resentful of
+maternity.  She never excused or exonerated herself by that ultimate
+joy of motherhood which had possessed her so utterly.  She had not been
+glad in the beginning; later, she had not been glad enough to give
+him--her little, helpless son--all her life.  How, indeed, could she
+hope to keep him now?
+
+Over and over this she went; and all the while she kept on about her
+tasks, deft, skillful, terribly calm.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell observed her with an alarm hardly less than she felt for
+the child.  "It will kill Sheila if Eric dies," she said to Ted.
+
+"Yes," he groaned, "I think it will."
+
+"What is it, Ted?--the thing that's eating into her heart?  There's
+more here than even a mother's grief."
+
+"She was writing a story when--when Lila exposed the boy to the fever.
+Of course, if she hadn't been--!  Oh, poor Sheila!--poor Sheila!" he
+ended brokenly.
+
+For all blame had gone out of Ted; his gentleness to Sheila was no
+longer that of forbearance, but of an immense and inarticulate pity.
+It racked him that he could not stand between her and her contrition,
+her pitiful sorrow; it hurt him intolerably that he could not hold them
+from her with his very hands.  Almost he lost the sense of his own sick
+pain in watching hers.  Once he tried to take her in his arms and
+comfort her.  "Don't suffer so!" he pleaded.  "Don't suffer so!"
+
+But she pulled away from him, denying herself the solace of his
+sympathy.  "I can't suffer _enough_!" she cried.  "I can _never_ suffer
+enough to atone for what I've done!"
+
+There came a night when they put Sheila out of the room--Mrs. Caldwell
+and Ted; literally put her out, with hands so tender and so firm.
+
+"I have a right to be with him when he dies!" she cried.
+
+"Sheila--he will need you to-morrow.  You _must_ rest--for his sake."
+So they sought to deceive and compel her.
+
+"No," she insisted, "he will not need me to-morrow.  But he needs me
+now--to die with."
+
+"He may not die."
+
+"He 'may' not die.  You don't say he _will_ not die!  Oh, he will
+die!--and he's too little to die without his mother!"
+
+And then they put her out.
+
+Ted led her away to the room where she was to "rest" and shut her
+within it, and she lay down on the couch as he had bidden her to do.
+It was easy enough to be obedient in this, since she was barred out
+from the one place where she yearned to be.  Since she could not be
+there, it did not matter where she was or what she did.  It was easiest
+just to do what she was told.
+
+She knew only too well that she had spoken truly when she had said that
+her little son might die that night.  She knew only too surely why she
+had been shut out.  And almost she submitted--the blow seemed so
+certain, so close.  The despair that resembles resignation in its
+apathy almost conquered her, as she waited for the hand of death to
+strike.
+
+But while she waited, lying in the quiet darkness, there suddenly came
+to her the idea that she might still save Eric.  Morbid from grief and
+fatigue, she had not a doubt that his death was a "judgment" on
+herself; a punishment.  Because she had neglected him for her own
+selfish ends; nay, more, because she had not been glad of his coming in
+the beginning, God was about to take him from her.  She was mercilessly
+sure of this--sure with the awakened blood, the inherited traditions of
+many Calvinistic ancestors, the stern forefathers of her father.  Her
+own more liberal faith, her personal conception of a God benignant and
+very tender, went down before that grim heritage of more rigorous
+consciences.  But with the self-conviction springing from that
+heritage, there came, too, the suggestion that she might make her peace
+with God; that with sufficient proof of her penitence, she might
+prevail upon Him to spare Eric.
+
+Again and again the suggestion reached her, in the "still, small voice"
+which may have been the voice of her own inner self, or of the
+surviving, guiding souls of her ancestors, or of God Himself.  Again
+and again it spoke to her--whatever it was, from whatever source it
+rose; again and again, until it was still and small no longer, but
+strong and purposeful, and its message unmistakable.
+
+She could but heed it--thankfully.  And so she began to cast about in
+her mind for the proof of her contrition.  It could be no light thing,
+no trivial surrender of self.  It must be a sacrifice--a sacrifice such
+as the ancient tribes of Israel would have offered an incensed God.  It
+must be--she saw it in a flash!--it must be her work.
+
+"If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for
+it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and
+not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
+
+"And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee:
+for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish,
+and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."
+
+This, then, must she do.  She must pluck out that thing which had
+offended her, which had betrayed her into a sin against her own
+motherhood, and cast it from her.  She must pluck out her gift and
+offer it up in expiation.
+
+And so she knelt there in the darkness and tendered her sacrifice; so
+she thrust from her the thing which had been so dear to her; so she
+entered into her compact with God.
+
+"Oh, God, grant me my child's life, and I will never write again.  I
+have sinned in selfishness and vanity, but I am repentant and will sin
+no more.  I have plucked out my right eye.  I have cut off my right
+hand.  I have cast my gifts from me forever.  Grant me my son's life,
+and I will never write again!"
+
+Hour after hour she entreated God to make terms with her.  The night
+crept by, slow-footed and silent, but she was not aware of the passing
+of time, or of the deepening of the stillness within the house, or of
+the quivering of the sword above her head.  She no longer listened for
+sounds from that distant room.  She no longer strove to pierce the
+intervening walls with her mother's sixth sense.  She heard nothing but
+the voice which had counselled her; she strove for nothing but to obey
+that voice.  Her whole being concentrated itself into a prayer.  She
+was conscious only of herself and God, and of her passionate effort to
+reach Him.
+
+"Oh, God, _hear_ me!  I have sinned, but I will sin no more.  My heart
+is broken with remorse.  I will never write again!"
+
+So she pleaded with God throughout the long night.  And pitiful and
+insolent as was her bargaining, God must have found in it something to
+weigh.
+
+For with the first light of the morning, Ted opened the door--and there
+was light in his worn face, too.
+
+"Sheila--_Sheila_!----"
+
+And then they fell into each other's arms, sobbing--sobbing as they
+could not have done if their little son had died.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+With tragic sincerity Sheila had entered into the compact for her son's
+life, and she kept it to the letter.  She saw no reason why she should
+have a poorer sense of honor toward God than she had toward men and
+women; her child had been spared to her, and henceforth it was for her
+to fulfill her part, to keep her given word.
+
+She had never understood, indeed, why people made--and broke--promises
+to God so lightly.  She had found them ready enough to complain if they
+considered God unjust to them, but they never seemed to think that it
+mattered whether they were "square" with God or not.  To them He was a
+sort of divine creditor who need not be paid.  They even made it a
+proof of reverence--a comfortable proof!--to place Him far above the
+consideration they had to show their fellow men.  This viewpoint was
+impossible to Sheila.  Morbid, hysterical, as her offered price for
+Eric's life had been, she felt herself bound, and she paid
+punctiliously.
+
+It was easy enough thus to pay as she watched her child growing strong
+and rosy again.  His little life--Ah, what was it not worth?  A dozen
+times a day the memory of that night when she had believed that he
+would die sent her shuddering to her knees with fresh prayers and
+promises.  And always the recollection of that loss escaped roused in
+her a very passion of thanksgiving.  She had her son!--that was her
+answer to all the dreams which, unrealized, sometimes stole back to
+tempt her with their wistful faces.
+
+When Eric was well enough for her now and then to leave him--at first
+she could not leave him lest, with her sheltering hands removed, his
+life should flicker out--she gave burial to the little brain children
+that, for the child of her body, she had sacrificed.  Every bit of
+verse, every little sketch, and the unfinished story which was, in her
+sight, most guilty, and most dear of all, she laid away; not with
+ribbon and lavender and rites of sentiment and tears, but sternly,
+barely, ruthlessly, as one puts away things discarded by the heart
+itself.  She might have burned them less harshly, and that she did not
+was only because she conceived it a finer deed to keep them and resist
+them.  So she put her honor to the uttermost test.
+
+It was thus, and with her own hands, she poured her life into the mould
+Ted had desired for it; it was thus she thrust from her all that did
+not pertain to her husband and her child and her home.  Yet between Ted
+and herself not a word about it passed.  He never reproached her for
+what her writing had so nearly cost them; he never asked her to give it
+up; he never even inquired as to whether she were still pursuing it.
+He simply stood aloof from that element in her, with what queer mixture
+of disapproval and pride and magnanimity she could but guess.
+
+They continued to be happy together, the happier as the months passed
+and Ted saw her more and more his and Eric's.  In the beginning he had
+probably thought that, after the shock of Eric's peril receded, Sheila
+would try to write again; that fear must have lurked behind his
+non-committal silence; but time gave him his security about it.  Sheila
+never told him of the compact of that anguished night, but gradually he
+became as sure that she had given up her talent forever as if he had
+heard her pledge.  "Little wife!" he often called her, "Little mother!"
+And always it was as if he said to her, "What other name could be half
+so sweet?"
+
+And she told herself that he was right.  Never had there been a better
+husband.  And to be loved by a man like that, a man clean and fine and
+kind; to be the mother of such a man's child, she was very certain was
+worth more to a woman than any other honors or fulfillments which life
+could bring her.  She had known that always, even when she first
+discovered--so bitterly!--that Ted was not in sympathy with her gift
+and her ambitions; and she knew it more surely as time went on.  There
+were moments when she wished ardently that the sympathy between them
+had been more absolute; when she thought that, happy as she was, she
+would have been happier if their tastes had gone hand-in-hand like
+their hearts.  But there was never a time when she would have exchanged
+Ted for any other man, or when she felt it possible to have done
+without him.  There are women who, married, feed their discontents with
+visions of what life could have been in freedom or with some other man
+than they have chosen.  Sheila was not of this sort.  Having crossed
+the threshold of marriage, she did not look behind her at the
+alluring--and elusive--road of might-have-been.
+
+She hoped, now, for other children.  With this utter surrender of
+herself to the woman's life, there came to her the longing for many
+children, for all her arms could hold.  The sum of that creative force
+which, under different circumstances, would have flowed into her work,
+all its denied passion and vitality, was transmuted into the instinct
+of motherhood.  Because of her creative gift, there was literally more
+life within her, more life to bestow, and so, the channel of artistic
+expression being closed to her, she yearned to spend it all upon
+maternity; to have, indeed, as many children as her arms could hold.
+
+Had these desired children come to her, peace might have been hers
+finally and entirely.  But the desire was not granted.  Eric grew out
+of his babyhood to a fine, sturdy boyhood, and was still the only
+child.  And now Sheila, a woman of thirty and ten years married, began
+to feel again, and more strongly than ever in her life, the urge of her
+gift, the unrest of dreams stifled, thwarted, but never destroyed.
+
+She had made a compact with God, and she continued to keep it; but more
+and more hunger stared out of her eyes and a nervous restlessness
+betrayed itself in her manner.  She was happy, but she was not
+satisfied.  Something clamored in her unappeased.
+
+If she had lived in a large city, there would at least have been food,
+if not activity, for that clamoring, aching thing within her.  There
+would have been pictures and music and plays to lift her, at times,
+into the world of poetic beauty for which she longed.  But Shadyville
+could offer nothing to one of her mental quality; as a girl she had
+found diversion in its social gaiety, but as a matron, the mother of a
+nine-year-old son, even the social life of the town was restricted for
+her to card-parties and the doubtful amusement of chaperonage.
+
+For in Shadyville, the young married people early abdicated in favor of
+those still younger, those still seeking mates.  Society was, in fact,
+merely a means of finding one's mate, so primitive had the little town
+remained; companionship between men and women, save as an opportunity
+for the eternal quest, was unknown.  Wives and mothers sat placidly, or
+wearily, against the walls at dances, watching the game of man and
+maid, and slaked their thirst for entertainment, for stimulating
+comradeship, at the afternoon teas and bridge parties of their own sex.
+Now and then a reading club or a study class was organized, a naļve
+effort toward an understanding of things which Shadyville vaguely
+perceived to be of importance beyond its boundaries; and always the
+class or club died of insufficient nourishment.  Within thirty miles of
+a large town, the life of Shadyville remained uncorrupted--and
+unimproved; a healthy, simple, joyous affair of the love-quest in
+youth; a healthy, simple, and usually contented, matter of home-making
+and child-rearing later.  Sheila, having stepped over into the second
+stage with her marriage, was not supposed to feel any longings which
+her domestic existence could not satisfy; and feeling them, in defiance
+of Shadyville's standards and traditions, she could but suppress and
+starve them.
+
+"Let me go down to the office every day and help you," she suggested to
+Ted finally, "I used to help you--before we were married."
+
+But Ted, whose limited ambitions had realized themselves and whose work
+had now settled into a comfortable routine for which he was more than
+capable, evinced no enthusiasm for the project.  She had helped him; he
+had never forgotten nor disparaged that.  But he did not need or want
+her at the Star office now, and he did need and want her in his home.
+
+"You have enough to do as it is--with Eric and the house," he said.
+
+"But, Ted, I _haven't_ enough to do," she insisted.  "There's nothing
+for me really to do in the house.  I overlook everything, but that
+doesn't occupy all my time.  And with Eric at school--don't you see, my
+dear, that it's something to do I need?  Don't you see how--how
+restless I am?"
+
+"We ought to have more children!" he exclaimed wistfully.
+
+"Yes," she agreed, "yes, we ought to have more children.  But if they
+do not come--?"  And she stared before her, her hands lying empty and
+listless in her lap.  "If they do not come--?" she repeated presently.
+And now she turned her brooding eyes to his face and a purpose gathered
+and concentrated in them.  "I wonder if you could understand--" she
+began.
+
+But he cut into the sentence: "I must hurry back to the office.  I take
+too much time for lunch.  Don't get discontented, little girl.  I'll
+take you down to Louisville for the horse show next week.  We'll have a
+bully spree.  That's what you need."  And he went off whistling
+blithely, sure that he had solved the problem of Sheila's "moods"--as
+he always called any symptom of depression in her.
+
+Sheila watched him go, smiling.  "Of course he wouldn't have
+understood," she said to herself.  "And how I would have bothered him
+if I'd tried to analyze myself for him--poor dear!"  But the
+reflection, amused, yet wholly tender, did not end her unrest, her
+perplexity.
+
+After a futile attempt to interest herself in duties about the house,
+she set out for a walk, hoping to capture something of the outdoor
+peace.  It was October, always an exhilarating month in Kentucky, with
+its crisp air and its flaming banners of red and gold, and soon her
+blood was stirred and her heart lightened, and she was swinging along
+at a brisk pace.  She had started in the direction of her grandmother's
+house, but suddenly she wheeled about and took to another street.
+
+Never since Eric's illness had her grandmother spoken to her of her
+writing, and she had been glad of the silence.  It seemed to her that
+if they talked at all, they who had been so close, so much would have
+to be said; she could not conceive of a reserve in anything which she
+undertook to discuss with Mrs. Caldwell at all.  Ted's views on the
+duty of a wife and mother would therefore have to be told with the
+rest, and she did not want to tell them.  Her grandmother would have
+little patience with them, she was sure.  As a devoted husband, most of
+all as the father of Sheila's child, Ted seemed to have won a secure
+place in Mrs. Caldwell's affection at last, and Sheila, who had clearly
+seen Mrs. Caldwell's original reluctance to the marriage, had no
+intention of jeopardizing that place now.  Understanding, sympathy,
+advice would have meant much to her, but she could not take them at
+Ted's expense.
+
+So she walked on, away from her grandmother's house; onward until she
+left the town behind her and found herself upon the road leading to
+Louisville.  Just ahead of her, she saw, then, a familiar figure
+trudging along in leisurely fashion, the figure of Peter Burnett.
+
+"Peter!" she hailed joyously.  And as he hastened back to her, her
+heart lifted buoyantly; her somber mood departed.  She did not say to
+herself, "_Here_ is understanding," but she felt it.  A sudden warmth
+possessed her, and that other self of hers, so long banished--the
+Other-Sheila of dreams and visions--suddenly looked out of her eyes.
+
+"A constitutional?" inquired Peter.  And then, to her nod, "May I go
+with you?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Peter, do!  Let's have a good old-time talk!  Let's play I'm
+young again!"
+
+Peter grimaced: "You?  You're still a child!  But _I_--!  It's a
+sensitive subject with me nowadays--that of youth."
+
+"It needn't be," laughed Sheila.  "You've discovered the fountain of
+eternal youth."
+
+And indeed, Peter at forty-six had changed curiously little from the
+Peter of twenty-eight.  Still slender and of an indolent grace, his
+aspect of youth had wonderfully persisted.  And having passed his life
+far more in contemplation than in struggle, his face matched his figure
+with a freshness rare to middle years.  He was, it must be admitted, a
+convincing argument in favor of laziness--except for the expression of
+his eyes; they had something of the look of Sheila's; their gaze seemed
+turned inward upon a tragedy of unfulfillment.  And unfulfilled, in
+very truth, was all the promise of Peter's attainments; of his
+exceptional parts.  He was still teaching rhetoric to little girls at
+the Shadyville Seminary, and, because he had not married, he was still
+leading cotillions.  He read his Theocritus as of old; he called often
+upon Mrs. Caldwell; sometimes he had an accidental meeting with Sheila,
+such as this.  So his years had passed; too smoothly to age him; too
+barrenly to content or enrich him in any sense.  No one appeared to see
+his pathos, but pathos was there.
+
+He fell into step with Sheila and they tramped onward together in the
+cool, bright air, talking with the happy fluency which they always had
+for each other.  And though Sheila said nothing of her problem, her
+restlessness, she felt all the while the comfort of her companion's
+understanding sympathy--for anything that she might choose to tell him.
+
+The road rose before them, a gradual, steady ascent; they reached its
+crest just as the sun grew low and vivid.  A glow was upon the autumn
+fields on either hand; tranquility and silence seemed to be everywhere;
+tranquility and silence except for a weird crooning that now floated to
+them, a crooning indescribably mournful.  And then they espied,
+crouching down at the roadside and almost at their elbows, a creature
+as weird and mournful as the sound.
+
+"Crazy Lisbeth," whispered Sheila.
+
+Lisbeth it was, Lisbeth grown old and more pitiful than ever; a ragged,
+unkempt being--yet strangely lifted above the sordidness of her rags
+and her beggar's life by her insanity.  Long ago she had ceased to work
+at all, her poor brain having become incapable of any continuous
+effort, however simple.  But she had resisted the obvious havens of
+asylum and almshouse, and contrived to live on in liberty by aid of the
+precarious charity of those who had once employed her.  She made her
+home in any deserted hovel that she could seize upon, going from one to
+another in a sad progress of destitution.  And whenever the days were
+fine, she still roamed the countryside, a desire upon her that would
+not let her rest, though her memory of her dead husband and child was
+now so vague and blurred that she no longer consciously sought them.
+To-day the desire that so tormented her was allayed.  For she held
+something in her arms, something that she rocked gently as she crooned.
+
+Sheila went a step nearer, but Lisbeth did not look up or appear aware
+of her presence.  She was not aware of anything in the world but the
+treasure within her arms.  Watching, Sheila's eyes filled with quick
+tears and her throat ached with a pity almost unbearable.  For the
+thing in Lisbeth's arms was a battered doll, and the crooning was a
+lullaby.
+
+Very softly Sheila turned to Peter.  "Let us go back," she said.  "She
+hasn't seen us--she mustn't see us.  We must not wake her from her
+dream.  It's a doll she's rocking, and she's dreaming--she's dreaming
+it's a child."
+
+They started back without speaking, hushed and saddened by what they
+had seen of another's tragedy; and as they went, Sheila was thinking of
+the occasion in her childhood when she had pretended to be Lisbeth's
+little daughter.  It had happened so long ago, but in all the years
+since then Lisbeth had been intent on the one dream, the one hope--that
+of motherhood.  All definite remembrance of the child she had borne and
+lost was gone from her clouded brain, but the instinct and desire of
+motherhood had remained; it had been life to her.  Her mind, flickering
+like a will-o'-the-wisp from one uncompleted thought to another, had
+been steadfast enough in that; her heart, detached from every human
+tie, had never faltered in its impulse of maternity.  The tears filled
+Sheila's eyes again, filled and overflowed so that Peter gave an
+exclamation of concern and dismay.
+
+"Poor Lisbeth!" she murmured.  "Poor thing!  And I who have my child am
+discontented.  What is the matter with me?"
+
+It was the question she had put to Ted long ago--after that other
+episode of Lisbeth--and he had been as bewildered as she.  But there
+was no bewilderment in the glance that met hers now.  Nevertheless,
+Peter did not answer her directly.  But after awhile he said musingly:
+
+"A bird's wings may be clipped, but its heart can't be changed.
+Always--always--it is mad to fly!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Mrs. Caldwell had grown very fragile that autumn; not as if she were
+ill, but rather as if she were gradually and gently relaxing her hold
+on life.  As yet no one but Peter had realized the change in her, but
+to him it was sadly evident, and he visited her oftener than ever,
+taking all he could of a friendship that would soon be his no longer.
+He had stopped to see her on his way home from the seminary, the day
+after his walk with Sheila, and it was upon Sheila that their talk
+finally turned.
+
+"I had a stroll with her yesterday afternoon," Peter remarked.  "It's
+rare luck for me to get any of her time nowadays.  Marriage swallows
+women terribly, doesn't it?"
+
+"Sheila's marriage has certainly swallowed her," admitted Mrs.
+Caldwell.  "I'm fond of Ted--really very fond of him, in fact--but I've
+always expected marriage to swallow his wife.  He's that sort of man."
+
+"You think he demands so much of her then?  I'd felt that it was the
+boy who stood between Sheila and all her old life--her old self."
+
+"Ah, but isn't that just the way Ted has her so utterly--through the
+boy?"
+
+Peter shook his head: "There's something I don't understand.  I
+understand _her_--to the soul!  But there's something in her life I
+don't understand.  I'm sure Ted's good to her.  I'm sure they love each
+other.  But she's not satisfied, Mrs. Caldwell.  The trouble is that
+she wants to write--and she doesn't.  I can't understand why she
+doesn't.  When Eric was a baby, it was natural enough that she should
+give up everything for him; but now it's unreasonable, it's absurd,
+that she doesn't take up her work again.  And I can't tell her so--well
+as I know the value of the gift she's wasting.  She isn't frank with
+me.  I can only talk to her about the matter in metaphors."
+
+"She isn't frank with me either, Peter.  But I'm a little more informed
+about the situation than you are.  Sheila was writing a story when
+Eric's nurse, taking advantage of not being overlooked, exposed him to
+scarlet fever.  That, I'm confident, is somehow responsible for
+Sheila's giving up her work."
+
+Peter's face flushed darkly: "Do you think Ted reproached her for that?
+Do you think he blamed her?"
+
+"No--I'm sure he didn't.  He was terribly, terribly sorry for her.  Ted
+is capable of generosity at times, Peter--I'm not fond of him for
+nothing!--and he was generous then.  But of course Sheila reproached
+herself.  I can imagine what she suffered, and how bitterly she
+censured herself.  I can imagine, too, that she's been atoning ever
+since.  It would be so like her to atone with her whole life for a
+mistake, an accident.  If she had married another man--it wouldn't have
+happened."
+
+"The mistake, the accident, wouldn't have happened?"
+
+"Ah, that might have happened in any case.  I meant the atonement."
+
+"But," objected Peter, "you said Ted did not blame her.  How, then,
+could he be responsible?"
+
+"He could let the atonement go on!  He isn't a subtle person, but I
+believe he's divined that, and let it continue.  I knew, before Sheila
+married him, that he would not care for her art.  I knew that he would
+resent any vital interest she might have outside of her marriage.  And
+knowing this, I've concluded that when her conscience worked along the
+line of his own wishes, it was too much for him; he simply couldn't
+help taking the advantage circumstances had offered him."
+
+"Yet you say he is capable of generosity!"
+
+"Capable of generosity _at times_, Peter.  And so he is.  Most of us
+have our generosities and our meannesses.  Ted's like the rest of us in
+both respects.  The real trouble is that he's the wrong man for Sheila.
+If she had married you, the same accident might have happened, but the
+atonement wouldn't.  For _you_ would have _wanted_ her to write; you
+would have made her feel it wrong _not_ to write.  It's not that you're
+a better man than Ted, either; it's that you're a better man for
+Sheila.  You ought to have married her, my dear.  I meant you to marry
+her!"
+
+Peter rose hastily from his chair and walked to the window, standing
+there with his back to Mrs. Caldwell.  Very rigidly he stood, his hands
+at his side, tightly closed.  When he finally turned again into the
+room, his face was white.
+
+"Why do you tell me that now--now that it's too late?" he asked.  And
+his voice shook with the question.
+
+At something in that white face of his, at something in his unsteady
+voice, Mrs. Caldwell grew very gentle: "Because I'm a blundering old
+woman, Peter dear.  But, since I have blundered, let us talk frankly.
+I did intend you to marry Sheila.  I plotted and planned for it from
+the time she was a little girl in your rhetoric class.  I believed that
+in a marriage with you lay her chance to be both a happy and a
+wonderful woman.  And then--Ted married her instead!  But there's still
+something you can do for her.  You can watch over her when I'm gone,
+Peter.  You can put out a saving hand now and then, if you see she
+needs it.  When I'm dead--and that will be soon, my dear--you'll be the
+only person in the world who understands her.  If I can feel that
+you'll always be there ready to help her, I can die in peace.  Bottled
+up genius is a dangerous thing.  Sometimes I am afraid for Sheila!  But
+if you'll promise to watch over her for me, I can die with my heart at
+rest."
+
+"There is nothing I would not do for you or for her!" he said.
+
+"I know that, Peter.  What wonder that I had my dreams about you?"
+
+"They were dreams, just dreams," he responded, and now he was speaking
+more easily.  "I wasn't the right man for Sheila after all.  If I had
+been, she would have realized it; she wouldn't have married some one
+else."
+
+"How could she realize it--at twenty?  And she was barely twenty when
+she married.  Peter, there's a moment in a girl's life when,
+consciously or not, her whole being, soul and body, cries out for love.
+And if a man is at hand then--any presentable man--to answer, '_I_ am
+love,' she believes him.  That moment came to Sheila--and Ted was
+there!"
+
+"Oh," cried Peter, "Oh, surely there was more to it than that!  Surely
+there was real love!"  And when she did not answer, he repeated
+earnestly, "Surely there was real love!"
+
+"You plead for Ted?" asked Mrs. Caldwell with a touch of irony.
+
+"I plead for her.  Ted doesn't matter, and I don't matter.  But
+_Sheila_--Oh, I can't bear that she should have only a second-rate
+thing, an imitation.  I can't bear that."
+
+"She thinks it's real love she feels for Ted.  And as long as she
+thinks so, Peter, she'll be happy.  What we have to do for her--what
+you have to do for her when I'm gone--is to keep her thinking that.  It
+isn't her baffled gift I worry about; it's the discontent her gift may
+rouse in her; the awful _vision_ it may bring her.  I see so clearly
+how she was married--and she must _never_ see!  If ever you find her
+beginning to see, you must blindfold her somehow.  I've often thought
+that women should be born blind--or that their eyes should be bandaged
+at birth."
+
+"Horrible!" exclaimed Peter.
+
+"No--_kind_!  All the creatures of our love would be beautiful then;
+all the circumstances of our little destinies noble and splendid.  We'd
+create them so in our own minds, and disillusionment could never touch
+us."
+
+"It's the truth we need, men and women," insisted Peter.
+
+"There's nothing so tragic as the truth--when it comes too late," said
+Mrs. Caldwell sadly.  "Your grandfather and I found out that.  He was
+already married, and I was on the eve of my wedding when--it happened.
+We might have run away together; ours was a real passion, Peter.  But
+people didn't do that sort of thing so readily in our young days.  They
+thought less of their individual rights then, and more of honor.  It
+seemed to us that it was sin enough ever to have realized what we felt;
+ever to have acknowledged it.  So we went on with our obligations, your
+grandfather and I.  He was a good husband, and I was a good wife.  Our
+lives were cast in pleasant lines, with dear, kindly companions, and we
+would have been happy if--if I hadn't, in a fatal hour, seen his heart
+and reflected it for him in my own eyes.  We would have been happy if I
+had been blindfolded!  As it was, we'd seen the truth, and to accept
+less was tragedy for us."
+
+"You were both free at last," said Peter.  "Why didn't you--Oh, why
+_didn't_ you--take what was left to you?"
+
+"My dear, we were already old.  Romance was still in our hearts, but we
+hadn't the courage to take it, publicly, into our lives.  We had felt a
+great love, and been brave enough to deny it.  But when we could have
+satisfied it honorably--we were afraid of the change in our lives; we
+were afraid of our children, of your father and Sheila's; we were even
+afraid of what the town would say!  In the beginning we had striven not
+to dare.  In the end we could not dare.  It is sad that we should be
+like that, isn't it, Peter?  It's sad that as the strength of our youth
+goes from us, the valor of our love should go too.  But it is so, it is
+so for all of us, my dear.  The day before your grandfather died,
+something flamed up in us again.  The courage of new life came to him,
+and he made me promise to marry him the next day.  But the next day he
+was--dead!"
+
+She fell silent, her eyes fixed broodingly upon the fire, eyes that
+looked strangely young.  Peter, silent too, was remembering that day
+before his grandfather's death; remembering Mrs. Caldwell's presence in
+the house, and the indescribable sense of some other presence also.  He
+had felt it so strongly, that other presence, that the whole house had
+seemed to him to be pervaded and thrilled by it.  His father was living
+then, and they two had spent the afternoon in the library, while Mrs.
+Caldwell had sat with his grandfather in the room above.  He had said
+to his father--he recalled it quite clearly--"I feel
+something--_something_--in the very air."  And his father had appeared
+startled and had replied, "Perhaps death is in the air."  But Peter
+knew now that it had not been death he had felt; that it had not been
+death that had filled the air as if with rushing wings and shooting
+stars and invisible, ineffable glories.  It had not been death; it had
+been love.  And glancing at Mrs. Caldwell's musing eyes, something like
+envy came into his own.  He went to her, knelt, and kissed her thin old
+hand.
+
+"After all, you _had_ love," he murmured.  And then, "I wish you had
+been my grandmother.  I _wish_ you had."
+
+"Oh, Peter!" she cried.  "Oh, Peter!  Peter!"  And suddenly her arms
+were around his neck.
+
+As she clung to him, her tears on his face and her heart's secret in
+his hands, he almost told her; he almost said what he had resolved
+never to say.  And yet he did not.
+
+"He's never loved her," concluded Mrs. Caldwell when he had gone.
+"There was a moment when he looked as if--but he's never loved Sheila.
+If he'd loved her--ever--he would have told me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Had Mrs. Caldwell seen Peter pacing the floor of his little hotel room
+that night, she would have been less certain that he did not love
+Sheila.  She had said to him, "There's nothing so tragic as the
+truth--when it comes too late!"  And it was this tragedy with which
+Peter grappled now.
+
+He had not known that he loved Sheila until Mrs. Caldwell told him that
+he should have married her; but those words had been for him a
+revelation; an illumination of the last ten years and more.  Suddenly
+he saw, as if a searchlight had been flung upon them, the innermost,
+secret depths of his own heart--saw them filled with the image of
+another man's wife.  So swiftly, so entirely without warning had
+self-knowledge dawned upon him that the cry had been wrung from him,
+"Why do you tell me this now--when it is too late?"  But after the one
+betraying exclamation, he had put all his strength into the attempt to
+conceal his discovery.  Mrs. Caldwell had spoken of the honor of her
+generation as of a thing that had not survived, in its purity, to a
+later one.  Yet Peter's sense of honor was too scrupulous to permit him
+the confession to anyone that he loved another's wife.  To the single
+end of concealment he had set himself through the rest of that
+interview.  He had gone through it as through some nerve-racking
+nightmare, struggling for self-control as one struggles for safety in
+dreams of horrid peril.
+
+He must not admit that he loved Sheila!  He must not admit that he
+loved her!  That was what he had told himself over and over, fighting
+all the while for the mastery of his face, his voice, lest they
+proclaim what his lips did not utter.
+
+Yet in spite of the struggle, in spite of the sense of awful calamity,
+of absolute wreckage, that had descended upon him, he had been keenly,
+piteously conscious of every word that Mrs. Caldwell had said; and he
+had realized fully the impossibility and the irony of the task she had
+imposed upon him.
+
+Having failed to marry Sheila himself, he must now undertake to keep
+her in love with the man who had married her!  This was all which was
+required of him; this was _all_!  His devotion to Mrs. Caldwell had not
+faltered; but now, facing his tragedy alone and in the freedom to
+suffer, he felt a great bitterness toward his old friend for her
+request.  It seemed to him incredibly stupid that she should think for
+an instant that he, an unmarried man, could assume the post of guardian
+over a wife's love for her husband.  It implied, in the first place, an
+intimacy which Sheila was far too fine-grained to permit; for however
+confidential she might become on the subject of her work, she would
+never be confidential with him in regard to Ted.  Whatever he might
+perceive, she would never give him the opportunity to say to her, "I
+think that your affection for your husband is waning.  Let us put fresh
+fuel on the fire."
+
+It implied, too, that request of Mrs. Caldwell's, a sharing of Sheila's
+life which Shadyville would never tolerate; which his own awakened
+heart could not tolerate.  He could not be much with Sheila henceforth.
+For once, Shadyville's narrow restrictions would be right.
+
+So, he told himself, Mrs. Caldwell had been stupid.
+And--unconsciously, of course--she had been cruel.
+
+And yet--she was leaving Sheila, leaving her to an essentially alien
+companion.  What wonder that, in her passionate solicitude, she had
+reached out to the one person whose understanding sympathy she could
+count upon?  What wonder that, however unpractically, she had made an
+appeal to one whose heart she had divined better than she knew?  What
+wonder, even, that he had made her a sort of promise?  "There is
+nothing I would not do for you or Sheila!" he had said to her; and that
+was true.  There was nothing he would not do for them--if he could.
+Only--Ted himself must keep what was his own!  He had been man enough
+to win Sheila; now he must keep her!
+
+Ted had been man enough to win her; and he, Peter, had not been!  That
+was what he realized now--with measureless self-scorn.  _He_ had not
+even been man enough to know that he loved her; much less man enough to
+make her his.  And now, because he could not make her his, his life was
+charred to ashes--but his soul was an anguished, unquenchable flame.
+He had long thought that he knew the worst of himself; his
+discreditable indolence; his reluctance for effort and conquest; his
+insufficient courage to follow his emotions into poverty; and that
+negligible fineness of his which had held him back from advantages that
+he could not repay with genuine emotion.  He had known all that of
+himself, calling it his worst, and feeling a certain pride in it, too,
+as in a failure that was of more delicate fiber than the successes of
+others.  But he had never really known the worst of himself until now.
+For the worst of him was that he had not recognized the true love of
+his life when it came to him.  Those early fancies of his for girls
+whom he deemed too poor to marry--what had they been but fancies
+indeed?  He had despised himself once or twice for not committing
+himself, but what was the offense of failing a mere fancy compared to
+the offense of not recognizing the one true love when it was in his
+life?  He would have had courage enough to follow it to the world's
+end, in sharpest poverty and hardship, but he had so sheltered himself
+from any mischance in love that he had not known love when it came.
+Blind fool that he was, he had not known it when it came!
+
+Even now he could not tell just when it had come.  Looking back along
+the years, it seemed to him to have been there always, for every memory
+of Sheila, since her little girlhood, took him by the throat.
+
+He saw her as he--and Ted!--had seen her one April day when she was but
+twelve years old; a slender, black-haired, dreaming-eyed child, lying
+upon the pale, spring grass and looking up into the flowering
+cherry-tree branches above her head; a child who was herself an
+embodied poem, so akin she was to all of April's magic, to the spring's
+lovely miracles.  He saw her, too, in his class-room, eager, earnest,
+exquisitely responsive to every perception, every thought of his own; a
+little girl while he was already a man, and yet his comrade, his
+comrade in every phase of life had he but discerned and willed it!  He
+saw her as a young girl, with her pure eyes and her generous mouth and
+her sweet, slender throat; a being still untouched by life, but
+beautifully ready, touchingly desirous for life's shaping hands.  And
+he saw her as she had been yesterday, walking by his side, the woman at
+last--yet strangely immature, incomplete.  He had thought her immature
+and incomplete because she had not developed her gift.  Now there came
+to him another thought--bred of all those flashing pictures of her in
+which she seemed so much his own--the thought that she was incomplete
+because she had not really loved.
+
+It was impossible that she should really love Ted; Ted who could give
+neither comprehension nor response to the greater part of her nature.
+It was impossible!  He had felt that at the time of her marriage; he
+remembered now how resentfully!  He had felt it when Mrs. Caldwell had
+shown him--only too convincingly--how that marriage had occurred.  He
+had cried out to Mrs. Caldwell that Sheila must have loved Ted, but he
+had realized, then, that she had not.  And he realized it now.  It had
+been love's hour with her, but it had not been love.  It had not been
+love because he himself, who could have given her such a love as she
+needed, who could have compelled such a love from her, had failed her.
+Back and forth he paced in his little room; a creature caged, not by
+mere walls, but by an irreparable mistake; a creature agonized and
+helpless.  For it was too late for this vision of utter truth now.  His
+life was spoiled--and hers!
+
+Yes, he had spoiled her life!  For a little while, he forgot his own
+disaster in contemplating hers.  He had said that he was not the right
+man for her; but with all his soul and all his brain and all his blood,
+he knew that he was the right man for her.  Throughout her whole life
+she had turned to him with that simple trust which is bred of love, or
+at least of potential love, alone.  She had said to him once--long
+ago--with an innocent and tender wonder, "There is nothing I cannot
+tell you, Peter--nothing!"  And that had been true--until Ted had lured
+her into bondage.  While she had been free, there had not been a door
+in her heart or her spirit that would not have opened at his touch.
+She had been his--his for the taking!  And he had not taken her.
+
+He had left her to Ted; to Ted for whom so many doors of her nature
+must be closed forever.  He had left her to that most terrible
+loneliness of all--loneliness in a shared life.  The thoughts that she
+could not speak to Ted--how they must beat about in the prison of her
+mind; how they must cry for release, for answer!  He seemed to feel
+them against his own temples, those unuttered thoughts that were
+Sheila's very self; he seemed to feel their ache, their hunger.
+Nothing would be born of those thoughts now; that gift of expression
+which had been a part of Sheila's soul would go barren to the grave.
+This was one of the wrongs he had done her--but it was not the worst.
+
+For the worst that had befallen her through him, he told himself, was
+not that her gift had missed expression, but that she herself had
+missed the blinding glory of true love.
+
+She was immature, she was undeveloped, because he had not made her his.
+And he wanted to make her his.  Oh, my God, he wanted to make her his!
+His life was charred to ashes, but his soul was the quivering,
+torturing flame of his passion.  It would not be quenched; it would
+not, in the least, be stilled; it drove him about the shabby little
+room as if it were literally a flame from which he must try to
+escape--though he knew he could not.
+
+He had broken his heart over the disaster to Sheila's life, but as the
+night advanced and his passion flared the fiercer in hours securely
+dark and secret, self rose up within him and shrieked and cursed over
+his own disaster.
+
+He wanted her!  He was forty-six years old; not too old to love, but
+far, far too old to love calmly.  The desires of half a lifetime were
+in him, desires that had lain low and fed upon his years until, in
+their accumulated strength, they were terrible--wild beasts that tore
+him, fires that burned him to the bone.  And they were strangely
+compounded of instincts evil and lawless--when felt for another man's
+wife--and longings wholly innocent and sweet.
+
+For the first time he longed for a home.  He looked about his tiny,
+dingy room with a feeling of desolation, seeing in his mind so
+different a place--a home with her.  He longed for simple, innocent
+things--her face across the table from him at his meals; her little
+possessions scattered about with his; the sound of her step in the
+rooms around him.  And he longed to reach out in the night and touch
+her; he longed to reach out in the night and take her into his arms.
+He wanted--and now soul and flesh merged in one flame--he wanted her to
+bear him a child.
+
+Back and forth he paced, his nails digging into his palms, his teeth
+cutting his lips, driven by the flame that could never be extinguished,
+never be satisfied.  And all the while, he pictured her in his arms; he
+pictured her with his child at her breast.
+
+Then, suddenly--and quite as plainly as if he were in the room--he saw
+_Ted's_ child, and he staggered toward a chair and fell, sobbing, into
+it.
+
+How long those horrible sobs shook him he did not know.  He felt
+himself baffled, beaten, inconceivably tortured.  He watched the gray
+morning steal into the room as one who has kept a death vigil beside
+his best-loved watches it.  A new day had come, but there was no hope
+in it for him.  There was no hope for him--though his days should be
+ever so many.
+
+He fell asleep at last, sitting there in his uncomfortable chair, with
+the cold light of the dawn creeping over his haggard face, and he
+dreamed that Ted came into the room and said, "Sheila needs you.  She
+needs you to keep alive her love for me."  And in the dream, he
+answered, as he had really answered Mrs. Caldwell the day before,
+"There is nothing I would not do for her."  So vivid was all this that
+when he opened his eyes and found Ted actually in the room, he was not
+in the least surprised.
+
+"You left your door unlocked," Ted explained apologetically, "and I
+came on in.  Mrs. Caldwell died in the night--and Sheila's gone to
+pieces.  She's been asking for you.  Would you mind going to her for a
+bit?"
+
+"There's nothing I would not do for her!" replied Peter, in the words
+of his dream.  And for an instant he thought he still dreamed.
+
+"That's awfully good of you.  You look done up, Burnett.  But if you're
+equal to it, I'll be grateful to you."
+
+As he gazed at Peter, whose face was gray still, though the morning
+light was now golden, Ted added to himself, "Poor chap!  He's growing
+old."  To him it would have been incredible that Peter's scars had been
+won in youth's own great battle--the battle with love.  A certain
+complacency stole warmly through him then, ruddy and robust as he knew
+himself to be, a complacency that led him to lay a kindly, solicitous
+hand on the older man's shoulder; and so intent he was upon his
+self-satisfied kindliness that he did not see Peter wince at the touch.
+
+"You do look done up, Burnett.  Maybe I ought not to ask you----"
+
+But Peter cut him short.  "I'd do anything for Sheila," he repeated.
+
+After all, this was left to him, Peter reflected; it was left to him to
+do things for Sheila.  And perhaps he would find nothing she needed of
+him impossible.  The love that had been so dark with the dark and
+secret hours could have its white vision, too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Peter had felt that he could not be much with Sheila henceforth; that
+neither his own heart nor conventional Shadyville's standards would
+permit it.  But Sheila herself ordained otherwise, and under the
+circumstances of her bereavement, Peter could but obey her.
+
+Never had Sheila been so lonely as in the weeks immediately following
+Mrs. Caldwell's death.  Whatever reserves of speech had existed between
+the two in these latter years, there had been no reserve of feeling, of
+comprehension.  Close friends they had always been; and if Sheila was
+alone in a shared life, so far as her marriage was concerned, she had
+had a satisfying refuge in her grandmother's sympathetic companionship.
+Now, with that companionship lost to her, she began to feel, as she had
+never done before, the limitations of her marriage.  Her nervous
+restlessness increased and sharpened to a positive hunger which Ted's
+affection and compassion were powerless to alleviate.  In her loss and
+sorrow he could do nothing for her, earnestly as he tried.  It was as
+if he could not reach her, and she realized it with amazement.  If he
+had not compelled from her the greatest passion of which she was
+capable, he had certainly won love of a kind from her, love warm and
+sincere, and their life together had bound her to him with such ties of
+loyalty and habit and common experience, with such dear memories of
+young tenderness and joy, that she had never doubted the completeness
+of their union.  That he could not reach her now, that he could bring
+no peace to her in her trouble, seemed to her unexplainable--until she
+recalled the fact that he and Mrs. Caldwell, though fond of each other,
+had not been really near each other in spirit.  Theirs had been a
+pleasant, light affection, an amiable, surface relation, bred of the
+accident of their connection rather than of any genuine attraction
+between them.  Remembering this, Sheila assured herself of its being
+the reason that Ted could not comfort her for Mrs. Caldwell's death.
+There was so much in her grandmother that he had never seen, so much of
+which he could not speak at all.
+
+Peter, on the other hand, had been almost as dear to her grandmother as
+she herself had been--almost as dear and quite as near.  He had a
+thousand sweet and intimate memories of Mrs. Caldwell, and he suffered,
+in the loss of her, a grief akin to Sheila's own.  So to Peter she
+turned.  With the perfect unconsciousness of self that a child might
+have shown, she made her demands upon him, upon his pity, upon his
+time; and if he did not come often to see her, she sent for him.
+
+She was really strangely unworldly, and in this renewed comradeship
+with her old friend, she saw nothing for anyone to criticize.  Neither
+did she recognize in it any danger for Peter or herself.  Peter had
+always been there in her life, an accepted and unexciting fact.  She
+did not allow for change in him or herself in the ten years of her
+marriage, years during which they had met hut seldom and casually.  She
+had simply resumed the way of her girlhood, her childhood, with him,
+never considering that it might now be surcharged with peril for them;
+never for an instant fearing that she might some day find herself
+unable to do without him.  She needed him; he was at hand; and she
+demanded fulfillment of her need.  He brought her the consolation that
+Ted could not bring her; he gave her aching heart peace.  Repeatedly he
+displayed a disposition to efface himself, after the first days of her
+mourning were over, but she would not have it so.  In her innocence she
+still insisted on his frequent presence, and was sometimes puzzled and
+hurt that he evinced so little gladness in being with her.  That he had
+the look of one harassed almost beyond endurance, she did finally
+perceive, but she understood it not at all, and at last dismissed it
+from her mind as something outside her province.  Men had worries,
+worries about money and trivial things like that, she reflected.  Peter
+was probably bothered about something of the sort, something that did
+not greatly matter after all.  A real trouble he would have brought to
+her; of that she was sure.
+
+So the winter passed in a close companionship between them, and it was
+to Peter's honor that she knew neither her own heart nor his at the end
+of it.
+
+Ted it was, and not Peter, who made the situation impossible of
+continuance.  Ted it was who plucked from it, at least for Sheila, its
+concealing innocence.  He had been cordial to Peter; at first he had
+even been grateful to him, seeing Sheila comforted by him.  But after a
+time he grew tired of Peter's face at his dinner table two or three
+times a week; he wearied of finding Peter in his little sitting-room
+whenever he came home particularly early; he sickened, with a sudden
+and profound distaste, of having Peter drawn into all the intimate
+concerns and happenings of his own and Sheila's life.  Not for a moment
+did he suspect Sheila of any sentimental inclinations toward Peter, for
+he fully appreciated and trusted her fidelity.  But he thought her
+behavior foolish and imprudent, and in spite of his trust in her, he
+_was_ jealous of this friendship which so absorbed and satisfied her.
+Why should she require a man's friendship at all?  Why should she
+require anyone but himself and Eric?  And having once questioned thus,
+his patience speedily gave way, and a climax ensued.
+
+"Sheila," he said to her one day, a day when he had come home to
+discover Peter reading Maeterlinck to her, "Sheila, why on earth do you
+have Burnett here so much?"
+
+"Because he's my friend--my dear old friend," answered Sheila, her eyes
+clear with the surprise of a clean conscience.
+
+"Wouldn't a woman friend do as well?"  Ted was trying to hold himself
+in check, but something in his words or his tone made Sheila stare, and
+he repeated, with a touch of asperity, "Wouldn't a woman friend do as
+well?"
+
+"The only woman friend I have whom I really care for is Charlotte--and
+she won't be here until April."
+
+"Then you'd better wait for her.  You'd better wait for her--and see
+less of Burnett."
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked.  And now her puzzled eyes grew
+steel-cold with intuitive resentment.
+
+"I mean that you'll get yourself talked about if you go on as you're
+doing at present.  A married woman can't be so much with a man not her
+husband _without_ being talked about."
+
+"That is absurd!" she retorted, and her voice was as cold as her eyes;
+it put miles between them.  "Peter has always been my friend.  He's
+been like one of my family to me all my life.  He's more than ever like
+a relative to me now that all my own people are dead.  It's absurd to
+suggest that our friendship could be so misinterpreted.  It's _low_ to
+think of such a thing!"
+
+"Low or not, it's _wise_ to think of such things.  You'll get yourself
+talked about if I let you.  But I'm your natural protector, and I
+_won't_ let you.  I forbid you to have Burnett here as you've been
+doing.  _I forbid you_!"
+
+"I am to tell him that?" she inquired scornfully.
+
+"You're to tell him nothing.  He'll soon stop coming if he's not asked.
+The fact is, I don't believe he's wanted to come so often.  You're the
+one to blame, Sheila.  You've invited him--you've sent for him when he
+hasn't come of his own accord."  And then, as they faced each other in
+their unaccustomed hostility, Ted added, with a final flare of wrath,
+"_You've run after him--that's what you've done_!"
+
+As if he had struck her, Sheila's face went livid, then scarlet.  She
+opened her lips to answer, but no sound came.  So, for an instant, they
+looked at each other, silent, motionless, transfixed by this horror
+that had risen between them, this horror of anger--almost of hate.
+Then Ted took a step toward her; already he was contrite: "I didn't
+mean that.  I lost my temper and went too far.  Forgive me, Sheila!"
+
+But she did not say that she forgave him.  She only said: "Never speak
+to me of this again--never in all our lives!"  And then she turned from
+him and walked out of the room, leaving him to feel himself far more at
+fault than he had ever believed her to be.
+
+But though her pride, her insulted innocence, had carried her unbroken
+through the interview, she was in reality cruelly humiliated.  That
+final sentence of Ted's anger--"You've run after him--that's what
+you've done!"--rang in her ears for days afterward, shaming her as only
+the very proud can be shamed.  It was not true of her, she told
+herself; it was not true--but it was hideous that it could have been
+said of her nevertheless.  That Peter had never thought it of her, she
+was confident.  It was impossible that Peter should misunderstand her
+in anything.  But she dreaded seeing him with the accusation in her
+mind.  She could not meet him now without an acute and painful
+self-consciousness.  Her happy friendship with him was changed, was
+forever spoiled.  At last she wrote to him, telling him not to come to
+see her for awhile--not to come until she should bid him.  After she
+had sent the note, however, she suffered more than before, feeling that
+she had brought constraint between them, that she had suggested to
+Peter, by her request that he stay away from her, the same unworthy
+thoughts about them that Ted had flung at her.  Far, far worse than
+meeting him was the growing certainty that she had made him
+self-conscious about their friendship, too; that she had shown it to
+him as possible of degrading misconstruction.  For he would read from
+her note, carefully though she had refrained from reasons or
+explanations, just what had happened.  Peter would never comfortably
+miss a thing like that; sensitive and subtle to a degree, he could
+never be spared by mere omissions, by lack of plain and definite
+statement.
+
+It was unbearable that such a situation should have come about.  Not
+for a moment did she forgive Ted for creating it.  But she lived on
+with him in cool outward harmony, realizing that in marriage one may
+have to endure hurt and disappointment, and being much too high-bred a
+woman to take her revenge in petty breaches of courtesy.
+
+That she was disappointed in Ted, as well as hurt by him, she now
+admitted to herself for the first time.  It is curious how some final
+and serious issue between two people living together will cast a light
+on all the past; will disclose anew, and more flagrantly, lapses and
+shortcomings and injuries that had once seemed trifles and been ignored
+or condoned or forgotten.  Thus Sheila now looked backward along the
+years of her marriage and saw how Ted had failed her in understanding,
+in generosity, in any selfless consideration and love.  Small instances
+of his selfishness recurred to her and promptly became as signposts
+directing her to greater ones.  His care for his creature comfort, his
+innocent vanities, his rather smug pleasure in his success--things
+which she had smiled over with a tender lenience--served now to remind
+her that he had never taken any account of her preferences, of her
+independent possibilities, of her talent; that he had not, at any time,
+made the least effort to comprehend or share her interests.  He had
+used her in his own work, and he had dismissed hers with a wave of his
+hand, as he might have pushed away a child's toy.  Whatever he had
+discerned of her mental quality and power, he had regarded only in its
+relation to himself; if she had been wonderful for him, she had been
+wonderful as his helpmate, not as the individual.  He had wanted her to
+be wife and mother only, and he had accomplished that.  With anything
+else in her nature, in her life, he had had neither tolerance nor
+patience nor sympathy.
+
+Of course she went too far in her arraignment of him.  She forgot, in
+her sudden bitterness, the warmth and kindness of his heart, the
+staunchness and integrity of his character, his desire and attempt to
+shield her from all things harsh and hard--even though he shielded her
+in his own particular way!--and the very real sincerity of his love for
+her.  She forgot that, by his own standards, his own conception of a
+husband's duty, he had honestly and steadfastly done his best for her.
+She saw her whole life fed to his selfishness as to an insatiable
+monster; and most terrible of all, she knew that she saw too late.
+Their marriage was made.  As a husband Ted was formed and could not be
+changed.  If, in the beginning, she had had a clearer conception of his
+nature; if she had had a stronger sense of her own rights as an
+individual and the courage to assert those rights, everything would
+have been different.  She would never have been subdued to mere
+wifehood and motherhood if that had been.  She would never--she saw it
+now!--she would never have made that compact of renunciation with God!
+
+It was to the matter of that compact she came at last--inevitably.  And
+she said to herself, over and over now, that she would never have made
+it if she had known herself and Ted better in the beginning.  She would
+never have made it because she would not have seen her work as a guilty
+thing.
+
+Nor had her work been a guilty thing!  No woman watched her child every
+moment; at least no woman did so who could have the relief of a nurse.
+She might as readily have been paying an afternoon call or playing
+bridge when Eric was exposed to scarlet fever.  It was just an accident
+that she had been writing then instead of doing any one of a dozen
+other things of which Ted would have approved.  Yes, it was an accident
+that she had been writing then, she repeated to herself.  But back of
+that accident had been her morbid conscience and Ted's
+narrow-mindedness; and together they had translated it into a crime.
+Thus she had been driven into the compact with God for Eric's life--the
+compact that had ruined her own life.  Her morbid conscience and Ted's
+selfish narrow-mindedness had wrought together for the frustration of
+her gift, of her happiness.  And it was upon Ted that she put far the
+greater share of the blame.
+
+Oddly enough, though she saw her husband so plainly now; though she
+censured his faults so unsparingly and regretted so passionately her
+own mistakes with him--mistakes of weakness, of cowardly submission,
+she told herself--she did not, even now, take the final step of
+considering what might have been if she had not married him; of what
+might have been if she had married some one altogether more congenial
+and unselfish.
+
+It was Charlotte who thought of that for her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+It was toward the end of April that Charlotte arrived in Shadyville.
+She had never lived in Shadyville since her first flight from it to
+boarding-school.  After school had come New York and Paris, where she
+had studied singing; and for the last five years she had been on the
+concert stage, filling engagements all over the continent--much to the
+distress of her family who, though inordinately proud of her, could not
+understand why any woman with plenty of money at her disposal should
+work.  Charlotte had always decided things for herself, however, and
+once convinced that her happiness lay in the active pursuit of her art,
+no one could dissuade her from it.  Certainly no penniless woman could
+have worked harder or with more zest than she.  Musician to her
+finger-tips, and with a remarkably beautiful, silver-clear soprano
+voice, she had also the modern woman's desire to earn her living; to
+justify her existence by doing something well.  An independent and a
+busy life was necessary to her, and it was impossible to see her
+without realizing that she had chosen wisely for herself.
+
+To Shadyville she had always seemed a brilliant figure; now, as a
+successful professional singer, she was a dazzling one.  Even Sheila
+was a little awed by her, although the two had kept up their
+childhood's friendship during all these years of separation and of such
+diverse interests.  Every now and then Charlotte descended on
+Shadyville for a brief visit to her parents, and then she invariably
+took up with Sheila their dropped threads and wove a new flower into
+the pattern of their affection.  On this occasion she came to Sheila
+with more than her usual warmth, divining what a grief Mrs. Caldwell's
+death must have been to her, and she watched her friend, as the days
+passed, with an increasing solicitude.
+
+To all appearances everything was well with the Kent household.  Sheila
+and Ted seemed to be on the best of terms; Eric had grown into a fine,
+healthy, handsome little lad, particularly fond of his proud mother;
+prosperity, as Shadyville measured it, fairly shone from the charming
+and well-ordered little house.  Certainly all appeared to be well with
+Sheila, yet Charlotte was not satisfied about her.  Six months had
+passed since Mrs. Caldwell's death, and though Charlotte allowed for
+the sincerity and depth of Sheila's mourning, she rejected a sorrow
+already somewhat softened by time as sufficient cause for the change
+she found in Sheila.  There was something else, something of an
+altogether different nature, that was responsible for the hunger of
+Sheila's eyes, the restlessness of her manner.  Charlotte remembered,
+with a rush of indignation, Sheila's unfulfilled ambitions, her wasted
+gift.  That was the trouble; of course that baffled gift of Sheila's
+was the trouble.  And something must be done about it.  She was with
+Sheila when she came to this conclusion, and immediately she acted on
+it, impulsive, decisive creature that she was.
+
+"What of your writing, Sheila dear?  I can't recall your speaking of it
+to me for a long, long while."
+
+"Oh--_that's_ over!" replied Sheila, with unhappy emphasis.
+
+"But why?"
+
+It was a warm May afternoon and they were sitting on Sheila's veranda.
+Out on the lawn Eric and another boy of his own age frolicked about
+like a couple of animated puppies.  Sheila pointed to them:
+
+"You remember what Mrs. North said--that a woman couldn't be both
+mother and artist?"
+
+"I told you that wasn't true!"
+
+"It has been true for me, Charlotte."
+
+"It needn't be now.  While Eric was a baby, it may have been true for
+you, but there's no reason in the world why it should be now."
+
+"Well, it _is_ true for me now--it will be true for me always.  And
+yet----"
+
+And then, because disillusion and bitterness were strong upon Sheila,
+Charlotte got the whole story out of her, from the first revelation of
+Ted's attitude toward a married woman's art to the final climax of
+Eric's illness, her self-blame and her renunciation of her work.  Even
+while she told it, she knew that she would reproach herself afterward
+for disloyalty to Ted, but the sheer relief of confiding it to a
+sympathetic listener was too much for her scruples.
+
+"I never heard of anything so outrageous in my life!" exclaimed
+Charlotte, when the story was ended.  "It's barbarous--_barbarous_!"
+
+Not a word of her final clear vision of her husband, her belated
+disappointment in him, had Sheila uttered.  For that at least she had
+been too loyal.  But already she repented having betrayed his views in
+regard to the married woman-artist.  So well she knew what Charlotte
+must think of them, indeed, that she now felt impelled to a defense:
+
+"Of course it hasn't been Ted's fault--you mustn't feel that he's to
+blame."
+
+"Mustn't I?" asked Charlotte drily.  And then, "My dear girl, he _has_
+been to blame--absolutely, unforgivably to blame.  It makes me wild to
+think of his narrow-minded, pig-headed selfishness.  And that you
+should have given in to it--!  Oh, Sheila, Sheila, where is your
+independence, your sense of your rights as an individual, a human
+being?  Are you a cave woman--that you should be just your husband's
+docile chattel?"  And Charlotte sprang from her chair and began to pace
+the veranda, urged by the fierce energy of her anger.
+
+"I said it had been Ted's fault--this spoiling of your life," she went
+on presently, "but it's been your fault, too, Sheila.  It's been your
+fault for giving in to him."
+
+"But," pleaded Sheila, "I didn't give in to _Ted_.  I gave in to
+circumstances.  Seeing that Eric was ill--that he might die--because
+I'd neglected him in order to write was what conquered me.  That was
+what drove me to the vow to renounce my work--if Eric was spared."
+
+Charlotte came and stood before her then: "Sheila, you know as well as
+I do that you'd never have made that vow if the sense of Ted's
+disapproval, his condemnation, hadn't been working on you.  You know
+that it was merely an accident that you were writing when Eric was
+exposed to scarlet fever.  You know that if you _hadn't_ been writing,
+you would have been reading or sleeping or paying calls, and that if
+you'd been doing any of those things, you wouldn't have thought
+yourself guilty because you'd taken an hour off from the hardest job a
+woman has--the mother-job--even though Eric did suffer by it.  You know
+you'd have recognized that there are just so many cruel mischances in
+life, and that Eric's illness was one of them.  You know that it was
+_Ted_, back of circumstances, that influenced you to make your vow of
+renunciation!"
+
+It was what Sheila had so recently told herself, and she could not
+refute it now.  Looking into her downcast, acquiescent face, Charlotte
+continued: "As for the vow--that's nonsense!  It's mere morbid,
+hysterical nonsense.  God never exacted it of you.  He's never held you
+to it, you may be sure.  If He's wanted anything of you, He's wanted
+you to use the talent He's given you.  If you've been at all at fault,
+it's for wasting your talent.  You _have_ wasted it--you've wasted it
+to please Ted.  You've wasted it because you've allowed yourself to be
+intimidated and bullied by Ted.  That's the whole trouble!"
+
+"Oh, Charlotte--," began Sheila.
+
+"I've spoken the truth," insisted Charlotte firmly.  "You can't deny a
+word I've said."  And then, flinging out her hands with a gesture of
+despair, "The worst of it is that it's too late to help matters now.
+You'll go on in the same way--letting Ted bully you--to the end of your
+days.  There's never been any chance for you with him.  Your chance was
+with Peter Burnett.  It's Peter you should have married!"
+
+"You must not say that," objected Sheila quickly--and a little
+unsteadily.  "You must not say that, Charlotte.  It's ridiculous.  And
+it's dreadful, too.  Ted and I love each other--we _do_ love each
+other!"
+
+But Charlotte was no longer inclined for argument.  She answered
+Sheila's protest with a smile--no more.  Suddenly she seemed to be
+through with the subject of Sheila's life, and perching upon the
+railing of the veranda, she looked off into green distances with a gaze
+singularly vague and pensive for her.  Sheila watched her admiringly,
+noting her erect slenderness, her spirited, keenly intelligent face,
+the clear blue of her eyes, the warm gold of her hair in the sunshine.
+
+"It's you Peter should marry," said Sheila lightly, when the silence
+between them had lengthened uncomfortably.  "You'd be just the wife for
+him, Charlotte!"
+
+Charlotte turned toward her, and there was no mistaking her earnestness
+and her sincerity.  "I'd marry him to-morrow!" she cried.
+
+"Oh, Charlotte, I never _dreamed--my dear_!----"
+
+"Don't be sorry for me," Charlotte interrupted warningly.  "Don't be
+sorry for me.  I may marry him yet!"
+
+And a moment later, she was swinging down the street, as serene and
+independent as if she had never known--much less, confessed--the pain
+of unrequited love.
+
+As Sheila looked after her, she noticed again the gold of her hair, the
+beautiful, free carriage of her shoulders--and now she felt no pleasure
+in them.  Rather was she conscious of a sharp little pang of envy, and
+with it, sounded the echo of Charlotte's last words--"I may marry him
+yet!"  Charlotte was a splendid, gallant creature; she _might_ marry
+Peter.  And then Sheila, feeling that envious pang again and still more
+sharply, demanded of herself in swift terror: "Am I jealous?--_am I
+jealous of Charlotte because Peter may come to love her_?"
+
+Oh, it couldn't be that!--it couldn't!  It was impossible that she
+should be jealous about any man but her husband.  For she and Ted loved
+each other--they _did_ love each other, whatever had been their
+mistakes with each other.
+
+She called Eric to her, and he left his playmate on the lawn and came,
+smiling.  She caught him to her, with a sort of frightened passion:
+
+"Kiss mother, darling!"
+
+He looked back over his shoulder at the boy who was waiting for him.
+"With him there?" he inquired reluctantly, already shy of caresses
+before his own sex.
+
+But Sheila, usually the most considerate and tactful of mothers, amazed
+him now by ignoring his hint.  Still with that terrified passion, she
+kissed him not once, but many times--her son and Ted's!  Her son and
+Ted's!  Then, leaving him standing there in his astonished
+embarrassment, she went into the house and up to her own room, there to
+sit and stare before her at things unseen, but all too visible to her.
+
+So Ted had been right after all; right in objecting to her being so
+much with Peter.  It _had_ been unwise; moreover, it had been wrong,
+all that companionship of the past winter.  For it had brought her to
+this; it had brought her so to depend upon Peter that she could not be
+happy unless he was often with her; it had brought her so to care for
+him that she could not think of him in relation to another woman
+without jealousy.  It had brought her to this--and she was a wife and
+mother!
+
+She had been ashamed when Ted had told her that she would get herself
+talked about in connection with Peter, and still more ashamed when he
+had accused her of "running after" Peter.  But that had been an
+endurable shame, for at the heart of it had been self-respect, the
+indestructible pride of perfect innocence.  But the shame that surged
+over her now was the agonizing shame of guilt, the shame of utter
+self-scorn, self-loathing.  She--a wife, a mother!--cared for a man not
+her husband; cared for him in a way that made it torment to her to
+think of his marrying another woman.  Hideous and unbelievable though
+it was, she cared for him so much.  She had cared for him even while
+she was declaring to Charlotte--and later, to herself--that she loved
+her husband.  She cared for Peter--even now, facing the truth and
+admitting it, she would not use the word, love--she cared for Peter,
+and she was Ted's wife, the mother of Ted's son.  Not even the touch of
+that little son had been powerful to blind her.  She cared!--she
+_cared_!
+
+For a moment her face went down into her hands, and the hopeless grief
+of unfortunate love mastered her, tore her throat with its sobs, burned
+her eyes with its bitter tears.  But presently her head was up again,
+and with shaking fingers she was bathing her eyes, concealing as best
+she could the ravages of that instant's surrender.  She had no rights
+in this thing; she had not even the right to suffer.  Ted or Eric might
+come in at any moment, and they must not see that she had wept; she was
+theirs.
+
+She had no right to suffer.  There could be only one right course in
+this; to fight, to crush out of herself what she was not free to feel,
+to put between herself and Peter some barrier that could not be
+destroyed.  There was Ted, there was Eric--they should have been
+barriers enough.  But they had not been barriers enough, and there must
+be another.  There must be something--some one--more, to keep her safe,
+to hold her heart, her thoughts, from this forbidden haven.  There must
+be something--some one--else--.  And then her mind leaped to Charlotte.
+Charlotte loved Peter; she had practically admitted that.  Well, she
+should marry him--as she'd said that she might do.  Though it broke her
+own heart, Charlotte should marry Peter.  She herself would arrange it.
+
+She did not pause to consider that Peter might not want to marry
+Charlotte, that he might not be happy in doing so.  She did not pause,
+yet, to question--she did not dare to question, indeed--whether Peter
+turned her own love.  She was intent upon but one end: to protect
+herself from what she felt for him, from what she would continue to
+feel for him as long as he was free.
+
+With this haste and need and fear upon her, she wrote to him, asking
+him to come to her the next afternoon.  It would be their first meeting
+since Ted's ban upon their friendship, and she realized, with fresh
+humiliation, that in spite of everything, she was glad of this chance
+to be with Peter.  She realized that she could scarcely wait until the
+morrow should bring him to her.  Because she was thus glad, she almost
+decided not to send her note after all, and then--lest she would
+not!--she hurried out and mailed it herself.
+
+Somehow she got through dinner and the evening.  She heard Eric's
+lessons and tucked him away for the night with a bedtime story and the
+kisses that, when no one was looking on, he was eager enough to
+receive.  She listened to Ted's anecdotes of the day and responded with
+a mechanical vivacity.  Then, at last, she was hidden by the night,
+freed by the night--though she lay by Ted's side.
+
+She had no right to suffer, but she did suffer now.  As Peter had done
+months before, she suffered through the darkness.  But with her there
+was no yielding to dear visions of a forbidden love, as there had been
+with him; there was no picturing of life as it might have been with
+him; no thrilling to the imaginary caresses and delights of a passion
+which, in her married self, was wholly unworthy.  Rather was the night
+a long battle with the love that it so shamed her to find within
+herself.  Thus, in this distress of her soul, she was at least spared
+the physical torture which Peter had endured.  Not for an instant was
+her love for Peter translated, in her mind, into physical terms; she
+neither imagined nor desired its touch; in her guilt there was a
+strange innocence--an innocence characteristic of her.  She would go
+through life unaware of the grosser aspects of things; under any
+circumstances, however equivocal, she would be curiously pure.  In one
+thing only did she fall now to the level of less idealistic beings; in
+spite of her struggle to the contrary, she wondered, at last, if Peter
+loved her.  She dared and stooped, in the privacy of the night, to
+wonder that.
+
+When Peter came to her the next afternoon, he found her haggard, but
+very quiet, very calm.  Beneath her calmness, however, he divined the
+stir of troubled depths, and he carefully kept to the surface; ignored
+his long banishment; took up one impersonal topic after another for her
+entertainment; and was altogether so much the safe, unromantic,
+delightful old friend of the family that, but for the hammering of her
+pulses, he would have persuaded Sheila that the distress of the past
+night was a mere, ugly dream.  But because she could not look at him
+without a catch of her breath; because she could not speak to him
+without first pausing to steady her voice; because all her tranquility
+was but desperate and painful effort, she knew the night was no dream,
+but even more of a reality than she had thought.
+
+"Peter," she said at last, with attempted lightness, "Peter, I'm going
+to meddle with your destiny."
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling at her.
+
+That smile of his almost cost her her self-control, so dear it was to
+her.  But she went on bravely enough: "I'm going to secure you a wife."
+
+He threw up his hands in dismay.  "Don't try," he pleaded.  "You could
+never find a wife to suit me!"
+
+"But I _have_ found one who's sure to suit you."
+
+"You've actually selected her?--you have her waiting for me?"
+
+She nodded, trying to smile back at him now with a deceiving gayety.
+
+"May I know who the fair lady is?"
+
+"Of course.  She's--Charlotte!  She is just the woman for you, Peter."
+
+"Never," he said promptly.  "She is charming and clever and handsome
+and kind, _but_--she's not the woman for me."
+
+"Peter"--and Sheila dropped her pretense of playfulness--"Peter, she's
+all that you need.  She'd make a great man of you."
+
+"At this late date?" he inquired a little ruefully.  "She'd make a
+great man of me at forty-six?"
+
+"Yes, she would.  Charlotte's very--strong.  She could accomplish
+anything she wished.  She'd do much for a man--with a man--if she loved
+him."
+
+"I have no reason to believe that she loves me," said Peter.
+
+"Perhaps I shouldn't tell you, but _I_ have reason to believe that--she
+loves you."
+
+He leaned forward and searchingly studied her face: "I'm sure you are
+mistaken.  But--granting that Charlotte may love me--is it for her sake
+that you want me to marry her?"
+
+"For hers--and for yours.  I want to see you in a home of your own,
+Peter--with a wife to love you, with children.  I want--I want you to
+be happy!"
+
+"I would not be happy if I married Charlotte."
+
+"Why, Peter?"
+
+"Because I do not love her."
+
+"You would come to love her."
+
+"No, Sheila--I am not free to do that."
+
+"Do you--do you love some one else?"  And her voice shook now in spite
+of her attempt to keep it firm.
+
+"Yes," he answered quietly, "I love some one else."
+
+"Some one you can--marry?"  She could not look at him, but question him
+she must.
+
+"No--not some one I can marry."
+
+The room was very still for a moment; but she seemed to hear the sorrow
+of his voice echoing and re-echoing through it.
+
+"You will get over that in time," she whispered.
+
+"I will never get over it," he answered.
+
+And now she looked at him.  She had wondered if he loved her; looking
+into his sad eyes, she knew.  A sob swelled her throat and broke from
+her lips.  And then they sprang up and faced each other.
+
+So they stood, gazing at each other.  And though they neither spoke nor
+touched each other, the heart of each was clear to the other--more
+clear, indeed, than speech or touch could have made them.  So they
+stood, looking into each other's eyes, and unbearable pain and
+unbelievable ecstasy were mingled in those few, silent moments.  Then
+the ecstasy died; the pain became cruelly intense.  And more than pain
+shone dark in Sheila's eyes; fear crouched there, and Peter saw it.
+She loved him--and she was afraid of him.  More intolerably than
+anything else, that hurt him--that she should have to be afraid of him.
+
+"Peter," she said--and her voice trembled so that he could scarcely
+understand her words, "Peter, I want you to marry Charlotte for--_for
+my sake_."  And her fear stared at him out of her eyes, stared at him
+and implored him.
+
+She was asking him to put Charlotte between them.  He realized that
+now.  She was telling him that Ted and Eric were not enough to keep
+them apart.
+
+"I will do it--or something which will answer as well," he assured her
+gently.  "You may trust me for that, Sheila."
+
+And then, still without touching her, without even looking at her
+again, he was gone.  He was gone and everything was ended for them--for
+them who had not known even the beginnings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Peter had engaged to dine with Charlotte that night, but after his talk
+with Sheila, his first impulse was to excuse himself.  It seemed to him
+impossible to get back, at once, to the safe level of everyday life, of
+commonplace affairs.  It seemed impossible, too, to meet Charlotte
+without betraying embarrassment.  But after an hour's solitude, he had
+sufficient command of himself to fill the appointment, and he appeared
+at the Davis house with all his usual placidity of manner.  After all,
+he had to go on as if nothing had happened, and it was as well, he told
+himself, to begin immediately.  That was, perhaps, the worst of secret
+disasters like his and Sheila's--that one had to go on as if nothing
+had happened; that one had to wear, from the first, a bright mask of
+concealment.  But it was, in a way, the best, too--this necessity for
+taking up tangible, practical matters, for continuing duties,
+obligations, enterprises that, perforce, diverted at least a part of
+one's mind from the contemplation of an inner tragedy.  There was
+effort in having to talk, to listen intelligently, to laugh, but there
+was relief, too, and the sense of safety that, when adrift on chaotic
+seas, one feels at the touch of something solid.  So he talked and
+listened and laughed with conscientious care.  And watching Charlotte
+across the dinner table, he considered Sheila's plea.
+
+As he had said to Sheila, he thought Charlotte clever and handsome and
+kind.  Whole-heartedly he liked and admired her; he enjoyed her; he was
+stimulated by her.  He was even prepared to admit that, if she would
+marry him, she might actually make something of him, middle-aged though
+he was.  His attainments, his really brilliant qualities of mind, were
+there to build with--and she was, by nature, a builder.  He could see
+her taking hold of his life and creating out of its hitherto negative
+stuff a thing worth while.  He could see her thus active for him and
+with him, and feel a certain pleasure in the picture.  To think of
+himself as dear to a woman like Charlotte could not but touch a man
+pleasantly and warmly.  And yet, thus touched, thus drawn, he knew
+still that his whole-hearted admiration and liking would never be
+followed by whole-hearted love.  His passion for Sheila had gone too
+deep to be effaced.  Unhappily for himself, he was not one of those
+whose heart can be enlisted sincerely more than once.  He looked across
+the table at Charlotte and noted the strong, rich gold of her hair, the
+dark, definite blue of her eyes, the gracious lines of her shoulders;
+he heard her clear, positive, courageous voice, her blithe laughter; he
+looked and listened and thought of her as his--and his heart clung to
+its dream of a woman far less compellingly vital and lovely.  Against
+Charlotte's vivid reality, he set a little ghost with a pale face and
+wistful gray eyes and a plaintive voice, a little ghost too sensitive
+to be quite strong, too shy to be self-confident and self-sufficient,
+too tender to be altogether brave; and with this very sensitiveness,
+this shyness, this uncourageous tenderness, the little ghost held him.
+She held him because her eyes were wistfully gray instead of
+triumphantly blue, because her voice was hauntingly plaintive instead
+of firmly buoyant; she held him because in her soul there was a strain
+of weakness, of timidity, of childlike helplessness and innocence that
+to him was at once piteous and exquisite.  She held him by all those
+qualities--and shortcomings--most unlike Charlotte.  He saw that
+Charlotte was, as Sheila had asserted, just the woman for a man of his
+indolent, dallying temperament; he saw that he needed such a woman.
+But he saw, too, that Sheila needed him, that she had always needed
+him, that she would always need him; and from that consciousness of her
+need he could not wrench himself free.
+
+He would never be free of his little, pale ghost.  If he married
+Charlotte, it would be for Sheila's sake.  _If_ he married
+Charlotte----!
+
+Well, he might marry Charlotte.  Sheila had said that he could, and
+perhaps she had been right.  In these later years, since Charlotte had
+been a woman, a cordial friendship had sprung up between them.
+Whenever she had been in Shadyville, he had been much with her, and in
+her absences there had been letters.  For several years, whether in
+Shadyville or away, she had been a presence in his life; they had many
+tastes and interests in common; she was kind to him--encouragingly
+kind.  It seemed probable that he could marry her; at least there was
+ground for trying to do so.  Yet how could he offer less than his best
+to a creature so fine, so honest, so loyal as he knew Charlotte to be?
+
+That something weighed on his mind, that he was observing her with
+unwonted gravity, Charlotte perceived before the dinner was over.
+
+Afterward she took him with her into the garden and they sat down there
+in the mild spring night, surrounded by flowers, regarded by
+innumerable stars.  The night, the flowers, the stars, all appeared to
+be conspiring for Charlotte.  They created an atmosphere of poetry for
+her; they threw over her a glamour that, with her obvious type of
+beauty, her downright and positive nature, she had missed.  It was as
+if the night, with its stars and flowers, were striving to invest her
+with that subtler allurement which, in Sheila, was so poignant and
+enchanting to Peter.  And instinctively Charlotte took up the night's
+cue; sat a little in shadow; spoke with unusual softness.
+
+"What have you been thinking of so seriously all evening?" she asked.
+
+"I've been wondering," said Peter, "whether a man whose heart is
+committed, in spite of himself, to a hopeless love, has any right to
+marry."
+
+Charlotte did not answer at once; she stirred, moved deeper into
+protecting shadow.  "That depends, I believe, on whether he's sure that
+the love his heart is committed to is really hopeless--will be hopeless
+always," she replied finally.
+
+"In the case I was considering--the man is sure of that."
+
+"Then he would get over his unfortunate love in time--wouldn't he?
+Ill-fated love does not often last forever.  Life--life is more
+merciful than that, isn't it?"
+
+It was his chance with her; he realized that she was giving it to
+him--giving it to him understandingly and deliberately.  He had only to
+agree that an "ill-fated" love--that his ill-fated love--would die at
+last.  But he could not take his chance like that.  He could not be
+less than honest with her.
+
+"He would never get over it altogether," he said.  "The woman he could
+not marry would always be--dearest to him.  And, granting that, would
+it be fair for him to ask another woman to take what was left of--of
+his affection?  Would it be fair to ask her to take--a spoiled life?"
+
+"She might feel that what was left of his life was well worth
+having--the woman he _could_ marry.  She might feel that--even if he
+had suffered much, missed what he supremely wanted--his life need not
+be spoiled after all.  She might feel that she could prevent its being
+spoiled.  If he were frank with her, and she felt like that about it, I
+think it would be fair for him to marry her--perfectly honorable and
+fair."
+
+"It could not be happiness for her," argued Peter.
+
+"Perhaps not.  Perhaps she could do without happiness."
+
+"That would require a great love of her," said Peter gravely, "a great
+love for a man who could not give a great love in return."
+
+"Yes," she agreed, her voice very low now, but as clear and steady as
+ever, "yes, it would require a great love from her.  But it is not
+impossible to find a woman who can feel a great love without hope of a
+full return."
+
+She was still in her sheltering shadow, but upon Peter's end of the
+garden seat the moonlight, unchecked by the trees, streamed white and
+strong.  She looked into his face, fully revealed to her now, and she
+realized, before he spoke, that he was going to refuse her sacrifice;
+she realized it because she saw in his face a deeper emotion for her
+than he had ever shown before.  He loved her not enough--and yet too
+much!--to marry her.  She saw that and was prepared for his next words.
+
+"To such a woman the man I have in mind could not give less than his
+best," he said.  And there was no longer any question, any hesitancy in
+his tone.  "To one so generous no man could be ungenerous--I should
+have known that!  Perhaps," he went on, with a note of distress and
+apology, "perhaps such things should not be talked about.  Perhaps it
+is--humiliating----"
+
+"To me the truth could never be humiliating," she answered, with quick
+reassurance.
+
+"Then it is best to speak it?" he pleaded, as if for
+self-justification.  "Then it is best to speak it, after all?  For it
+does make things--plain; it does show one the right, the decent course."
+
+"It's best to speak it," she assented kindly; and she held out her hand
+to him.
+
+He lifted her hand and kissed it.  And when he spoke again, his voice
+faltered: "When a man knows a woman like you, Charlotte, he sees that
+happiness--or unhappiness--doesn't matter so much as he's thought.
+There are other things--better things--to live for.  You've found
+them--and now I'm going to find them, too, my dear."
+
+So, for the second time that day, Peter went from a woman who loved
+him.  The night and the stars and the flowers had done their best to
+quicken his pulses; to blur his vision of the truth; to blunt his sense
+of absolute, unswerving honor.  But in the end Charlotte herself had
+defeated what the night was fain to do for her with its witchery; she
+had defeated the night's intents with her measureless honesty and
+generosity--to which Peter's own generosity and honesty could but
+respond.  To use a woman like Charlotte as a barrier between himself
+and another woman was impossible to him.  Neither for Sheila's safety,
+nor for any benefit to himself, could he do a thing so base.  He
+recognized now that marriage with Charlotte--even without that utter
+love he had given to Sheila--might be a gracious, even a happy destiny
+for him.  But having found her so ready to sacrifice herself, he could
+not sacrifice her.  He could not rob her of the chance of being loved
+as she could love.  Such a love might come to her some day; he could
+but leave her free for it.
+
+As he walked homeward along the silent, wide street, other gardens than
+Charlotte's flung their fragrance to him; the night still whispered to
+him of the sweetness of being loved, of all those compensations from
+which he had turned away.  But he was not allured; he was not
+vanquished.  His course stretched before him--through the befogging,
+unmanning sweetness--to daylight and self-respect and an uncompromising
+sincerity of life.  It stretched before him farther than he could
+descry--as far as the great fighting, suffering, achieving world.  Mrs.
+Caldwell had once told him that he had never grown up, and that some
+day he would have to grow up; that there could be no escape for him.
+She had been right about it.  Until now he had not grown up.  Not even
+in his love for Sheila and the pain of it, had he grown up.  He had
+been like a child playing in a garden, and though the sweetest rose
+there had torn him with its thorns, he had stayed on in the garden.
+But now he was a child no longer; there had been no escape from growing
+up.  He had put it off a long time--more than half his lifetime
+perhaps--but he had not been able to put it off forever.  And now,
+yielding at last, he was willing to leave his garden; he was willing to
+go out into the world of men.
+
+As he neared the hotel where he lived, he met Ted Kent, quitting his
+office--going home to Sheila.
+
+At once Ted stopped and put out his hand.  For in his mind no hostility
+against Peter had lingered.  Indeed, on the occasion when he had
+upbraided Sheila about Peter, he had felt very little animosity toward
+Peter himself, and several months having passed in a strict compliance
+to his wishes on Sheila's part, the whole matter had almost vanished
+from his memory.  His was not a nature to cherish resentment, to brood
+over fancied wrongs; he liked to be at peace with all his fellow-men
+and upon genial terms with them.  He was animated by a distinct
+cordiality toward Peter now, as he extended his hand to him.
+
+"Been calling on the girls, Burnett?" he inquired jovially.
+
+"On one of them," admitted Peter.
+
+"Well, it's been a long while since I did anything like that--a long
+while.  And I'm not sorry either.  There's nothing like your slippers
+and your pipe and your paper at home!  When I have to work late, as I
+did to-night, it's a real hardship.  Have a drink with me before I go
+on?"
+
+"Thanks," said Peter pleasantly, "but I'm in a bit of a hurry.  I've
+got to pack up.  I'm leaving town in the morning."
+
+"Leaving town?  For a vacation?"
+
+"No, for work.  I've had a job offered me in New York.  Brentwood, of
+the Brentwood Publishing Company, has been asking me to come to them
+for years, and I've finally decided to go."
+
+"High-brows, aren't they--the Brentwood Company?" Ted questioned,
+somewhat impressed.
+
+"Perhaps you'd call them so.  They publish real literature--a good many
+translations; that's what they want me for."
+
+"Well, well," pursued Ted, still detaining him, "and so you're going to
+leave little old Shadyville for good!  And after spending all your days
+here, too--after making so many friends.  I believe you'll miss us,
+Burnett!"
+
+"I'm sure I shall," agreed Peter, with patient courtesy.
+
+"Then why go?  It may be a good change for you in ways, but I'm
+convinced there's more to be said against it than for it.  For the life
+of me, I can't see why you're doing it."
+
+"No," said Peter, a little drily, "you wouldn't see, Kent.  But I'm
+sure it's the only thing to do.  Tell Sheila I think so, please, and
+that I send her my good-byes."
+
+"You aren't going to tell her good-bye yourself?"
+
+"I'm afraid I can't."  And as Peter spoke, he was acutely conscious of
+all that Ted did not see, of all that he would never understand.  "I'm
+afraid I can't--I start early in the morning."
+
+"All right!  You know what's best for yourself, no doubt.  Sorry you
+can't say good-bye to Sheila, though--she cares a lot for you, as much
+as if you were one of the family.  I'll give her your message, but
+she'll be disappointed that you didn't deliver it yourself.  Good luck
+to you, old man, and don't forget us!"  And shaking hands again, Ted
+went cheerfully on his homeward way, serenely unaware of the
+sorrow--and of the irony!--that had confronted him from Peter's quiet
+eyes.
+
+Up in his little room, Peter began to carry out his sudden plan for
+leaving Shadyville.  It was true that he had had an offer, more than
+once, from Brentwood.  Brentwood had been a chum of his at college, a
+friend who had never ceased to remember and appreciate him.  The offer
+was still open, and it solved Peter's problem.  He had told Sheila that
+he would marry Charlotte or do something else that would answer as
+well.  He found that something else in going away.
+
+He had not many possessions; shabby clothes--with an air to them;
+shabby books--that shone with their inner grace.  The books took
+longest, and when he had finished packing them, it was dawn.  He went
+to his window and watched the slow coming of the light, and in that
+silent, gray hour, he felt himself more alone than he had ever been.
+Everything seemed to have been stripped from him; this town where he
+had been born, and where generations of his family had been born before
+him; his friends; the little room, so dismantled now, that for years
+had been his home-place; all these--and his hope of happy love.  He
+remembered how, in his early, romantic boyhood, he had hoped for
+that--for happy love; and now that hope was gone and everything was
+gone with it.  Everything was gone because of Sheila; he had given up
+everything that she might be safe, that she might have peace--the
+peace, at least, of being unafraid.  He thought of her now with a calm
+tenderness--as if, having given so much for her peace, he had somehow
+gained peace for himself, too.  And then he thought of Charlotte, and
+it was for Charlotte, not for Sheila, that tears--a man's slow,
+difficult tears--forced themselves into his eyes.
+
+But Charlotte was strong.  It was her strength that had roused strength
+in him; strength to leave the garden, to escape the insinuating,
+ensnaring sweetness of the night and go forth into the daylight world
+of men.
+
+And just then the first ray of sunlight touched his window sill,
+touched it and stole within the room.  The day had come; and though he
+was forty-six years old and not born for fighting, a sudden elation
+seized upon Peter's sad heart--as if the finger of the sunlight had
+touched it, too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Sheila had thought herself acquainted with loneliness in the days
+immediately following her grandmother's death--days when she had had
+the consolation and companionship of Peter's frequent visits; but after
+Peter left Shadyville, she knew loneliness indeed.  Charlotte had taken
+flight to Paris soon after Peter's departure, and there remained in
+Sheila's small world not one to comprehend the depths of her, the real
+needs and desires and aspirations of her mind and spirit.
+
+To all outward seeming, her life flowed on in its usual channels; she
+occupied herself with her housewifely duties, with her care for her
+husband's and child's well-being; she exchanged visits with her
+neighbors and went to afternoon tea-parties.  Certainly her life
+appeared to flow on smoothly enough, but in fact it did not flow at
+all--that which was really the life current; it was checked, stemmed,
+thrown back upon itself in a tempestuous flood.  Heart, mind, spirit,
+all had come up against an obstacle which there was no surmounting, no
+eluding--the indestructible obstacle of a mistaken marriage.  Those
+were the bitterest days of Sheila's existence--the days when all the
+vital, matured forces of her throbbed and surged and clamored, prisoned
+things that beat in vain against the walls of circumstances.
+
+Worn out at last by this inner rebellion and conflict, she began to
+question whether she might not write once more.  What she felt for
+Peter must forever be suppressed; must, if possible, be crushed out
+altogether; for her heart, importunate though it was with her woman's
+maturity, there could be no satisfying outlet.  And in her
+conscientious recognition of this, in her resolution to abide by it,
+her very genuine affection for Ted--despite all the differences of
+temperament that divided them, despite even her realization and
+resentment of the wrong his selfishness had done her--was her greatest
+source of strength.  But though she thus armed herself with her
+affection for her husband, though she so strove for utter loyalty to
+him, the suppression of her gift was no part of her conception of
+wifely duty now.  And, thanks to Charlotte, she no longer regarded her
+compact with God for Eric's life as a thing sacred and binding.  Even
+before Charlotte had expressed herself so vigorously on the subject,
+Sheila had, indeed, grown to see that her vow to renounce her gift had
+been unfairly wrung from her by a too effective combination of accident
+and Ted's opinions.  And after Charlotte had cried out upon that vow as
+"morbid, hysterical nonsense," after she had exclaimed that Sheila's
+only fault had been in wasting her gift, it was but a step for Sheila
+to the conclusion that her vow could not--_should_ not!--bind her.  At
+last she saw herself free for work, if not for love; she saw herself
+the more free for work because love must be denied.  Her work should be
+her recompense; she had earned it now, as all things worth the having
+must be earned--by what one suffers for them.  And she believed that
+her work would be the better for all that she had suffered, all that
+she had endured.  It would be the better for that secret, unceasing
+ache of her heart for a love forbidden to her; and it would be the
+better for all the hours of pure suffering for itself alone.
+
+She had suffered for the loss of her work--Oh, very really!  Even
+through years that had been altogether happy otherwise, the
+restlessness and hunger and depression of a talent unappeased had come
+upon her at times, come upon her almost unbearably.  Though she had set
+her little son between it and her, it had reached her; it had harassed
+her unspeakably with demands that she had, perforce, refused to
+gratify.  The sudden note of a violin, the sight of a flowering tree
+pearly against an April sky, a glimpse of tranquil stars through her
+window at night--such things as these had been enough to bring her
+gift's importuning and torment upon her.  Earnestly and sincerely as
+she had tried to steel herself from such importunity and torment, they
+had come upon her again and again; they still came; they would come
+always--unless she flung off the shackles of that foolish, unnecessary
+vow.
+
+Fling off its shackles she did, with a sudden, blessed sense of liberty
+and strength.  With neither confession to Ted, nor any attempt at
+concealment, she set herself to write.  For the first time since her
+marriage--at least since her motherhood--she felt her life, in some
+measure, her own.  That she made no announcement of her independence to
+Ted was significant of the complete independence she had begun to feel.
+Perhaps it was significant of it, also--of the extent to which she
+conveyed, without words, her emancipation--that Ted, discovering, in
+the ensuing days, what she was about, said nothing of it either.
+
+When she sat down, at last, to her writing-table, to her clean sheaf of
+paper, it was with the conviction of her individual rights spurringly
+upon her.  But though she was finally so sure of her right to set free
+her gift, she felt within her no stir and flutter of a thing mad to fly
+and now released to do it.  No winged words sprang upon her paper to
+leave bright traces of a heavenly flight.  At the end of a long,
+uninterrupted morning, there was upon her paper no word at all.
+
+Not for lack of ideas did the paper remain thus bare.  There were ideas
+enough and to spare in the treasure chamber of her brain, ideas long
+hoarded, but still fresh with the glamour of their first conception.
+There was one idea which had especially tantalized and allured her
+through years of resistance on her part, an idea for a story really
+insolently quiet and unpretentious--because its stuff was such pure
+gold.  How that gold would shine through the cunningly chosen medium of
+her simple, unassuming phrases!  She had seen it shining so through all
+the time that she had resisted it.  But now--though she gave herself
+unreservedly to the cherished idea, though she turned over and over,
+with a passionate preoccupation, the little golden nugget of it--the
+simple, delicate phrases that were to reveal, to exploit it, did not
+appear.
+
+She had always written with a singular ease, and it seemed strange to
+sit before her tempting pages and write not a word.  But on the first
+morning, she felt no alarm.  After all, it was but natural that she
+should have to spend some time in coaxing it out to the light--that
+talent of hers so long confined.  It was but natural that it should not
+have courage to soar and sing at once.  But on the second day her paper
+was as empty as before; it lay upon her table like a useless snare for
+some wild and lovely bird that no longer had vitality enough to flutter
+within reach of it.
+
+And now, sitting at her writing-table in vain for several days, fear
+seized upon Sheila, fear that she would not name or analyze.
+
+Well, as one grew older, one often wrote differently, with more
+difficulty.  She had heard that, she reflected eagerly.  She had heard
+that deliberate, intellectual effort had often to succeed the flushed,
+panting rush of youthful inspiration.  This was probably the case with
+her now; of course it was, indeed.  She must undertake the effort; she
+must accept and master a new method.  Then all would be right with her.
+
+And so she went about deliberately translating the gold of her idea
+into those dreamed-of words which were so fitly to interpret it.  She
+went about it with an energy, a will to accomplish the feat, that
+should have been sufficient to achieve miracles.  If there had been,
+hitherto, a strain of weakness in her, she was now all strength.  And
+by that sheer strength--of purpose, of determination--she sought to
+realize her dream of perfection.
+
+Now the white sheets on her table were no longer barren.  Slow, painful
+writing covered them.  She wrote and discarded, and wrote again.  Day
+after day, she sat there at her table, engaged, as she came at last to
+perceive, in her final, her ultimate tragedy.
+
+For when the thing that she had visioned as a little golden masterpiece
+was finished, she knew it for what it was.  There was no felicity of
+phrase, no cunning art of construction, no conviction of truth, no
+throb of vitality within it.  As surely as a still-born child had it
+been brought into the world dead.  And it was incredibly ugly and
+deformed.  There was not a gleam of gold upon it!
+
+She recognized all this with unsparing clearness.  Not one illusion was
+left to her, not one merciful deception; with a single glance at her
+completed story, illusions and self-deceptions were swept from her--and
+hope was swept from her with them.
+
+Her gift was dead--or, at the least, it was forever ineffectual.  There
+would be no more mad, glad flights; no more songs high in the sunlit
+heavens.  The flights and songs and ecstasies were over for all time.
+Not for an instant did she cheat herself with sophistries of an
+eventual recovery.  She knew that if it lived at all--this gift of hers
+which had once been more alive than she herself--it would but live
+within her as the pain of a thing balked and futile, restless still
+perhaps, but not restless with any power.  Always--always now--the too
+exquisite note of a violin, the sight of blossoming trees at dawn, of
+silver, inscrutable stars at night would waken in her the hunger, the
+grief, of the unsatisfied.  There would never be a time when she could
+look on poignant beauty with the peace of one who is herself a part of
+all beauty--having created something beautiful.  For the ultimate
+calamity had befallen her; her gift had been killed, or hopelessly
+maimed.
+
+Under the tremendous impact of this blow she was curiously unresentful.
+She wondered a little how it had happened.  She wondered if she had
+suffered too much, suffered to the point of numbness--a thing fatal to
+one whose work had been fine largely through her capacity for emotion;
+or if the habit, the superstition, of her vow, persisting within her
+after the vow itself had been cast aside, had thus finally broken the
+wings of her talent.  She wondered if her marriage alone, or her
+motherhood, or her shamed and hopeless love for Peter had been most
+disastrous to her.  She had been conscious of them all as she had sat
+there trying to write.  Eric's face and Peter's had drifted between her
+and her pages.  Ted's cold declaration that talent was a bad thing for
+a married woman, and her own impassioned promise to God to renounce her
+work for Eric's life had both drowned for her the voice of her gift.
+It was as if all these factors in her destiny had had too much of her;
+it was as if they had claimed her too entirely and tenaciously ever to
+release her.  Even in silence and solitude and a belated sense of
+liberty and rights, she could not be free of them.  She could not
+decide whether one or all of them had been responsible for this final
+frustration.  She wondered--and then she ceased to wonder at all.  She
+knew that the frustration had been accomplished--and that she was
+suddenly too weary even to cry out.
+
+It was at the moment when she realized all this fully, when she sat
+staring at the deformed and lifeless thing which she had brought forth,
+that a letter from Charlotte was handed to her.  It came from New
+York--where was Peter.  Sheila opened it with shaking fingers--and
+found what she desired:
+
+
+I have seen Peter [wrote Charlotte] and he seems to have fitted
+himself, very happily, into the right place.  I say happily, but I do
+not use the word literally, for Peter is scarcely happy.  But he is
+appreciated here, and he likes his work.  I'm sure you'll be glad of
+that.
+
+As for happiness--I sometimes question whether those of us who catch a
+glimpse of a happiness perfect and transcendent ever experience the
+reality.  I doubt, in fact, if any reality could stand, unimpaired, by
+that vision.  It may be that we have to choose between the
+vision--beheld for an instant and forever remembered--and an earthy,
+faulty, commonplace little happiness.  We may have to choose between a
+fairy tale that can never be anything but a wonderful fairy tale, and a
+grubby reality that will spoil fairy tales for us evermore.  If that be
+true, Peter is not to be pitied.  He is manifestly one of the chosen;
+he's had his matchless vision; he still believes in the fairy tale.
+
+I told you, once, that I might marry him--in spite of him, as it were!
+Now I know that I will never marry him.  But you must not be sorry for
+me, my dear.  I, too, have had my vision.  I'll always believe in the
+fairy tale.
+
+
+Sheila laid the letter down--beside the stillborn child of her gift.
+And fleetingly she saw again the pure gold of her idea--saw it gleaming
+through the misshapen thing she had actually fashioned.  After all,
+though she could never create masterpieces, she had had her vision of
+them; that, at least, had been vouchsafed to her.  And she had had her
+vision of the perfect love; not even unspeakable sorrow and humiliation
+had dimmed it.  She, also, was one of the chosen; she would always
+believe in the fairy tale.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+It is, perhaps, only after we have put many dreams and hopes behind us
+that we stumble upon life's real gift to us.  And thus it happened for
+Sheila.  It was as if, seeing that she held out her hands for gifts no
+longer, life capriciously resolved to thrust one upon her.  But beneath
+the apparent caprice was a fine justice--for life was at last kind to
+Sheila through her son.
+
+As Eric grew older, there sprang up between them such a comradeship as,
+even in her gladdest moments of motherhood, Sheila had never foreseen.
+He was a manly boy, fond of other boys and of boyish sports, but for
+all that his companionship with his mother persisted, and as he matured
+somewhat, deepened into an intimate, understanding relation such as
+Sheila had not thought to know again.  Their kinship was not of the
+flesh only; that was the thing that Sheila began presently to see.
+
+It was then that she began to dream once more; to visualize a future
+beyond her own unrealized future.  But she didn't so much as stretch
+out a shaping hand; she didn't say an illuminating, a determining word.
+She remembered instances--many of them--of children's lives having been
+moulded by their parents, and with pitiful mischance.  She had known
+men and women who, with entirely unconscious tyranny, had thrust
+ready-made destinies on their sons and daughters, saying in extenuation:
+
+"We want our children to do all the brave deeds we've failed to do.  We
+want them to fulfill our defeated ambitions and to become what we have
+never become.  We want to save them from our mistakes and our regrets.
+We haven't done much with our own lives--but we're going to live again,
+more wisely and effectually, in our children's lives."
+
+And so they had advised and coerced, and destroyed individuality and
+independence, and extinguished, only too often, the very joy of life
+itself by striving to transfer the flame to a vessel of their own
+choosing.
+
+This she must not do to Eric, Sheila told herself.  From the despotic
+impulse of parenthood--queer mixture that it was of too zealous love
+and a thoroughly selfish desire for a second chance through the medium
+of the child--she must protect Eric.  Therefore she restrained herself;
+she simply waited--as she might have waited for a seed to spring up
+from the secret sprouting place of some deep garden bed.  It requires a
+sort of earthy, benign patience thus to hold back one's hand and
+passively wait--especially when one has, in spite of oneself, the
+dominating parent instinct!--but Sheila forced herself to it.
+
+And then, when Eric was fourteen years old, the seed sprang up through
+the soil and turned its face to the light.  The boy came to Sheila one
+day, obviously bent upon a confidence.  Shy, hesitant, shamefaced he
+was, but so eager.  She wanted to kiss him as he stood there before
+her, awkward and winsome, a little too tall for his knickerbockers,
+child and adolescent contending in his face and the flush of some
+portentous thing upon his cheek.  She wanted to kiss him--but she
+didn't.  For she divined that the moment was for sterner stuff than
+kisses.
+
+"Mother, here's--here's a story I've written."
+
+That was all; but Sheila saw her own youth, her hopes, her dreams in
+his eyes.  What there was in her eyes she did not know, but at
+something there Eric suddenly exclaimed and put his arms around her.
+
+And then Sheila knew that she was crying.
+
+It was not a marvellous story--that first effort of her young
+son's--but _something was there_; something that raised the crude,
+immature pages above immaturity and crudity and made the little tale
+better than itself.  And sensing it--that evanescent, impalpable, but
+infinitely promising thing--she saw the future shining through the
+present.
+
+But it was not to Eric that she went first with her discovery.  She
+longed to make the boy's path smooth for him before she sped him on it,
+and so she went first to Ted, story in hand.
+
+Ted had not desired talent in his wife.  Would he desire it in his son?
+Would he cheer and encourage, would he even tolerate, a dreamer, a
+poet, a worker in mere beauty?  Would he ever regard art as more than a
+shadow of life?
+
+Sheila sought him now to learn that--with Eric's story to plead for
+itself.
+
+Ted was in his den, a place sacred to those masculine pursuits and
+possessions which he did not share with her.  Only for momentous
+affairs did she invade the shabby, comfortable, littered room, and now
+Ted glanced up at her from his pipe and papers with serious expectancy.
+
+"I'd like you to read this," she said, holding out the little
+manuscript.
+
+"Now?  Is it important?"
+
+"Yes, now.  It is very important.  I must have a talk with you when
+you've read it."
+
+He took it from her, and she sat down to await his verdict.  The story
+was short.  Her suspense could have lasted but a little while.  But
+Eric's fate was at stake, and the minutes seemed as laggard as years.
+
+She had given up her own talent; that it was now a crippled thing
+within her was because she had renounced it, long before, for Eric's
+life.  But she would not easily sacrifice Eric's talent--if talent he
+really had.  She was prepared to fight for it, if need be.  Yet, as she
+watched Ted, reading with inscrutable face, her heart grew heavy within
+her for dread of dissension, of struggle between them.  That hot,
+rebellious heart of hers had come at last to a sort of peace.  The
+affection between herself and Ted, in the past few quiet years, had
+become for her, unconsciously, more and more of a haven.  She had given
+up much to the end that she and Ted might live together in harmony, and
+she sickened now at the prospect of conflict.  For at conflict, old
+wounds would open, regrets long firmly suppressed would rush upon her,
+a devastating flood.  If she had to fight for Eric, she knew that she
+would fight with the strength of old bitterness, bitterness that she
+had striven to outlive.  And she could not bear that this should
+happen.  She could not bear that her affection for Ted should be thus
+jeopardized.
+
+She remembered, as she sat there, the anger she had felt toward him
+when he had condemned Alice North for her art--and, however innocently,
+through Alice North, herself.  She remembered how indignant she had
+felt, how hurt and _divided_.  And she remembered, too--thinking,
+against her will, of Peter--how divided from Ted she had felt in later
+years, in years not so long gone that she could recall them calmly.
+She remembered how she had come, finally, to see Ted, and his part in
+the destruction of her talent, all too clearly--and how her heart had
+turned from him then to one whom she had no right to love.  She had
+driven her heart back to its appointed path; she had constrained it to
+its duty--in so far as the heart can be constrained.  She had even
+achieved the supreme triumph of keeping alive for Ted, through
+disillusion and passionate resentment, that very real affection with
+which they had begun life together--but she trembled now at thought of
+any further pressure being brought to bear upon it.  It was as if she
+held out her hands to her husband, crying: "Oh, let me love you!  Do
+nothing that shall make it impossible for me to love you!"
+
+And yet--though conflict between them should destroy the love she had
+so endeavored, in spite of everything, to feel--if Ted opposed Eric's
+gift, there must be conflict.
+
+For she considered what her own unappeased gift had cost her--the
+hunger, the restlessness, the pain.  She considered how, throughout all
+the years of her marriage, she had suffered her gift's insistence and
+its reproach.  She thought of how she had never been able to look upon
+the miracle of the spring, the majesty of the stars, without an aching
+heart.  All beauty had been transmuted for her into unassuageable
+sorrow--because she had been born to create beauty and had failed of
+her destiny.  And it would be transmuted into sorrow for Eric,
+too--unless he were given the freedom she had foregone.  He, too, would
+face the stars with an aching heart; all high and exquisite creation
+would be for him the material of suffering--unless he were allowed to
+create also.
+
+She had nerved herself to any effort, any struggle that might be
+necessary, when Ted at last laid down Eric's story and turned to his
+desk without a word.  Was there as little hope as that?
+
+"Ted?" she cried.
+
+"Wait," he answered, rummaging in a drawer of his desk, with his back
+toward her.  And his voice sounded queer--almost as if it were choked
+with tears.  "Wait, Sheila."
+
+He rose, directly, and walked toward her, and his face was queer, too,
+unsteady with some rarely deep emotion.  Thus he had looked when he
+first bent over her after Eric's birth.  That flashed through Sheila's
+mind, touched her to sudden faith in his being, now, what she prayed to
+have him.  Then she saw that in his hand he had, not Eric's story, but
+a bulky package of yellowed manuscripts, tied clumsily with a faded
+ribbon.  In such fashion a romantic man might have tied love letters.
+But Ted was not romantic, and, never having been separated from him at
+any time since their marriage, she had written him no letters.
+Besides, these papers were large, business-like sheets.  She stared at
+them curiously.  What had they to do with Eric and Eric's future?
+
+But to Ted they had their significance.  He carefully untied the dingy
+ribbon and spread the loosened pages on the table before her--and she
+noticed that his fingers were shaking.
+
+"Look," he said, in that queer, blurred voice.
+
+She picked up one of the discolored pages--and her own writing
+confronted her; for the page was from the unfinished story she had been
+working on when Eric was taken ill with scarlet fever--the story that,
+in obedience to her vow, she had put aside, still uncompleted.
+
+"Why, Ted--_Ted_--!"  But even then she did not understand.
+
+"I found them," he explained, furtively stroking the shabby sheets, but
+attempting a bluff and off-hand tone, "I found them--Oh, years
+ago!--just stuck off in a cupboard _like trash that nobody wanted any
+more_.  And so--because I _did_ want them--I brought them down here."
+
+"_You_ wanted them?" Sheila gasped.  "But, Ted----"
+
+And then he had her in his arms, and his eyes--full of the tears he had
+tried to repress--were gazing down into hers!
+
+"Don't you suppose I realize what you might have done?  Don't you
+suppose I've seen what you've given up for me--for me and Eric?"
+
+She could not speak.  She could only gaze back at him, incredulous
+still of the comprehension that he had so long concealed from her.
+
+"I've been a selfish brute, Sheila," he went on.  "I've craved all of
+you for myself and my child, and I've had all of you.  It's been my
+man's way, I reckon, for I couldn't have helped it.  If I had it to do
+over again, it would be just the same--though I'm ashamed of myself
+now.  Of course I didn't ask you to give up your writing, but I'd quite
+as well have asked you.  For I guessed that you'd done it--after Eric
+had scarlet fever--and I _let_ you, without a word.  I've let you
+sacrifice your talent ever since, too--needlessly.  Yes, I've _let_
+you--for I've seen the whole thing."
+
+She had sometimes felt that the tragedy of her life had been in all
+that Ted had not seen.  Now, finding that he had seen so much more than
+she had ever suspected--so much of what had been profound suffering to
+her--she might readily have blamed him more than she had ever done
+before.  But generosity rushed out of her to meet his
+generosity--belated though his was.
+
+"No, no," she interrupted, "it isn't that you let me give up my work.
+The fault isn't yours.  That awful night--when it seemed that Eric
+would die--I offered my work for his life--I offered it to _God_!  That
+was why I didn't write afterward."
+
+Ted fixed pitying eyes upon her: "You poor little girl!  Was it as bad
+as that with you?  I knew I was taking advantage of your conscience,
+but I never dreamed you'd carried your remorse so far.  Did you really
+believe you had to buy God's mercy?  Oh, no, dear.  It's only your
+husband that's seized the opportunity to extract a sacrifice from your
+Puritan conscience.  But with all my selfishness, I haven't stopped
+you--I haven't been the end of your talent."
+
+She started to tell him of her late emancipation from that unnecessary
+vow of hers; to tell him that she had tried to write again--and
+discovered that she could not.  But she did not tell him after all.
+For that could only hurt and shame him--in the hour of his penitence.
+So she was silent, and he continued with appealing eagerness.
+
+"I haven't been the end of your talent," he repeated.  "Don't you
+realize, dear, that your talent isn't ended at all?"
+
+"You mean--Eric?"
+
+"Yes, I mean that you've handed on your gift to Eric.  And he's going
+to have the chance I wasn't unselfish enough to let you have.  Don't be
+afraid for him--he's going to have his chance, And he'll know what to
+do with it!  I believe you'll be the mother of a great man--and that
+Eric will probably be the father of great men.  I believe it will go on
+and on and on--what you are, what you might have done."
+
+"But, Ted--Eric is only a child.  We cannot be sure yet--
+
+"I believe!" he insisted.  "I believe _this_ is to be your work--the
+work I haven't stopped."
+
+And as she listened, there came to her, too, a faith in Ted's prophecy.
+Her gift would have its fruition in Eric--and perhaps in Eric's sons
+and his sons' sons.  She was granted a vision of a torch passed on from
+one trustworthy hand to another throughout the years; and beholding
+that vision, she was aware that nothing she had suffered mattered at
+all.  She could face the stars now with a heart at peace.  She could
+watch the earth's miracles, feeling herself a part of them.  From the
+earth sprang flowers; from her flesh had sprung her son--her son who
+had been born to carry on the torch.  She had created beauty
+indeed--beauty that would outlive her life in her son's art.
+
+Even Peter's image was blurred for her as she beheld her supreme vision.
+
+And then she recalled Charlotte's words: "I sometimes question if those
+of us who catch a glimpse of a happiness perfect and transcendent ever
+experience the reality.  I doubt, in fact, if any reality could stand
+unimpaired by that vision."
+
+Charlotte was mistaken.  There were visions which became realities;
+this final vision of hers would become a reality--and it would be none
+the less perfect and transcendent for that.
+
+Sheila laid her hands on her husband's shoulders.  "I'm glad that I've
+lived!" she said.  And again, with a little sob, "Oh, my dear, I'm glad
+that I've lived!"
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Torch Bearer, by Reina Melcher Marquis
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TORCH BEARER ***
+
+***** This file should be named 32394-8.txt or 32394-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/3/9/32394/
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/32394-8.zip b/32394-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88c4e35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32394-8.zip
diff --git a/32394-h.zip b/32394-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..231b9a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32394-h.zip
diff --git a/32394-h/32394-h.htm b/32394-h/32394-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ba2c66f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32394-h/32394-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,8041 @@
+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<HTML>
+<HEAD>
+
+<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+
+<TITLE>
+The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Torch Bearer, by Reina Melcher Marquis
+</TITLE>
+
+<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
+BODY { color: Black;
+       background: White;
+       margin-right: 10%;
+       margin-left: 10%;
+       font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;
+       text-align: justify }
+
+P {text-indent: 4% }
+
+P.noindent {text-indent: 0% }
+
+P.poem {text-indent: 0%;
+        margin-left: 10%; }
+
+P.letter {text-indent: 4%;
+          font-size: 85%;
+          margin-left: 10% ;
+          margin-right: 10% }
+
+P.finis { font-size: larger ;
+          text-align: center ;
+          text-indent: 0% ;
+          margin-left: 0% ;
+          margin-right: 0% }
+
+</STYLE>
+
+</HEAD>
+
+<BODY>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Torch Bearer, by Reina Melcher Marquis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Torch Bearer
+
+Author: Reina Melcher Marquis
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2010 [EBook #32394]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TORCH BEARER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+THE TORCH BEARER
+</H1>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+BY
+</H4>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+REINA MELCHER MARQUIS
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+<BR>
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+<BR>
+1914
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
+<BR>
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+<BR><BR>
+Printed in the United States of America
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+TO
+<BR>
+MY HUSBAND
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+FOR WITHOUT HIS HEARTENING FAITH IN MY<BR>
+WORK, HIS GENEROUS SYMPATHY WITH IT,<BR>
+AND HIS DISCERNING CRITICISM OF IT, THIS<BR>
+BOOK WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN WRITTEN.<BR>
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+THE TORCH BEARER
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER I
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Peter Burnett stood on the top-most of the broad white steps leading to
+the "Shadyville Seminary for Young Ladies."  He had just closed the
+door of that sacred institution behind him, and with a sigh of relief
+which was incompatible with the honors of his professorship.  But Peter
+had never duly valued his position of instructor to Shadyville's
+feminine youth, though his reverence for scholarship was deep and
+sincere.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Friday afternoon, and freed from the chrysalis of his
+bread-winning duties, he was about to spread his wings for the flight
+of his inclination.  He looked out on the April greenery of the town
+with the fastidious gaze of one who has the world to choose from; for
+though he was a poor young school-master, clad in a shirt that had been
+darned too often, he was also a Burnett of Kentucky and born to a
+manner of leisure and arrogance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Slowly, and with this manner at its best, he began to descend the
+steps.  His whole lax figure assumed an air of indolence that, for all
+his lack of imposing proportions, subtly invested him with distinction,
+and he set a dallying, aristocratic foot upon the quiet street.  In
+that descent he triumphed over the mended shirt&mdash;and forgot it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From Friday afternoon until Monday morning&mdash;the brief interval when
+little girls are reprieved from lessons&mdash;he had indeed the world to
+choose from; or, to be accurate, the social world of Shadyville, of
+Kentucky, and of the larger south.  Within that radius he might take
+his amusements where he would and it was a matter of some amazement to
+those less privileged than he that he made such unspectacular use of
+his opportunities.  Why, thought they, should Peter Burnett waste his
+holidays over a country walk or a copy of Theocritus when he might be
+fashionably golfing, dancing a cotillion or flirting at a house party?
+Not that Peter neglected these pursuits&mdash;being a more astute young man
+than his reserved face and tranquil gray eye would indicate&mdash;but that
+he paused occasionally in the round of them for what his admirers
+considered less worthy diversions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he was pausing now, as he loitered along the wide, silent street
+with its trees in pale, sweet leafage and its old-fashioned houses
+showing a prim gayety in the bloom of their garden closes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He loved this street which stretched the length of the town; beginning
+in homes of a humble sort; breaking, a little farther on, into a
+feverish importance as it ran along before the doors of the shops;
+gathering dignity unto itself as it gained the site of the Shadyville
+Seminary; and finally advancing, in the evolution of a social
+consciousness, through the select upper end of town, where it spread
+itself ingratiatingly beneath the feet of the "prominent citizens" and
+clung smugly to well-trimmed hedges instead of skirting shop doors, and
+dingy fences.  Peter called its course its "rise in life"&mdash;so obvious
+was its snobbery, its persistent climbing; but his ridicule was the
+tolerant ridicule of affection.  He knew the street like the nature of
+an old friend; he saw it like the face of one; and if he laughed now
+and then at its weaknesses, he was none the less certain to enjoy its
+company.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To walk along <I>with</I> a street&mdash;not merely upon it&mdash;was one of his
+favorite pastimes, and this afternoon he pursued it in great
+contentment, with no thought of what its end should be, nor any
+definite desire.  For it was his theory that to walk with a street,
+divining its moods and discovering its little dramas, was in itself an
+adventure, and need not lead to one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But though he was content to stroll with the street, particularly in
+this pleasant neighborhood of its upper end, he soon halted, perforce,
+at the greeting: "Peter, you <I>won't</I> pass me by?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a blithe voice that addressed him, pretty and clear, but it was
+not the voice of youth; and Peter, glancing toward the veranda whence
+it came, saw sitting there an old lady who was like the voice, pretty
+and blithe and brave, though with no affectation of a youth long gone.
+His face lighted at sight of her, and he hastened up her garden path.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear Mrs. Caldwell!" he cried, both hands extended.  And then, with
+pleased alacrity, he settled himself upon the step at her feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's worth while taking a walk up this way," he remarked
+appreciatively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now confess," laughed the old lady, "confess that <I>I</I> am not the
+adventure you are seeking this afternoon!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wasn't seeking one at all," disclaimed Peter, "but I couldn't refuse
+a divine accident."  And as she shook a chiding head at his flattery,
+he went on firmly: "It's the wayside adventures like this which have
+long since decided me to start out with none in view.  The gods
+presiding over a wayfarer's destiny always offer him something better
+than he could have provided for himself!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Peter!  Peter!" protested the old lady, "what a book of pretty
+speeches you are!"  But the two smiled at each other with the happy
+understanding of friends to whom disparity of years was no barrier.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And how does your garden grow, Mistress Mary?" Peter presently
+inquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Caldwell looked out upon her trim flower beds where bloomed tulip
+and crocus in April festival.  "My silver bells and cockle shells grow
+very well," she answered, in the spirit of the rhyme, "but"&mdash;and her
+delicate old face quivered into an anxious quickening of life&mdash;"but,
+Oh, Peter!  I fear my pretty maid grows too fast for her own good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila?  Then you've seen?"  And Peter sat up eagerly, shedding the
+garment of his indolence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you've seen!" returned Mrs. Caldwell.  "But what have you seen,
+Peter?  What do you think of her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think," said he slowly, "that she has the most delightful mind I've
+ever encountered."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Pride leapt into Mrs. Caldwell's eyes, but, as if to make quite certain
+of him, she demurred: "She's only a little girl, Peter&mdash;only a little
+twelve-year-old girl."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he assented.  "That's why I'm so sure of her quality.  At her
+age&mdash;to be what she is!  Why, Mrs. Caldwell, her mind is like light!
+And it isn't just a wonderfully acute intelligence either.  She has the
+feeling, the intuition, too.  It's as if she thinks with her heart
+sometimes!"  And his face glowed as it never did save for something
+precious and rare.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you considered her future?" he added.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Caldwell smiled: "What do you suppose I'm living for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To make her like you, I hope," answered Peter gallantly.  His
+grandfather had loved Mrs. Caldwell, and his appreciation of her was
+inherited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To make her so much wiser!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wiser?"  And Peter looked fondly up at the lovely old face above him.
+For it was lovely, lovely with living, with the very years that might
+have withered and spoiled it.  To him the wisdom of such living was
+beyond compare.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she insisted: "Yes, so much wiser.  Peter, in my youth it wasn't
+ladylike to be too wise.  I had a few womanly accomplishments.  I
+sewed.  I sang.  I read Jane Austen and Miss Edgeworth and Charlotte
+Brontė.  And I gardened a little&mdash;with gloves on and a shade hat to
+protect my complexion.  And sometimes I made a dessert.  Peter dear, I
+was a very nice girl, but&mdash;!"  And she flung up her hands with a
+gesture that mocked at her futility.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila can never be nicer!" he persisted loyally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, she can&mdash;if some one wiser than I teaches her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I," said Peter importantly, "I teach her rhetoric at the Shadyville
+Seminary.  '"I," quoth the sparrow, "with my little bow and arrow!"'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Caldwell leaned forward and touched his shoulder.  "I'm very
+serious," she said.  "Here's my little orphaned Sheila&mdash;my dead boy's
+child&mdash;with no near kin in the world but me.  And I'm not fit for the
+task of helping her to grow up.  Oh, Peter, will <I>you</I> help?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know I will!  At least, I'll try."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled at him through her earnestness.  "Your rhetoric isn't
+enough," she warned him.  "All you know isn't enough.  You'll have to
+keep on learning too, Peter, if you're really going to help her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will," he promised again.  "I'm twenty-eight, and a lazy beggar&mdash;but
+I can still learn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Caldwell drew a quick breath of relief: "Thank you, Peter.  To
+tell you the truth, I've been really a little frightened lately."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"About Sheila?  But she's so sweet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so strange!  She isn't like a child.  And it's not because she's
+outgrowing her childhood, for she's not like a young girl either.
+Peter"&mdash;and Mrs. Caldwell's voice sank to a whisper now, as if she
+communicated a dangerous thing&mdash;"Peter, she's like&mdash;<I>a poet</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter laughed outright at her timid pronouncement of the word.  "But is
+that so terrible?" he teased.  "All poets are not mad, after all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you may laugh.  I dare say my terror of a thing like genius is
+funny.  But it's genuine terror, Peter.  What should I do with a poet
+on my hands?  I tell you, I'm not wise enough to&mdash;to trim the wick of a
+star!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," he suggested comfortably, "she may not be a poet.  What makes
+you think she's likely to be?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know how she reads&mdash;quite beyond the ordinary little girl's
+appreciation?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;but she may have an extraordinary mind without being a genius of
+any sort.  And I'm responsible for her reading.  It isn't so precocious
+after all.  I've just given her simple, beautiful things instead of
+simple, silly ones."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Peter, I've another reason besides her reading.  She goes off by
+herself and sits brooding&mdash;dreaming&mdash;for hours at a time.  I've come on
+her unexpectedly once or twice and she didn't even realize that I was
+there&mdash;she was so rapt.  She looked as if she were seeing visions!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps she was," said Peter softly.  "I've seen visions in my time,
+and I'm no poet.  Haven't you&mdash;when you were as young as Sheila?
+Confess now&mdash;haven't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Mrs. Caldwell resolutely shook her head: "Not like Sheila does.
+And neither have you, Peter.  Sheila is different from you and me.  You
+know her mother was Irish&mdash;full of whimsical fancy and quaint
+superstitions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, I had forgotten about her mother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course.  You were only a boy when she died."  And her eyes filled
+with slow, remembering tears as she went on, "She always believed in
+fairies&mdash;even when she was face to face with a reality like death.  And
+Sheila believes in them, too, though her mother didn't live long enough
+to tell her about them.  She never says anything about it, but I know
+that she has a whole world which I can't share&mdash;the dream-world her
+mother bequeathed to her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But that's beautiful!" cried Peter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she admitted, "it's beautiful.  But, Peter, it's sad for me
+because&mdash;because I can't follow her there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She fell silent for a moment, her eyes wistful and anxious; and
+suddenly he saw the pathos of age in her face as well as its finely
+tempered beauty, the pathos of all the closed doors that would open no
+more&mdash;among them the door of fairyland.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's true," she said bravely, as if they had looked at those closed
+doors together and she were answering his thought.  "I'm an old woman
+and I've lost the way to fairyland.  So I want you to go with Sheila in
+my place.  I want you to guard her dream&mdash;and keep <I>her</I> safe, too.
+I'm afraid for her, Peter&mdash;I'm afraid!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear Mrs. Caldwell, how can I walk where your foot is too heavy?"  And
+Peter's voice was very gentle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ask your poets that.  I was never one for the poets.  I can sew a fine
+seam and make my garden grow&mdash;nothing more.  But you have the store of
+poetry&mdash;and you have youth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There," said Peter, pointing to a lad of fourteen or thereabout who
+was coming toward them, "there is what Sheila calls youth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And there," retorted Mrs. Caldwell, "is what <I>I</I> call the heavy foot.
+But Theodore Kent is a good boy.  He's just not good enough for Sheila.
+I can't understand the child's liking him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Theodore came up to them briskly, his cap off, his yellow-brown hair
+shining in the sunlight with a vigorous glory, his face ruddy and
+smiling.  His body and his features were alike, strong and somewhat
+bluntly fashioned, the body and the features of the very sturdy,
+closely akin to the earth's health and kindliness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where's Sheila, Mrs. Caldwell?" he asked, happily unconscious of a
+critical atmosphere.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the back garden.  What do you want, Ted?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He lifted a battered volume.  "She promised to help me with this
+rhetoric stuff," he announced, quite unabashed at the admission of
+Sheila's superior cleverness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, run along and find her."  And Mrs. Caldwell glanced at Peter as
+if to add, "Didn't I tell you he wasn't good enough for Sheila?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But what, after all, does an understanding of rhetoric amount to?
+What has it done for <I>me</I>?" murmured Peter, answering the glance.  And
+then, as the boy still lingered before them, "I'll go with you, Ted.  I
+must make my bow to Sheila before I leave."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The back garden belied its humble name.  The kitchen windows opened
+upon it, it is true, but they did not discourage its prideful aspect.
+Indeed, it might just as well have been a front garden, for it had
+never been the shelter of the useful cabbage and its homely relations.
+The young grass was close-cropped with the same care that had been
+bestowed upon the front lawn, and simple, gay flowers flourished in
+bright beds and along the smooth walk.  Toward the end of the garden,
+and as if for a charming climax, several cherry trees shook blossoming
+branches to the spring wind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And beneath those trees lay Sheila, her eyes lifted to their bloom, a
+still, enraptured little figure, quite unconscious that intruders were
+drawing near.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At sight of her, Peter halted and laid a staying hand on Ted's arm.
+"Don't speak to her!" he whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so the two stood and looked at her, and yet she did not stir nor
+grow aware of their presence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was a slender little shape, lying there on the fresh grass&mdash;a thin
+child, with a pale face and black hair braided away from it; a child
+who was not actually pretty, nor, to the eyes of the casual observer,
+in any other way remarkable.  But to Peter she seemed touched, for the
+moment, with the glamour of enchantment, this small dreamer communing
+with her fays.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't speak to her!" he said again, as Ted moved restively.  "She's as
+far away as if she were in a different world," he added softly, and
+only to himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Ted, overhearing, nodded comprehendingly.  "Sheila does make you
+feel like that sometimes, even if she <I>is</I> standing right by you all
+the time.  She's queer&mdash;Sheila is.  But," and he spoke boastfully,
+though still in the cautious undertone Peter had used, "but I always
+call her back!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter looked down at him, at the frank, wholesome, unimaginative face,
+fatuous now with the vanity of power.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>I</I> always call her back!" the boy repeated proudly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Peter slowly, "you&mdash;and people like you&mdash;will always call
+her back.  But not this time, Ted&mdash;not this time.  I'll help you with
+your rhetoric myself.  Sheila has better things to think of just now."
+And putting his hands on the boy's shoulders, he turned him about for
+retreat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It occurred to Peter then that he was fulfilling Mrs. Caldwell's trust,
+but he shook his head dubiously, nevertheless.  He had saved one dream,
+but&mdash;the future was long and the people like Ted were many and
+intrepid.  Suddenly he saw what life might do to a being like Sheila
+and something of the fear and tenderness that Mrs. Caldwell had felt
+smote upon his heart.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER II
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It was on a Saturday of late October that it happened&mdash;the adventure
+which, in after years, Sheila was to see as so significant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila and Ted had gone to the woods with a nutting-party&mdash;a party too
+merry to do much but frolic, and eat as they gathered.  By afternoon
+their baskets were not nearly full, and Ted surveyed his own with
+chagrin.  He liked to accomplish what he set out to do, not because he
+was particularly industrious, but because a sense of power within him,
+partly sheer physical vigor and partly a naturally dominant will,
+demanded deeds for its satisfaction.  If he could stay an hour longer,
+if he could go a little deeper into the woods, he could fill his
+basket, he reflected; whereas now&mdash;and he looked with contempt and a
+genuine distress at his meagre store of hazel nuts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In his discontent he had already lagged behind his companions.  The
+other children had set their faces homeward; Sheila walked just ahead
+of him, her arm around the waist of Charlotte Davis, a girl of her own
+age whom she had taken, with solemn vows, for her dearest friend.  He
+might call the two girls, he thought, and together they could soon have
+a fine harvest, but his inclination rejected Charlotte almost as
+quickly as the idea occurred to him.  For Charlotte, with her pert
+little freckled nose and her shrewd blue eyes, was not a comrade to
+Ted's taste.  She had never shown him a proper reverence, and he was at
+the stage when a boy desires feminine tribute even while he affects to
+scorn it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charlotte had never understood him.  Or was it what he did not
+suspect&mdash;that she had always understood him too well?  At any rate she
+had a disconcerting way of gazing at him, her head cocked impudently on
+one side, her eyes half speculative, half amused.  And her sharp,
+teasing tongue was even more disconcerting than her naughty, quizzical
+stare.  He could imagine, from past experience at her hands, what would
+happen now if he included her in his plan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you want of more nuts?" she would ask, with the inquiring
+innocence that he had learned to distrust.  "Haven't you got all you
+can eat?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, but&mdash;" he would begin to explain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she would interrupt him in the middle of his sentence with:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I see!  You just want to do more than anybody else, don't you?
+Theodore Kent always does more than anybody else!  Don't he, Sheila?"
+And this with a great show of admiration.  Yet even to Sheila, whose
+loyal mind conceived with difficulty of any disrespect to him, the
+mockery of the apparent admiration would be obvious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, that was what would happen if he invited Charlotte to stay, and he
+felt himself flush at the fancied conversation.  But he would ask
+Sheila.  She really admired him!  She appreciated him!  If she was
+sometimes queer, she was a nice little thing in spite of that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila!" he called.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She paused and looked back at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come here a minute," he urged.  "I want to tell you something."  And
+when she would have drawn Charlotte with her, he added: "It's a secret."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At which transparent hint, Charlotte flung off Sheila's arm and marched
+on, singing maliciously:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Ted has got a secret&mdash;secret&mdash;secret!<BR>
+Like a little gir-rul&mdash;gir-rul&mdash;gir-rul!"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+And hearing himself thus effeminized, Ted winced and wondered if he had
+not better have asked her after all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila came up to him with a troubled face.  The feud between him and
+Charlotte always hurt and bewildered her.  "You've made Charlotte feel
+bad," she chided reproachfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But with Charlotte's taunt still ringing in his ears, Ted was ruthless:
+"Fiddlesticks!  If she feels bad about that, she's silly.  And I can't
+tell secrets to silly girls."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila was sorry for Charlotte, but she began to feel vaguely flattered
+on her own account: "What's the secret?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know a place&mdash;just a little way back yonder&mdash;that's <I>fat</I> with nuts!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila looked disappointed.  It seemed, at this hour, rather a poor
+secret.  But Ted, still with the air of honoring her above all others
+of her sex, went on: "I'm going back and get some.  And"&mdash;this
+impressively&mdash;"I'm going to let you come with me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila brightened at the magnanimous offer, but a moment later grew
+uneasy: "Grandmother would be scared if I didn't come home with the
+others."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How'd she find it out?  Your house is farthest.  She won't see the
+rest of 'em."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&mdash;but when I tell her&mdash;" said Sheila uneasily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You <I>needn't</I> tell her!  Don't you understand?  She'll never know you
+<I>didn't</I> come home with the others!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted had a scrupulous personal honor, a pride, as it were, in his
+integrity.  He told the truth about his own transgressions and paid the
+piper without complaint.  But for others his truth was sometimes
+equivocal, his morality comfortably lax.  And these lapses from grace
+on his part always filled Sheila with a shocked dismay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she protested, "I couldn't do that!  Why, it would be <I>lying</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fiddlesticks!  Where's the lie?  You wouldn't <I>tell</I> one!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It <I>would</I> be a lie," persisted Sheila.  "It would be a lie if I let
+her think what wasn't so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fiddlesticks!" he pronounced again.  But he looked at her approvingly,
+nevertheless.  Sheila was always "square," and he liked her the better
+for it.  "Well, you go along with Charlotte, then," he added
+regretfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he had tempted her more successfully than he knew, and her mind was
+busily working toward some compromise with her conscience.  She cast an
+eye in the direction Charlotte had taken, and that glance decided her.
+"Charlotte's out of sight," she said.  "I&mdash;I believe I'll stay,
+Ted&mdash;<I>but I'll tell when I get home</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was late afternoon when they did at last start homeward&mdash;with
+baskets as full as Ted had predicted.  Going through the bright-hued
+woods, where the scarlet and burnished yellow of long-lived leaves
+still flaunted ribbons of flame and the dead and dun-colored broke
+crisply beneath their feet, they fell amicably silent, trudging briskly
+along with the impetus of health and hunger.  Ted's silence was the
+content of a body drenched all day in sunshine and clean, cold air, and
+now deliciously placid; but Sheila's quiet was of a different quality.
+For her the woods were full of mysteries and miracles; she was sure
+that little people, as quick and elusive as shadows, darted hither and
+thither at her very feet, and that enchantment was spread there like a
+fine-spun web.  As she walked onward, brooding over things unseen and
+yet so surely true for her, there recurred to her a dream of the night
+before, and so vivid was her remembrance of it that she seemed to be
+dreaming a second time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the dream, oddly enough, she had been walking through these same
+woods.  Here and there she had seen a bright leaf blowing; she had
+heard her own footsteps on the brittle leaves beneath; a slender shaft
+of sunlight&mdash;the last of the day&mdash;had stolen downward and touched her
+like a long finger.  Then, suddenly, the golden finger had withdrawn
+and the dusk had fallen, not gradually, but in swift, downward billows
+of mist that flooded upon her and blinded her.  She had closed her eyes
+against them for a moment, and when she opened them again, the mist had
+disappeared, leaving her in a space of clear gray light.  Through this
+light some one had come toward her, a shape at first vague and
+ethereal, as if it were a lingering spirit of the mist, but gathering
+substance and definite outline as it advanced until it became the
+figure of a woman with arms that reached toward her for embrace.
+Involuntarily Sheila's own arms had reached forth in answer; she had
+taken a stumbling step forward; through the pale light there had
+glimmered on her, for an instant of revelation, the shadow's face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>And she had wakened with the cry: "Mother!"</I>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A strange dream, especially for a little girl whose mother had died
+soon after her birth.  But that dead mother had always been a dear
+familiar of Sheila's thoughts; her picture had been like a living
+companion.  And though the sleeping vision of her had driven the child,
+startled to the very soul, to her grandmother's bed, now, as she trod
+the woods that had been the scene of the dream-miracle, she remembered
+it without fear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What if, after all, dreams sometimes came true?"  The thought
+quickened her breath, but not her feet.  In the night she had fled from
+a dream too poignant, but now she felt no impulse for flight.  Rather,
+she delayed her steps, thrilling as she recognized about her the
+dream's landmarks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For now there arose before Sheila's dazed eyes that rare and marvellous
+phenomenon of a dream reproduced, at least in its physical aspects, by
+reality.  And in such an experience, given perhaps to one in a
+thousand, it is the reality that seems to tremble&mdash;threatened by some
+older and stronger truth&mdash;beneath one's feet.  So it trembled now for
+Sheila as she saw again those features in the face of the woods that
+had impressed her sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here were the few rich leaves, fluttering lightly in the evening wind
+as they had fluttered in her dreaming vision of them!  And now her
+heart fluttered with them, so much stranger than the dream itself was
+its incredible repetition.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There&mdash;just ahead&mdash;yes, surely! there was the same long finger of pale
+sunlight striking downward through the stripped trees!  Presently she
+would pass beneath its touch, feeling it faintly warm upon her
+cheek&mdash;as she had felt it in her dream!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Afterwards would be the dusk.  And then&mdash;<I>what if dreams came true</I>?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was not afraid, but instinctively she drew nearer the boy beside
+her.  "Ted," she breathed, in an awed whisper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Huh?" he asked, roused from his own silent well-being.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she did not answer, and he strode cheerfully on without troubling
+himself to question her again.  "What if dreams come true?" she was
+saying within herself, but she could not, after all, put the thought
+into words for Ted to scoff at.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then, before she reached it, the finger of sunlight vanished and
+the dusk was upon her, not swiftly billowing, but slipping softly
+downward like a silken veil.  She was not afraid, she told herself, but
+the dusk chilled her and she shivered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After the dusk&mdash;if dreams came true!&mdash;would be&mdash;  And then her heart
+seemed to stop its beating.  For dim in the distance, but coming toward
+her through the trees, there walked a shadow.  And even while she
+watched, it gathered shape and substance unto itself; it ceased to be a
+floating fragment of mist and became a woman!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But now Sheila's heart began to beat again&mdash;riotously.  Her
+hesitations, her unacknowledged fears, were succeeded by a sense of
+exquisite exultation.  The miracle was at hand&mdash;and she rushed upon it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ted!"  It was not a whisper this time, but a cry, and the boy turned
+sharply.  But Sheila had already started forward, calling wildly:
+"<I>Mother!  Mother!  Mother!</I>"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And though the woman was still but a distant figure, she heard that
+piercing call and answered it with one as clear and passionate:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>My little girl!  I'm coming!  I'm coming!</I>"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For an instant Ted stood motionless, struck to the earth by that simple
+horror of the unusual, the abnormal, which the very sane and
+unimaginative always feel.  Then, with a single bound, he overtook
+Sheila and laid a detaining hand on her shoulder: "Sheila, <I>stop</I>!
+It's Crazy Lisbeth!  I know her voice!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was right.  The advancing figure was not the beautiful mother-spirit
+of Sheila's dream, but a flesh and blood mother who, years before, had
+lost her husband and only child, and become crazed by her grief.  Ever
+since then her heart had been wandering on a piteous quest for her
+dead, and her wits with it.  And because she was very poor and quite
+harmless, suffering only the illusion that she would sooner or later
+find her husband and little daughter, the town was kind to her; set her
+to work when she would; fed her when she would not work; and left her
+free for her sad and futile search.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila and Ted knew her well and no fear of her had ever touched them
+before, but now, as she came onward with her insanity strong upon her,
+both terror and repugnance seized on Ted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She thinks you're her child," he said angrily.  "And no wonder!  What
+made you do such a thing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila turned to him with her explanation on her lips&mdash;the whole
+confession of her dream and her momentary belief that it had come
+true&mdash;but at sight of him looking at her so protectingly and yet so
+severely, her impetuous words faltered and grew cold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I was thinking of my mother," she stammered shyly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The unexpected reply embarrassed him.  He wanted to scold her, but at
+this mention of her dead mother he could not.  So he only dug his foot
+into the ground and gazed toward Lisbeth, who was now almost upon them,
+stumbling in her happy haste.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We can't run away from her," said Sheila.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She thinks you're her child!" he protested again, but less harshly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," admitted Sheila gently, "like I thought she&mdash;"  And then, at
+some sudden counsel of her heart, she exclaimed: "You stay here.  I'll
+know what to do!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to Ted an unbelievable thing that he saw happen before him
+then.  For Sheila stepped quickly forward to meet the hurrying, pitiful
+creature who sought her; stepped forward and straight into the woman's
+arms.  As he stared, a shudder of disgust shook Ted from head to foot.
+"It's horrible!" he muttered to himself.  "It's horrible for Sheila to
+let Crazy Lisbeth hug her!"  But he could not go and draw Sheila away.
+His repulsion would not permit him to approach the spectacle that
+excited it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And meanwhile the little girl was murmuring, still in the fold of
+Lisbeth's arm, words that he could not understand, but that drifted to
+him with the soft sounds of pleadings and promises.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila!" he called peremptorily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did not reply, but talked on to Lisbeth, interrupted now and then
+by the latter, but evidently not discouraged in her purpose of
+persuasion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila!" Ted called again, and this time uneasily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now she answered, over her shoulder, and with a motion that held
+him back: "We're going home!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that he understood what she was bent upon.  She had been coaxing
+Lisbeth to go home.  But why should she concern herself about one who
+was used to roam the whole countryside at any hour of the day or night,
+walking unmolested in the desolate safety of her affliction?  Why,
+above all, should Sheila go home <I>with</I> her?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For that, apparently, was what Sheila meant to do.  She had already
+started onward with her self-appointed charge, and though the woods had
+grown more shadowy, Ted could see the two figures plainly, walking
+close together and linked by the woman's arm.  That arm about Sheila's
+shoulder&mdash;Crazy Lisbeth's arm!&mdash;set him shuddering again as violently
+as the first embrace had done.  It was an affront to every fiber of his
+thoroughly normal being.  But still he could not go nearer to remove
+it; by the law of his own nature he had to stay outside the circle of
+Lisbeth's madness and Sheila's folly.  And his sense of responsibility
+had, perforce, to appease itself with his following them at a discreet
+range&mdash;a distant and sulking protector.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to him, as he strode on behind them with irate steps, that
+they would never get out of the woods.  Little woodland sounds, a
+snapping bough, a breaking leaf, a scurrying squirrel, sounds that he
+would not ordinarily have noticed, now startled him into fright.  The
+gradual failing of the light oppressed him almost to panic; and when
+the early twilight settled somberly over the woods, such weird, moving
+shadows rose up all around him that he would fain have taken to his
+heels had he not feared what lay before him more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Crazy Lisbeth scrubbing his mother's kitchen floor was only a harmless
+"innocent," the pensioner of his condescending pity; but Crazy Lisbeth
+in the woods at nightfall&mdash;Ah, then she became a different and a
+dreadful creature, one to shake the heart and alarm the nerves of the
+bravest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila appeared to think otherwise and to find Lisbeth docile enough,
+for despite Ted's conviction that the homeward way was interminable,
+these two went steadily onward and at a fair pace.  And after no long
+interval their attendant knight had the satisfaction of following them
+from the covert of the woods into the open spaces of the town.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here Ted's alarms left him, abruptly and completely.  He could have
+laughed aloud at the bogies he had escaped.  His self-respect came
+swaggering back, and with it the determination to assert a belated
+mastery of Sheila.  She was not a block ahead, and now he hailed her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But as she had done in the woods, she merely called to him over her
+shoulder: "We're going home!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Crazy Lisbeth lived on the other side of the town, in a mean little
+cottage that more fortunate householders had deserted.  It was a long
+walk there and the hour was already late, seven at the least.  A vision
+of Mrs. Caldwell watching for Sheila flashed across Ted's mind and
+strengthened his resistance against this further perversity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must go with me right away!" he exclaimed, hastening after Sheila.
+"Your grandmother'll be scared to death!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," cried Sheila, stopping now, but with her hand still resolutely
+gripping Lisbeth's, "Oh, I know it, Ted!  But I can't help it!"  And
+though her tone was sharp with distress, she turned obstinately on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was nothing for him but to follow her to the end of her
+adventure.  Ted knew it from experience.  Sheila in one of her moods,
+obsessed by some "queer notion," was immovable, though sweetly
+reasonable at all other times.  So with a bad grace he went on in her
+wake, beset now, not by fear, but by keen resentment of the whole
+absurd situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus they came at last, the ill-assorted trio, to Lisbeth's cottage,
+sitting lonely and unlit by lamp or fire upon a bare hillside.  Sheila
+and Lisbeth paused, and Ted stopped, too, still a few yards from them,
+but expectant of some further freak and ready to spring forward with a
+rebuke that would end the mad episode on the spot.  But just then the
+moon swung slowly out from some prisoning cloud, flooding the hillside
+with light, and as Ted saw Lisbeth's face, he forgot his intention of
+remonstrance and could but stand and gaze.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment he thought that the woman before him could not be Crazy
+Lisbeth at all, and then he thought that the moonlight tricked him.
+But of one thing he was sure; be the cause what it might, he saw a
+Lisbeth magically and beautifully changed.  Foolish and pathetic and
+middle-aged she had been only yesterday, but to-night love and joy had
+had their way with her for a little while and had transformed her
+almost into youth and comeliness again.  Unconscious of Ted's watchful
+and hostile presence, as she had been from the first, she turned to
+Sheila with a simple and moving tenderness:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come," she said, opening her gate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Sheila stood motionless, her face soft with a pity that could no
+longer protect.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come," urged Lisbeth, "come, darling precious!  This is home!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Sheila did not stir.  "I&mdash;I can't," she answered gently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can't?  <I>You can't</I>?  Oh, it's been a dream!&mdash;a dream!&mdash;a dream!
+You're not real&mdash;you're never real!  I see you&mdash;and see you&mdash;and see
+you!  <I>But when I reach you, you're not real&mdash;not real</I>!  I believed it
+was different this time&mdash;but it's always the same!  <I>You're not real</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And with that despairing cry, the Lisbeth whom Ted knew so well stood
+there before him again, old and foolish and piteous, whimpering softly
+and plucking at her ragged dress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila put her hand on the bent shoulder&mdash;bent to its long burden.  "I
+<I>am</I> real," said the child in a clear, steadfast voice that somehow,
+penetrated Lisbeth's sad whimsies, "I <I>am</I> real!&mdash;and I'll come back!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll come back?"  And Lisbeth ceased her whimpering and laid
+pleading hold on her.  "You'll come back?  I don't believe you're real
+now&mdash;I <I>can't</I> believe it any more!  But I don't mind that if you'll
+come back anyway.  You will?  You promise?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I promise," answered Sheila.  "If you are good&mdash;if you go straight
+into the house&mdash;I'll come back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lisbeth looked at her for an instant with an odd shrewdness in her poor
+foolish face.  Then she nodded, evidently satisfied with what she saw.
+"I'll be good," she agreed.  "I'll go in.  Oh, my pretty darling!  My
+dearest precious!  Lisbeth will be good!"  And after a quick clasping
+of Sheila, she went obediently into the mean little house and, without
+even a backward glance, closed the door behind her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila stepped toward Ted.  "I'll go home now," she said wearily.  Then
+she added, as if she were stretching out a wistful hand to his
+sympathy: "Oh, Ted, she thought&mdash;until the last&mdash;that I was her little
+girl!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he said, all his resentment returning, "and you let her!  You
+<I>let</I> her, Sheila!  How could you do such a thing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it comforted her.  It comforted her to think so, Ted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She wasn't comforted when she thought you weren't real!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, she was&mdash;even then.  She was when I promised to come back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can't keep your promise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why can't I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your grandmother won't let you.  You know that as well as I do.
+'Tisn't your place to comfort Crazy Lisbeth, and Mrs. Caldwell will
+tell you so.  Her troubles aren't any of your business."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are!" cried Sheila, with an anger now that matched his own, "they
+are&mdash;because I understand how she feels!  I haven't any mother&mdash;and
+Lisbeth hasn't any child.  Don't you see that it's just the same for
+both of us?  And <I>her</I> little girl may be comforting <I>my</I> mother up in
+heaven right now!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And she may <I>not</I>!" he retorted,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe it!" she proclaimed, carried away by the imaginary scene she
+had evoked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Ted, with his most exasperating tone of superior
+intelligence, "<I>I</I> don't!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She glanced up at him as he trudged beside her, his face firm with his
+substantial beliefs, his feet sturdily treading a very solid earth.
+And though she was only a little girl, unlearned in the finger-posts of
+character, Sheila felt what she could not name nor analyze.  She
+remembered that she had almost told him her dream, and she shivered at
+the thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," she remarked ruefully, "you don't believe anything that you can't
+<I>see</I>, do you, Ted?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't believe lies!" he replied crisply, "not even when I tell 'em
+myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Lies</I>?" she repeated in astonishment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stopped and faced her.  "Look here!  You said you couldn't let your
+grandmother think you came home with the rest of 'em when you didn't
+because that would be lying."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," agreed Sheila with conviction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you let Lisbeth think what wasn't so!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words flashed their accusation at her with unmistakable clarity.
+"Yes," she assented once more, slowly, "I did."  And then, with pained
+surprise, "Why, that <I>was</I> a lie, wasn't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now," finished Ted ruthlessly, "you're making up lies about heaven
+for yourself!  What's the matter with you, Sheila?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had reached Mrs. Caldwell's gate, and for a moment they stood
+staring at each other, the question hanging in the air between them.
+Then there came to Sheila a swift, inward vision of the contradictions
+of her own temperament, a vision untempered by the merciful knowledge
+that, in the final analysis, all human nature is very much alike.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she cried, "what <I>is</I> the matter with me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And with a sob, she fled up the path to the house, leaving Ted
+frightened, ashamed, and more bewildered than ever.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER III
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The moment when Sheila had that terrifying inward vision of her own
+inconsistencies marked the beginning of her self-consciousness.  For a
+while this was acute and painful.  She was always afraid of finding
+herself, quite unintentionally, involved in a labyrinth of untruth, and
+her conscience, which passionately rejected any dishonesty that it
+perceived, was continually occupied in analyzing her emotions and
+impulses, her most guileless thoughts and her simplest actions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am naturally a liar," she told herself solemnly.  "I must watch
+myself all the time&mdash;because I am naturally a liar!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she said nothing of her self-revelation and ensuing struggles to
+Mrs. Caldwell.  It was a thing to be overcome in shame and silence, and
+alone, this innate wickedness of hers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her shame was indeed so genuine that she met Ted, for the first time
+after he had shown her failing to her, with deep reluctance.  He must
+have been thinking of her awful tendency ever since they had parted&mdash;as
+she had been.  And he could not possibly respect her!  But to her
+amazement, he greeted her with his usual manner of untroubled good
+fellowship.  Clearly, she had not sunk in his estimation.  She was
+astounded, and shocked at him as well as at herself, until it occurred
+to her that he might have forgotten the matter altogether.  This was
+incredible, but more honorably incredible than that he should remember
+and not care.  And if it were the case, she must not take advantage of
+his forgetfulness; she must not unfairly keep his esteem.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ted," she said, with an effort worthy of a more saintly confessor,
+"Ted, I reckon I ought to remind you about the way I acted with
+Lisbeth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What about it?  Did your grandmother scold you much?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, no.  Don't you understand what I mean?"  It was too painful to
+put her sin into words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has Lisbeth been after you again?"  But the question was obviously not
+one of sympathy, for Ted's voice was sharp now.  At the mention of
+Lisbeth he had recalled his grievance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," repeated Sheila.  "I meant I ought to remind you about&mdash;<I>me</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as Ted stared at her with no gleam of comprehension in his eyes,
+she was forced to become explicit: "I mean&mdash;the way I let Lisbeth
+believe what wasn't so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted looked at her speculatively for a moment, wondering if he had
+better rebuke her again for her folly, so that she should not commit it
+a second time.  She would be capable of doing the whole thing over,
+under the impression that she was benefiting Lisbeth.  She was so queer!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were very silly," he said finally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was wicked!" she exclaimed in a fervor of repentance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted continued to regard her with that speculative gaze.  "Well, you
+<I>are</I> a queer one!" he ejaculated slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila flushed.  She had abased herself in penitence, and he only
+thought her queer.  He <I>always</I> thought her queer!  She turned on him
+with a flare of temper that burned up her humility so far as he was
+concerned:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How <I>dare</I> you call me queer?  How <I>dare</I> you call me silly?  I hate
+you, Theodore Kent!  I never want to see you again as long as I live!
+You're&mdash;<I>you're an abomination in the eyes of the Lord</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And with this scriptural anathema, plagiarized from the Presbyterian
+minister's latest sermon, she flung away from him in a fit of wrath
+that did much to restore her normal self-respect.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+However, though she felt no further uneasiness in the presence of
+Ted&mdash;whom she forgave the next day with the readiness that is the
+virtue of a quick temper&mdash;she continued her vigil over herself until
+time softened her impression of her iniquity.  And even then, when her
+self-criticism had relaxed, her consciousness of her individual
+temperament remained.  She had discovered herself, and this self, like
+her shadow which she had discovered with wild excitement in her
+babyhood, would be her life companion.  After she ceased to fear it, as
+a possible moral monster, she began to take a profound interest in it
+and its behavior.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What will you be doing next?" she would inquire of it quaintly, "what
+<I>will</I> you be doing next, Other-Sheila?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did in fact credit this newly realized self of hers with a very
+distinct and separate personality.  All her caprices, her unexpected
+and unexplainable impulses, her mystic imaginings, she laid at its
+door, and in her fantastic name for it&mdash;"Other-Sheila"&mdash;she probably
+found the true name for something that the psychologists define far
+more clumsily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But stung into sensitiveness by Ted's taunt about her queerness, she
+kept her discovery of Other-Sheila to herself.  Not even to Mrs.
+Caldwell, who was a friend as well as a grandmother; not even to Peter,
+who was all the while feeding her eager young mind with food both
+wholesome and stimulating, and becoming, in his task, a comrade who
+rivalled Ted in her affections, did she confide the existence of this
+other self.  With self-consciousness came the instinct of reserve&mdash;not
+a lack of frankness, but a kind of modesty of the soul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had passed her fifteenth birthday before Other-Sheila roused her to
+unrest.  Until that time, the shadowy self dwelling deep within her,
+and every now and then flashing forth elusively just long enough to
+manifest its reality, had been a secret and delightful companion, one
+with whom she held animated conversations when alone, and from whose
+acquiescence to all her wishes and opinions she extracted considerable
+comfort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Other-Sheila," she would say to herself, "is the only person who
+always agrees with me."  And then she would add, with a glint of
+whimsical humor in her gray eyes, "I reckon that's what an Other-Sheila
+is <I>for</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But after a while Other-Sheila became less acquiescent and more
+assertive.  And for the first time in her life, Sheila felt within her
+the troubling spirit of discontent.  She wanted something, wanted it
+desperately as the very young always do, but she did not know what that
+something was.  It was a tantalizing experience, and she saw no end to
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I could only find out <I>what</I> I want, I might get it," she mused.
+And then, "Don't you know what it is, Other-Sheila?"  But Other-Sheila
+was provokingly unresponsive, though it was probably her desire that
+fretted the objective Sheila's mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Caldwell saw the unrest in the young girl's face and recognized it
+for what it was&mdash;the unrest of growth.  It was a look of unborn things
+stirring beneath the surface, stirring and quivering as flowers must
+stir and tremble beneath the ground before they break their way through
+to the sun.  But though she watched eagerly from day to day, ready to
+do her part when the hour for it should come, Mrs. Caldwell was too
+wise a gardener to hasten bloom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peter," said she one day, when he had paused in an indolent stroll to
+chat with her over her garden hedge, "Peter, it's a terrible thing to
+be young!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it?" he laughed.  "Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So many things have to happen to you!"  And out of the security of her
+placid years Mrs. Caldwell spoke with an earnest pity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter laughed again.  "Well, I'm young&mdash;at least, I suppose I would be
+so considered.  And <I>nothing</I> ever happens to me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Caldwell surveyed him with mischievous eyes.  "No, Peter," she
+contradicted, "you're not young&mdash;yet.  You're not even alive yet.
+You're too lazy to really live!  But you'll have to come to it some
+day.  We all have to be born finally."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He chuckled at her comprehension of him.  Then a disturbed look
+fluttered across his face: "Do you actually mean that there's no
+escape?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None!  It's better to yield gracefully&mdash;and have it over.  And if you
+don't hurry a bit, Sheila will be through her growing pains while yours
+are still before you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Little Sheila?  The master's star pupil?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she insisted, "little Sheila.  You'll be taking her to parties
+in a long frock before you know it.  She graduates from the Seminary
+next year."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Peter was nearer to meeting Sheila in a long frock than either he
+or Mrs. Caldwell dreamed.  For at that moment Sheila was planning to
+wear one before she was a week older.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She and Charlotte Davis were in the latter's dainty room, and spread on
+the bed before them was Charlotte's new party frock.  Charlotte's
+father was the wealthiest man in Shadyville, and both she and her frock
+did his wealth justice.  She was now at home, for the Easter vacation,
+from a fashionable boarding-school in Baltimore, the Shadyville
+Seminary not satisfying Mr. Davis's requirements for his youngest and
+favorite daughter.  Her absence from the little town during the greater
+part of the past two years had enabled her to erase its traces.  She
+had become a typical city-bred girl and she appeared pert, smartly
+dressed and, for her sixteen years, amazingly mature.  She had always
+been prettier than Sheila, though no one had ever realized it and
+probably no one ever would.  For her prettiness was so informed with
+sharp intelligence that her face had a challenging and almost
+aggressive quality.  Boys had never admired her, and men were not
+likely to do so either, so lacking was she in the softer and more
+appealing charms of her sex.  Even at sixteen her bright blue eyes were
+a trifle hard, not because of what they had seen&mdash;for she was, in
+experience, still the nice little ingénue&mdash;but of what they had seen
+<I>through</I>.  The veil of credulity never dimmed her clear, bold glance.
+But for Sheila she was always gentle, so strong in this shrewd,
+fastidious young creature was her one deep and uncritical affection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the two girls examined the frock on the bed&mdash;a rose chiffon over
+silk that fairly shrieked of expense&mdash;Sheila sighed.  "Will you wear it
+Friday night?" she inquired wistfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For on Friday night Charlotte was to give a party&mdash;a real evening party
+to which the debutantes and even the older set were coming, as well as
+the school-girls and boys.  It would be Sheila's first grown-up
+party&mdash;and she had only a white muslin and a blue sash to make herself
+fine with.  Thus Mrs. Caldwell had dressed for parties until her
+marriage, and it had never occurred to her to provide any other costume
+for Sheila, who was not yet quite sixteen.  Besides, in Mrs. Caldwell's
+opinion&mdash;and even in the exquisite Peter's&mdash;there was no sweeter sight
+than a young girl in white muslin and blue ribbons.  But to Sheila, in
+comparison with Charlotte's splendor, the white muslin seemed
+unspeakably dowdy.  And so, when she asked Charlotte about her toilette
+for the great occasion, it was with a heart of unfestive heaviness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course I'll wear this.  That's what I got it for.  Oh, Sheila,
+aren't the little sleeves cunning?  Just half way to the elbow&mdash;it's
+lucky my arms aren't thin!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Sheila only sighed again in response to Charlotte's enthusiasm, and
+now Charlotte heard the sigh and glanced at her with sudden
+attentiveness.  "What will you wear?" she demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll have to wear my white muslin.  I haven't anything else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Sheila, that's too bad!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wouldn't mind so <I>very</I> much except for&mdash;"  And Sheila's eyes,
+wandering sadly toward Charlotte's chiffon, finished the sentence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Charlotte's dismay had already vanished.  "You won't have to wear
+your white muslin either," she announced in her positive, capable way.
+"You can wear one of my frocks, Sheila.  You must!  Why"&mdash;this in a
+burst of generosity&mdash;"why, you can wear this one!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, I couldn't do that.  Not your new frock, Charlotte!  But
+you're a dear to offer it!"  And Sheila gave her friend a grateful hug,
+though Charlotte never encouraged caresses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then, perhaps not this one," agreed Charlotte, to whom, used
+though she was to her pretty clothes, it would have been something of a
+hardship to surrender the first wearing of them to anyone else,
+"perhaps not this one&mdash;rose is more my color than yours.  But
+another&mdash;a blue silk mull that will be lovely with your blue-gray eyes
+and black hair.  I've worn it only two or three times, and never in
+Shadyville."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I couldn't," said Sheila again.  "Grandmother wouldn't let me.
+I'm sure she wouldn't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't see why."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She wouldn't," persisted Sheila regretfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now look here, Sheila.  She wouldn't <I>know</I>.  You're going to spend
+the night with me and dress after you get here.  And <I>she's</I> not coming
+to the party."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the same form of temptation which Ted had offered Sheila in the
+woods three years before, but now it was tenfold stronger.  Then a mere
+good time was at stake; now the gratification of her young vanity, of
+her first girlish desire to make herself charming, was to be gained.
+And as she had hesitated that day in the woods, for the sake of the
+fun, she hesitated now for the sake of this new, clamoring instinct.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd have to tell her," she temporized.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then tell her," assented Charlotte impatiently, "but don't tell her
+until afterwards."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Sheila's own method of that earlier time&mdash;a middle path between
+conscience and desire, and lightly skirting both.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I might do that," she remarked thoughtfully.  "If I told her&mdash;even
+afterwards&mdash;it wouldn't be quite so wicked.  And I <I>want</I> to wear the
+frock dreadfully!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just tell her as if it's nothing at all," advised Charlotte cleverly,
+"as if we never even thought of it until after you got here that
+evening.  Then she won't mind it a bit.  You'll see she won't!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, she will.  She won't like my wearing your clothes.  She won't
+think it's <I>nice</I>.  And when I tell, I'll tell the whole thing&mdash;the way
+it really happened.  But"&mdash;and Sheila's full-lipped, generous mouth
+straightened into a thin line of resolution&mdash;"I'm going to do it
+anyway, Charlotte!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Three days intervened before the party, and they were not happy days
+for Sheila.  Her sense of guilt depressed every moment of the time,
+especially when she was in Mrs. Caldwell's trusting presence.  For
+Sheila was not equipped by nature to sin comfortably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But when the eventful night arrived, and she beheld herself at last in
+Charlotte's blue silk mull, with its short sleeves and little round
+neck frothy with lace, and its soft skirt falling to her very feet, she
+forgot every scruple that had been sacrificed to that enchanting end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charlotte, gay as a bright-hued bird with her blue eyes and yellow hair
+and rose-colored gown, and her mother and young Mrs. Bailey, her
+married sister, all stood around Sheila in an admiring circle, every
+now and then breaking out anew into delighted exclamations over their
+transformed Cinderella.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't she too sweet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And look at her eyes&mdash;as blue as Charlotte's, aren't they?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what a young lady she seems!  Isn't that long skirt becoming to
+her?" cried Charlotte.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charlotte had worn her party frocks long for the last year, and she
+approved emphatically of the dignity thus attained for a few hours.  It
+gave her a delicious foretaste of the real young ladyhood to come, when
+she meant to be very dignified and very brilliant indeed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But to all their pleased outcry, Sheila said nothing at all.  She
+merely stood, radiant and silent, before them until they had to leave
+her for a last survey of the rooms downstairs, the flowers and the
+supper.  Then, sure that she was quite alone, Cinderella stole to the
+mirror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a long time she gazed at the girl in the glass; a straight, slim
+girl in a delicate little gown that somehow brought out fully, for the
+first time, the charming delicacy of her face&mdash;not the delicacy of
+small features, of frail health, nor of a timid temper, but of an
+exceeding and subtle fineness, partly of the flesh, partly of the
+spirit, like the fineness of rare and gossamer fabrics.  Sheila, of
+course, did not perceive this, which was always to be her one real
+claim to beauty, but she saw the frock itself, and white young
+shoulders rising from it, and above it a pair of shining eyes.  And
+suddenly an ache came sharply into her throat and the shining eyes
+filled with tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she whispered, leaning to the figure in the mirror, "Oh, <I>this</I>
+is what I wanted!  <I>I wanted to be beautiful</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The evening was half over when Sheila, still up-borne on the tide of
+her feminine exultation, glanced across the room to find that Peter
+stood there quietly regarding her.  Straightway she forsook the youth
+who was administering awkward flattery to her new-born vanity, and
+hastened to the side of her old friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Peter, don't I look nice?" she demanded eagerly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Peter ignored the frank appeal for a compliment.  "I think you'd
+better call me Mr. Burnett," said he.  And his tone was so serious that
+she failed to catch the banter of his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, I've always called you Peter, just like grandmother does&mdash;always!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," admitted Peter, "and it's been very jolly and friendly.  But,
+Sheila, I must have <I>something</I> to remind me that you're still a little
+girl and my pupil.  There's nothing in your appearance to suggest it,
+but perhaps&mdash;if you will address me with a great deal of respect&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that, Sheila laughed and patted her frock: "Oh, I understand you
+now!  Do I really seem so grown-up?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So grown-up that I can't understand how Mrs. Caldwell came to let you
+do it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Peter!  <I>Oh, Peter</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, what's the matter?" he asked, surprised at the poignant
+exclamation.  But she turned abruptly away from him, and presently he
+saw her blue gown flutter through a distant doorway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now I wonder," he pondered, "what in the world I've done.  Offended
+her by appearing to criticize Mrs. Caldwell, I suppose."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Peter had done a much graver thing than that.  Unconsciously, he
+had summoned Sheila's conscience to its deserted duty; and already,
+like any well-intentioned conscience that has taken a vacation, it was
+making up for lost time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With that comment of Peter's&mdash;"I can't understand how Mrs. Caldwell
+came to let you do it"&mdash;Sheila's little house of pleasure suddenly
+tumbled to the ground.  She had not meant to be sorry about the
+deception of the frock until <I>after</I> the party, and until her encounter
+with Peter she had been successful enough in holding penitence at bay.
+That vision of herself in the mirror, seeming to answer some longing of
+her very soul, had indeed kept her forgetful of everything but a sense
+of fulfillment and triumph.  But now, reminded of her grandmother, she
+began to be sorry at once&mdash;impatiently, violently sorry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must go home," she murmured to herself distressfully, as she slipped
+unobserved through the crowded rooms.  "I must go home.  I can't wait
+until morning!  I must tell grandmother <I>now</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so it happened that Mrs. Caldwell, looking out from her
+sitting-room window into the early spring night, saw a slim figure
+speed up her garden path as if urged by some importunate need; and the
+next moment Sheila was kneeling before her, with her face hidden upon
+her shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Sheila!&mdash;dear child!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, grandmother, will you forgive me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What should I forgive you?  I'm sure you've done nothing wrong this
+time!"  And Mrs. Caldwell, who was accustomed to the rigors of Sheila's
+conscience, smiled above the face on her breast with tender amusement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Sheila sprang to her feet and stepped back a pace or two.  "Don't
+you <I>see</I>?" she cried tragically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then Mrs. Caldwell discovered the transformation of her Cinderella.
+No demure little maiden this, in the white muslin and blue ribbons of
+an ingenuous spirit, but a fashionably clad "young lady," who appeared
+to have grown suddenly tall and rather stately with the clothing of her
+slim body in the long, soft gown.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila!" exclaimed Mrs. Caldwell involuntarily.  And then, with her
+hands outstretched to the impressive young culprit, "Tell me all about
+it, dear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And sitting on the floor at her grandmother's feet, regardless of
+Charlotte's crushed flounces, Sheila poured out her impetuous
+confession, from the first moment of temptation and yielding to the
+final one of Peter's awakening words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And when he spoke of you, grandmother, I just couldn't <I>bear</I> it!  I
+wondered how I could have been happy at all&mdash;I wondered how I could
+have forgotten you for a minute!  I hated the frock!  I hated the
+party!  And I hated myself most of all!  I had to come home and ask you
+to forgive me right away!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And down went her head into Mrs. Caldwell's lap.  "Do you&mdash;-think&mdash;you
+can forgive me?" came the muffled plea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For answer Mrs. Caldwell bent and kissed the prostrate head, and it
+burrowed more comfortably against her knee.  But Mrs. Caldwell did not
+speak.  She was waiting for something, and when Sheila continued to
+burrow, in the contented silence of a penitence achieved, she inquired
+quietly: "Well, dear?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila lifted her head at that, and looked straight into the wise,
+sweet eyes above her: "I wanted something!  I wanted something
+dreadfully!  And I didn't know what it was.  And then, when I saw
+myself in Charlotte's frock&mdash;and so changed&mdash;I thought I'd found what I
+wanted.  I thought&mdash;I thought I'd wanted to be beautiful!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Mrs. Caldwell gently, "I used to think that, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, grandmother, did you?  Then you understand how I felt!  But&mdash;but,
+you see, it didn't last.  I wanted to be good <I>more</I>.  That's what made
+me come home.  Grandmother, do you suppose <I>that's</I> what I've wanted
+all the time, without knowing it&mdash;to be good?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the question, Mrs. Caldwell, wise gardener that she was, realized
+that one of the flowers which she had divined, stirring in the depths
+of Sheila's being, was pushing its way upward to the light, and that
+the moment had come for her to help it.  She slipped her arms around
+the girl kneeling before her, as if seeking in love's touch inspiration
+for love's words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think you will always want to be good," she said, "and I think you
+will always want to be beautiful.  Women do, Sheila dear&mdash;even the
+women who are least beautiful and least&mdash;good.  It's part of being a
+woman&mdash;just like loving things that are little and helpless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Sheila, being beautiful isn't enough!  Even being good isn't
+enough, though of course it ought to be.  It's essential, but it isn't
+enough.  Every woman must have something else besides to make her
+happy&mdash;something that is hers, <I>her own</I>!  She must have that to be
+beautiful <I>for</I>, and to be good for&mdash;she must have that to live for!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And that is what you want, dear&mdash;the thing that is your own.  You have
+been born for that&mdash;you cannot be complete or content without it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Caldwell's voice rose, grave and rich with the harmonies of life,
+through the peaceful room, and Sheila quivered responsively in the
+circle of her arms.  To the young girl, womanhood, that only yesterday
+had been so far away, now seemed to be drawing thrillingly near with
+all its attendant mysteries.  And in her next question she took a step
+to meet it:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Grandmother, what is it?&mdash;the thing that will be mine?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear, how can I tell?  It isn't the same for us all.  For one woman it
+is love; for another it is work; for some it is, blessedly, both work
+and love.  For me&mdash;now&mdash;it is <I>you</I>!  How can I tell what it will be
+for my little girl?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want it!" whispered Sheila.  "I want it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must wait for it, dear.  You must wait for it to come to you.  You
+can't hurry life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But can't I do <I>anything</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can be good, and you can be beautiful, so that you'll be ready for
+it when it comes.  But"&mdash;and now Mrs. Caldwell smiled, and with her
+smile the stress of the moment passed&mdash;"but not in Charlotte's frock!
+It wouldn't be fair to make yourself beautiful with borrowed plumage,
+would it, little bird of paradise?  You'd only get a borrowed happiness
+out of that&mdash;one that you hadn't a right to, and couldn't keep."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila rose from her knees, smiling, too.  "I'll go right upstairs and
+take it off," she declared.  "I want to play fair from the start&mdash;I
+only <I>want</I> what's really mine!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so, coming back, under Mrs. Caldwell's tactful guidance, from the
+deep waters to the pleasant, shallow wavelets that lap the shores of
+commonplace life, she began to busy herself with the small duties of
+the night, closing the windows and putting out the lamps.  Then, with
+bed-time candles after the fashion of Mrs. Caldwell's own girlhood, the
+two started up the stairs, Sheila leading and lighting the way&mdash;as
+youth always will, despite the riper wisdom of age.  Once she smiled
+over her shoulder; and before they had gained the top of the flight,
+she paused and reached back her hand to help her grandmother up the
+last few steps.  There was something gracious and strong in the
+gesture&mdash;something that had not been in the nature of the Sheila who
+had bent her head to Mrs. Caldwell's knee an hour before.  It was as if
+the womanhood of which Mrs. Caldwell had spoken had already awakened in
+her and with it, not only the longing for something of her own, but
+that kindred tenderness for things little and helpless&mdash;or helpless and
+old.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take my hand," she said sweetly, and there was in her voice the lovely
+gentleness that young mothers use toward their children.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The next day, when Charlotte came to inquire why her guest had flown,
+without warning and apparently without cause, she found a Sheila who,
+though garbed once more in her own short frock, seemed in some
+mysterious way more grown-up than she had in the trailing splendor of
+the night before.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's happened to you?" demanded Charlotte shrewdly, when the two
+girls were shut into the privacy of Sheila's little white bedroom, a
+room that resembled the despised white muslin and blue sash which had
+been discarded for Charlotte's furbelows.  "I know <I>something's</I>
+happened to you.  You're&mdash;different.  Did somebody make love to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Goodness, no!" denied Sheila in a horrified tone, and the alarmed
+young blood rose in a slow, rich tide over her neck and face and
+temples.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you needn't be so shocked.  Somebody will some day!"  And
+Charlotte laughed lightly out of her own precocious experience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of the two girls, Sheila was the one to be loved, but Charlotte was the
+one to be made love to&mdash;if the love-making were only the pastime of the
+hour.  Charlotte was clever and daring and cold, and could take care of
+herself.  She knew, even at sixteen, all the rules of the game: when to
+advance, when to retreat, and, most important of all, when to laugh.
+But Sheila would never be able to laugh at love or love's counterpart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Somebody <I>will</I> make love to you some day!" repeated Charlotte
+teasingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, nobody has yet!" Sheila assured her crossly.  "And what's more,
+I hope nobody will!  <I>That</I> isn't what I want!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you want?" asked Charlotte curiously, detecting the underlying
+earnestness of the words.  But she received no response, and so, bent
+upon an interesting topic, she harked back to Sheila's flight from the
+party: "If nobody made love to you, why did you run away?  Did your
+conscience hurt you, Sheila?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," admitted Sheila, "that was what made me come home.  But I stayed
+home because of something else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila groped for the language of Mrs. Caldwell's lesson: "Because I&mdash;I
+didn't want to be pretty in somebody else's clothes.  I was happy for a
+little while, but it didn't last.  You see, I'd borrowed that&mdash;the
+happiness&mdash;along with the frock.  And of course I couldn't keep it.  I
+just want what belongs to me after this, Charlotte.  It isn't fair to
+take anything else&mdash;and it isn't any use either."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charlotte stared at her with puzzled eyes.  "You <I>are</I> queer," she
+remarked reflectively.  "You <I>are</I> queer, Sheila.  Theodore Kent always
+said so, and he was right.  I wonder what he'll think of you when he
+gets back from college."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Sheila, who had blushed painfully at the suggestion of a lover who
+did not exist, heard Ted's name without a flush or a tremor; and in
+despair of any conversation about dress or beaux, the guest presently
+took her departure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A few days later Charlotte went back to her city school for further
+"finishing," though she had already been sharpened and polished to a
+bewildering edge and brilliancy.  And left to herself, Sheila resumed
+her unsophisticated, girlish life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We aren't going to have any young ladies at our house after all,
+Peter," Mrs. Caldwell announced triumphantly over her teacup one
+afternoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Peter, lounging on the leafy veranda and appreciatively sipping
+Mrs. Caldwell's fragrant amber brew, lifted a languidly interested
+face: "How are you going to stop time for Sheila?  Of course you've
+done it for yourself, but not even you, fairy godmother, can do that
+for other people."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't intend to try.  I don't want to try.  Because&mdash;when my little
+girl goes&mdash;it's time that will bring me some one better."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The young lady, dear Mrs. Caldwell.  The young lady&mdash;inevitably."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, Peter&mdash;the woman!"  And Mrs. Caldwell's voice rang with pride and
+confidence.  "There's the making of one in Sheila, Peter&mdash;of a real
+woman!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's become of the poet you used to see in her?" he inquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you've shut that safely into a cage of books.  I'm not afraid of
+it any more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It can still sing behind the bars, you know," he warned her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," she said, growing serious again, "it wouldn't&mdash;in Sheila's case.
+At least it wouldn't unless it got into just the right cage, hung in
+the sunshine and the south wind.  That's what I'm afraid of,
+Peter&mdash;that Sheila herself will be snared into the wrong cage!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But even while Mrs. Caldwell spoke, Sheila was standing at the open
+door of the right cage, gazing in with illumined eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The spring was at its height, as warm and ripely blooming as early
+summer, and Sheila had slipped away to her favorite haunt of the back
+garden.  She had taken a book with her, one of Peter's recommendation,
+and as she lay on the soft, fresh grass, she idly turned the pages, not
+from any desire to read, but for the pleasure of touching the leaves
+and knowing that, if she liked, she had only to look within for words
+that would create a fairyland as easily as the fingers of the spring
+had done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But presently, sated with mere earth-sweetness, she lifted herself on
+her elbow and opened the book widely where her hand had finally rested.
+It was the choice of chance, that page; but, as happens every now and
+then, chance and the Shaping Power were at that moment one.  For
+shining on the white leaf, as if written in silver, were the lines that
+have stirred every potential poet to rapture and self-knowledge:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+&mdash;magic casements opening on the foam<BR>
+Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Sheila read them with no fore-warning of their moving music.  They
+flashed, winged, into her tranquil world&mdash;and shook it to its
+foundations.  For the first time the full sense of beauty rushed upon
+her, and she caught her breath with the keen, aching ecstasy of it:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+&mdash;magic casements opening on the foam<BR>
+Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+She read the lines again, and now aloud, softly, with a beauty-broken
+breath.  She had wanted something, and all the while this&mdash;<I>this</I>&mdash;had
+been waiting for her.  Compared to the joy of it, what was the joy of
+looking into a mirror and finding oneself fair?  What was any other
+beauty beside this beauty of words, of subtle harmony and exquisite
+imagery?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then there came to her the thought that some one&mdash;some one just
+human like herself&mdash;yes, human and young&mdash;had written these lines, had
+drawn them from the treasure house of himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she whispered, "how happy he must have been!  How happy!  To have
+written this!  If I had done it&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She paused and sat up straight and still, the book falling unheeded
+from her hand.  Slowly her eyes widened, filled first with light and
+then with tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I had written this!  If I could write <I>anything</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And suddenly, for that moment and for life, she knew!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>That</I> is what I want&mdash;to <I>write</I>!&mdash;to <I>make</I> something beautiful!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then her guardian angel should have pushed her into the cage and
+fastened its door.  For the sun was shining and the south wind was
+blowing&mdash;and it was the right cage!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER V
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+One September afternoon, Peter lingered in his class-room after his
+duties were done and his pupils had departed.  He usually lost no time
+in shaking the dust of academic toil from his feet&mdash;and from his
+mind&mdash;but to-day an unwonted longing for some steadying purpose, some
+<I>raison d'źtre</I>, made him remain to dally with the tools of his
+occupation, perhaps in a wistful hope that he might discover a hitherto
+unsuspected charm in the teaching of rhetoric to reluctant young girls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If they only cared," he thought, "if they only cared a little for the
+English language, it wouldn't be such a deadly grind to teach I them.
+But <I>they'll</I> never 'contend for the shade of a world.'  It's just a
+dull necessity to them&mdash;this business of learning how to use their
+mother tongue&mdash;except, of course, to Sheila.  And next year she won't
+be here to help me endure it.  Oh, how I wish I could get away&mdash;to
+something better, something bigger!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But with the wish, there came to him also the certainty of its
+futility.  He wouldn't get away; the next year, and the year following,
+and the year after that would find him still at his uninspiring post in
+the Shadyville Seminary, teaching bored pupils the properties of
+speech, and inwardly cursing himself for doing it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For Peter knew that he would always be the victim of his own laziness;
+that every impulse toward a broader life and its achievements would be
+checked and overcome by what he termed his "vast inertia."  In spite of
+his mental capacity, his social gifts, his assets of birth and
+excellent appearance, he would go through all his years without
+attaining either honors or profits&mdash;merely because, in his
+unconquerable languor, he would not exert himself to the extent of
+reaching out his hand for them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He taught in the seminary because he must; because, otherwise, his
+bread would go unbuttered, or rather, there would be no bread to
+butter.  For he was the last of a family whose fortune had been their
+"blood" and their brains, and not their material possessions.  Nothing
+had been left to him but the prestige of his birth and his inherited
+intellect, and the connections which they opened to him.  And these
+connections were rosebuds for him to wear in his buttonhole rather than
+beefsteak to swell his waistcoat.  They entitled him to lead a
+cotillion, but not to direct a bank.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His natural parts, as he fully realized, would at any time have secured
+a career to him, if he had had the industry to use them assiduously.  A
+little enterprise, a little initiative would long since have despatched
+him to the opportunities and successes of a city.  But, always defeated
+by the "inertia" which he regarded as a fatal malady of his
+temperament&mdash;and also, perhaps, by a native distaste for the vulgar
+scramble and unsavory methods of the modern business world&mdash;his fine
+intelligence wasted itself in small tasks and his ambitions dissolved
+like dream-stuff in the somnolent atmosphere of Shadyville.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The only success available to him under such conditions was an
+advantageous marriage.  This he could more than once have accomplished,
+for it cost him no effort to practice the abilities of the lover, and
+he had, indeed, a reputation for gallantry that invested him with a
+dangerous glamour as a suitor.  But here he was thwarted each time by a
+quality that dominated him as ruthlessly to his undoing as did his
+laziness&mdash;and this quality was fastidiousness.  For him only the
+exquisite was good enough.  He wanted a woman with a face like an angel
+or a flower, and a soul to match it.  And this the eligible girl had
+never had.  So, although he had several times reached the verge of a
+leap into matrimonial prosperity, he had always drawn back before the
+crucial moment.  A laugh&mdash;just a note too broad and loud&mdash;had once
+restrained him from the easy capture of half a million.  He could not
+live with a woman who laughed like that, he told himself!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And on the other hand, though marriage appealed to him, he could not
+accept the exquisite in poverty.  A few years before, he had spent a
+summer in courting a girl whose profile had enchanted him.  In
+imagination he saw it always against a background of dull gold&mdash;the
+pure, slender throat; the sweet, round chin; the delicate, proud lip
+and nostril; the dreaming eye.  But in fact, there was no background of
+gold, dull or otherwise; and when Peter reflected on the size of his
+salary and the shifts to which poverty must needs resort&mdash;the shabby
+clothes, the domestic sordidness, the devastating finger-marks of
+weariness and anxiety upon even the fairest face&mdash;his courage failed
+him, and he surrendered the profile to one who could give her a
+Kentucky stock farm, a town house in New York and a box at the opera
+there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After that episode, he resigned his hope of romance.  Fate was perverse
+and offered him impossible combinations, and he had not the energy to
+seek and seize for himself.  So love, like the other big prizes of
+life, eluded him, and at thirty-three he was a confirmed bachelor as
+well as a professional idler.  He still pursued the graceful, aimless
+flirtations that are the small change of intercourse at dances and
+dinners&mdash;just as he still read Theocritus&mdash;but neither his heart nor
+his mind engaged in any more serious endeavor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet, every now and then, he felt a faint desire for something more,
+for something that should not be a pastime, nor a mere bread-and-butter
+chore&mdash;something that would demand and exhaust the best of him and give
+him in return the pride of work worth the doing and doing well.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This afternoon the desire was more than usually persistent, and it had
+held him at his desk long after school hours were over, fingering his
+pen and ink bottle, glancing through the weekly essays which had that
+day been handed in for criticism, and turning the leaves of a history
+of English literature with which he had vainly striven to awake
+enthusiasm in the minds of his class.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The school-room was a pleasant place, as school-rooms go.  There were
+potted plants on the window sills and a few good engravings on the
+walls, and the afternoon sunshine was streaming gaily in.  But to Peter
+the room was the disillusioning scene of unwilling labors&mdash;both on the
+part of his pupils and himself&mdash;and its chalky atmosphere was heavy and
+depressing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the use of pretending that <I>this</I> is a 'life-work'&mdash;a 'noble
+profession'?" he muttered, after his casual examination of a
+particularly discouraging essay.  "They don't <I>want</I> to learn.  They
+only want to get through and away.  After Sheila graduates, I'll he
+without a single responsive pupil.  For I won't get another like
+her&mdash;not in years, and probably never.  Why don't I chuck it all?  Why
+<I>don't</I> I go away?  There's nothing to <I>stay</I> for!  But my confounded
+antipathy to a tussle in the hurly-burly of my fellow-men&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that moment a tap sounded upon the door panel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come in," called Peter carelessly, supposing that a pupil had returned
+for some forgotten possession.  And he did not even look around until
+an amused voice inquired: "So absorbed, Professor Peter?"  Then he
+turned to see Mrs. Caldwell, an old-fashioned picture in silvery gray,
+smiling at him from the doorway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've come for a serious talk," said she, when he had seated her beside
+the sunniest window and established himself close by.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," he answered ruefully, "you've come to the right place and the
+right person.  I was just considering&mdash;in these scholarly
+surroundings&mdash;how I am wasting my life!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really?"  And she beamed on him hopefully.  "Because that's the
+beginning of better things.  You <I>could</I> amount to so much, Peter!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he shook his head: "Not here.  And I'm too lazy to leave
+Shadyville."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not here?  I don't want you to leave Shadyville.  I can't do
+without you!  But I want you to do something splendid here.  Peter, why
+don't you write a book?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed: "Dear Mrs. Caldwell, to write a book requires more than the
+determination or the wish to write one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Genius?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not necessarily.  But at least a special kind of ability.  The divine
+fire has never burned on my hearth&mdash;not even a tiny spark of it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you think it's rather a great thing to be able to write?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do indeed!"  And the reverence of the book-lover thrilled through
+his tone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm glad you feel that way about writers, Peter," she remarked archly,
+"because&mdash;we have one up at our house."  And she extended a note-book
+to him, a thin, paper-backed book such as his class used for
+compositions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean&mdash;Sheila?"  For he had expected this.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  It's happened!&mdash;as I told you it would."  And her voice was very
+grave now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He opened the book&mdash;and discovered that Sheila's efforts were poems.
+"I'll read them to-night," he said cautiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Mrs. Caldwell would not let him escape so easily: "No, Peter,
+please.  If you have the time, read them now.  There are only a few,
+and I can't go home without a message from you about them.  Sheila's
+waiting up there&mdash;and she's simply tense!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then she knows you've brought them to me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course.  Do you think I'd have done it without her permission?
+Peter, don't neglect your manners with your grandchildren."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I deserve the rebuke, Mrs. Caldwell.  But if Sheila wants me to see
+her poems, why hasn't she brought them to me herself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too shy!  Peter, poets are <I>very</I> sensitive.  It's an awful thing to
+have one in your family!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you won't find it so bad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I shall.  I always told you it would happen.  And I always told
+you, too, that I couldn't cope with such a&mdash;calamity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, there's still hope that this may be a case of 'sweet sixteen'
+instead of genius.  I'll take a peep and give you a verdict."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's a <I>poet</I>," insisted Mrs. Caldwell, obstinately convinced of the
+worst.  And she fixed her eyes on Peter's face, as he read, with an
+eagerness that, save for her lamentations, might have seemed anxiety to
+have her opinion confirmed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently Peter chuckled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you laughing at, Peter?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you read the 'Ode to the Evening Star'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I've read them all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then&mdash;<I>what</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know why I'm laughing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think it's <I>funny</I>?"  And there was an unmistakable note of
+indignation in the question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course I think it's funny!  Don't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no reply, and Peter looked up from the note-book.  "<I>Don't</I>
+you think it's funny?" he repeated.  And then he stared at her.  Her
+cheeks were pink with excitement, her eyes were glittering with angry
+tears.  "Why, I thought&mdash;" he began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she interrupted him: "I certainly don't think it's funny.  I think
+it's a <I>lovely</I> poem!  I think they're <I>all</I> lovely poems!  I expected
+you to appreciate them, but as you don't&mdash;"  And she put out a
+peremptory hand for the book.  But as Peter continued to stare at her,
+she perceived his amusement, and her resentment gave way to mirth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Peter, do forgive me for being cross to you, but you see&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see that you're proud of these poems!" he exclaimed, his own eyes
+twinkling merrily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she admitted, "I am proud of them.  I really do think they're
+the loveliest poems ever written!"  And she met his laughing gaze quite
+shamelessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you're glad&mdash;yes, <I>glad</I>&mdash;that she's turned out a poet!" he
+accused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," confessed Mrs. Caldwell again, "I'm glad!"  And she leaned
+earnestly toward him: "<I>Oh, Peter, isn't she wonderful</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Peter regarded her severely.  "Ah, the deceit of woman!  And I
+believed you when you claimed to be distressed!  I sympathized with
+you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Mrs. Caldwell was not to be abashed: "I've been a shocking
+hypocrite, haven't I?  But you're so clever, Peter, that I expected you
+to see through me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I trusted you!" he mourned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Peter!  Peter!  That's the way a man always seeks to excuse his
+stupidity when a woman gets the best of him!  But you can trust my
+sincerity now.  And you can sympathize with me if Sheila's <I>not</I> a
+poet.  You seem to doubt her being one!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She isn't a poet&mdash;yet.  She may become one.  I can't tell about that.
+What I am sure of is that she has a remarkable mind&mdash;as I told you long
+ago.  She has things to express, and evidently the time has come when
+she wants to express them.  That's the hopeful point."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then she is promising&mdash;for all your laughter?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed she is!  These poems are funny&mdash;but every now and then there's
+a flash of light through them.  Mrs. Caldwell, I believe in the
+<I>light</I>.  I don't know what Sheila will do with it, but it's there&mdash;and
+it's wonderful!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tears were in Mrs. Caldwell's eyes again, not the bright tears of
+anger, but the soft mist that rises from a heart profoundly moved.  As
+Peter spoke, the drops overflowed and rolled slowly down her cheeks,
+but she was unconscious of them.  "You don't know what this means to
+me!" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't know you would feel like this about it.  You deceived me so
+thoroughly!  But now I wonder why I didn't realize, in spite of all
+your protestations, that you'd care just this deeply.  I should have
+understood what things of the mind are to you&mdash;you were my
+grandfather's friend!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I was your grandfather's friend.  And he was a marvellous man,
+Peter.  It's the proudest thing I can say of myself&mdash;that I was his
+friend."  Then, quickly, as if she had closed a treasure box, she
+turned from the subject of her old friendship&mdash;which Peter knew might
+have been more&mdash;to that of Sheila.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What shall I do with my poet, Peter?  I'm as much afraid of her as I
+said I should be&mdash;and as unfit to help her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me help her!  Will you let me train her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, my dear, I hoped you'd ask to do it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then it's a bargain&mdash;not only for the present, but for the
+future&mdash;after she graduates&mdash;as long as she needs me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Caldwell flashed a keen glance at him: "As long as you will,
+Peter!  I'll trust her to you gratefully."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But if there was any deeper significance in her words than her
+acceptance of the present compact, Peter failed to catch it.  As he
+stood in the seminary doorway a few moments later, watching Mrs.
+Caldwell's retreating figure up the shady street, there came to him,
+however, a sense of having something to work for at last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was it Mrs. Caldwell once said?" he murmured to himself.  "That
+she wasn't wise enough to 'trim the wick of a star'?  Yes, that was it.
+Well," he added whimsically, "I don't suppose I'm fit for the job
+either, but I'm going to undertake it.  It'll be worth while staying
+here&mdash;it'll be worth while living&mdash;if I can trim the wick of a star and
+help it to shine!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+There was nothing spectacular or startlingly precocious about Sheila's
+development during the next few years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On her seventeenth birthday, her frocks were lowered to her slender
+ankles; on her eighteenth, she permanently assumed the dignity of full
+length skirts; on her nineteenth, she lifted her hair from its soft,
+girlish knot on her neck to a womanly coronet upon the top of her head.
+But despite her regal coiffure, she remained very much of a child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Caldwell had achieved the apparently impossible; she had
+eliminated the rōle of the "young lady" from Sheila's <I>repertoire</I>.  At
+nineteen the girl was ready, at the touch of fate, to merge the child
+in the woman; but there was nothing of the conventional young lady
+about her, though she led the same life as other girls in Shadyville, a
+life that abounded in parties&mdash;-in town through the winter and at the
+country houses in the summer&mdash;and little sex vanities and love affairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila herself had never had a love affair.  She was a charming young
+person&mdash;not quite pretty, but more alluring in her shy, wistful
+fashion, than handsomer girls&mdash;so it followed that susceptible youths
+sued for her favor.  But they sued in vain.  She smiled upon them until
+they said some word of love, and then she was on the wing like a wild
+bird.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whatever ardor there was in her she had expended thus far upon her
+ambition to write.  Under Peter's restraining tutelage, she had long
+since foresworn odes to the evening star for prose fantasies, and these
+were in turn being superseded by what promised to become a clean-cut,
+brilliant gift for narrative.  She had a rich imagination, an unusual
+facility for characterization, a certain quaint, whimsical humor&mdash;that
+she never displayed in her speech; all of which raised her work, crude
+though it still was, distinctly above the level of the commonplace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had recently sold a little sketch, in her later and better manner,
+to an eastern magazine with a keen eye for young talent, and the event
+had been to her as truly the pinnacle of romance as a betrothal would
+have been to another girl.  It had shed a veritable glory over life for
+her, and all her dreams were now of further triumphs, of approving
+editors and an applauding public.  She would be a famous woman, she
+told herself, with the naļve assurance of youth.  That was her destiny!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So it was small wonder, after all, that Shadyville lads had not induced
+her to regard them seriously.  She would marry some time, of course.
+Everyone married&mdash;at least in Shadyville, where the elemental
+simplicities of existence prevailed for very lack of its complexities.
+There was really nothing to do in Shadyville except to participate, in
+one capacity or another, in birth, marriage and death.  Sheila
+therefore considered marriage an inescapable end, but she thought very
+little about it along the way thither.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet, when the hour of sex romance finally struck for Sheila, when,
+for the first time, she realized love's moving power and beauty, her
+surrender to it was tenfold quicker and more unquestioning than would
+have been that of a girl who had dallied with sentiment from the days
+of her short frocks.  Her very years of indifference were her undoing.
+Owing to them, love came to her with the shock of an instant and
+supreme revelation; she who had been blind suddenly beheld a whole
+undreamed of world, as it were, and the vastness of the vision
+inevitably dazed her to a degree that made clear perception of it
+impossible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps Sheila would have been less ingenuously innocent, and more
+effectually prepared for this crisis, had Charlotte Davis been at hand
+during the formative period of her girlhood.  But Charlotte had been
+traveling in Europe for a couple of years, and her letters&mdash;clever,
+witty, worldly-wise&mdash;were too infrequent to equip Sheila for the
+defense of her heart.  So she went forward&mdash;profoundly unconscious,
+pitifully unready&mdash;to capture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was nineteen years old, and the season was summer, and the moon was
+shining&mdash;when it began.  And summer is an opulent thing in Kentucky; a
+blue and golden thing by day; a thing of white witchery by night; and
+whether in the burnished glamour of the sun, or the pallid glamour of
+the moon, too sweet, too full-blooded, too poignant with the forces and
+the purposes of nature to leave the pulse unstirred.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila, restless with this earth-magic, was standing at the garden gate
+one evening, when a young man came up and paused, smiling, before her.
+At first glance, and in the uncertain moonlight, she thought him a
+stranger, but a second look revealed his sturdy identity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, <I>Ted</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Ted he was; a Ted grown to a fine, vigorous manliness&mdash;the
+manliness of a thoroughly healthy body and a cheerful, literal mind.
+It was obvious at once that there was not a subtlety in him; that, in
+his early maturity, he was of the same substantial quality that he had
+been as a child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila had not seen him for a long time&mdash;as time is measured at
+nineteen&mdash;for during his first year at college, his family had removed
+to Lexington, and neither they nor he had ever returned.  But it seemed
+as natural to her to have him there as if they had parted only
+yesterday, as natural to have him, and as natural to admire him.  She
+had admired him devoutly when she was a little girl, though she had
+sometimes had disconcerting glimpses of his limitations.  And she
+admired him now.  Instantly she felt that splendid, radiant materialism
+of his as a charm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She walked up the path to the house at his side, in a flutter of
+girlish delight&mdash;all sex, all softness, the weaker, the submissive
+creature.  So he had dominated her in the past&mdash;except in her rare,
+"queer" moments when the wings of her quick fancy had lifted her on
+some flight beyond his reach.  Her wings did not lift her now, however;
+they were folded so meekly against her shoulders that they might as
+well not have been there at all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They sat down on the veranda together, and a climbing rose shook down a
+shower of night fragrance upon them, and the moonlight streamed over
+their faces as if with the intent to glorify each to the other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Caldwell was playing whist at the house next door, so Sheila and
+Ted were there alone, save for the cook's tuneful presence in the
+kitchen.  Her song floated out to them in her warm, caressing negro
+voice&mdash;"Weep no mo', my lady!  Oh, weep no mo' to-day!"  And suddenly
+Sheila felt that she would never weep again&mdash;life was such a joyous
+thing!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted sat on a step at her feet, and he leaned his head back against a
+pillar of the veranda as he talked.  She noticed how crisp and strong
+his fair hair was, and the sense of his vitality weighed upon her like
+a compelling hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was telling her what had brought him back.  The editorship of the
+<I>Shadyville Star</I>, the town's semi-weekly paper&mdash;the editorship and
+part ownership in fact&mdash;was open to him, and, alert as ever, he was
+seizing the opportunity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a chance&mdash;a good chance&mdash;to go into the newspaper game as my own
+boss, or as part proprietor anyhow," he explained.  "Mr. Orcutt is
+making the <I>Star</I> into a daily, and he wants a live man&mdash;a young
+man&mdash;to take charge of it.  Father's let me have a couple of thousand
+dollars, and I've borrowed three thousand more, and I'm going in with
+Mr. Orcutt as a partner.  It's a big thing for me if I can pull it
+through.  And I <I>will</I> pull it through.  I was editor of our college
+magazine, and I've worked on one or another of the Louisville papers
+every summer, so I know a little about the game&mdash;and I like it
+tremendously.  Oh, I'll succeed all right!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you will!" she agreed heartily.  At the mere sound of his
+bright, confident voice she believed in his ability to succeed in
+anything whatever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, of course I will.  And it's nice to have <I>you</I> say so.  The only
+question about it," he pursued, "is whether it's a big <I>enough</I>
+opportunity for me.  But I'll <I>make</I> it big enough.  I'll make the
+paper grow&mdash;and the paper will make the town grow.  See?  All
+Shadyville needs is enterprise&mdash;enterprise and advertising."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she agreed again.  An hour earlier she would have been ready to
+protect Shadyville's sacred precincts from the vandals of "enterprise"
+and "advertising" with her own slim fist, but here she was handing over
+the keys of the town to modern commercialism without a qualm of
+hesitation.  "<I>You're</I> just what Shadyville needs, Ted," she added
+earnestly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought you'd feel that way about it!"  And his voice was exultant.
+"You always were a good pal, Sheila!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And at the tribute Sheila had a swift conception of woman's mission as
+the perfect comrade.  Oh, that was a mission to thrill and inspire one,
+to move one to high and selfless endeavor!  And she dedicated herself,
+in the secrecy of her own mind, to the cause of Ted and the <I>Shadyville
+Star</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Throughout the next few weeks she was, indeed, the perfect comrade.
+She who had never before been interested in the spectacle of actual,
+contemporary life, flung herself now, with a fervor which not even her
+personal ambitions had excited, into the business of life's presentment
+through the daily press, and in particular through the medium of the
+<I>Shadyville Star</I>.  She read newspapers avidly; she suggested subjects
+for editorials to Ted; she came down to the office of the <I>Shadyville
+Daily Star</I>&mdash;under Mrs. Caldwell's reluctant chaperonage&mdash;to see the
+linotype machine which had been installed in honor of Ted's reign.  She
+even read proof on the tumultuous day which preceded the transformed
+<I>Star's</I> first appearance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter watched her in amazement.  "But I thought newspapers bored you!"
+he exclaimed one afternoon when, coming to read his beloved Theocritus
+with her, he found Sheila immersed in a whirlwind of New York papers,
+from which she was industriously clipping items for reprint in the
+<I>Star</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she cried, in the rapturous voice of the devotee, "I didn't
+understand how wonderful newspaper work could be!  Why, Peter&mdash;I've got
+my finger on the pulse of the world!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At which Peter put his Theocritus back into the safety of his pocket
+lest even its tranquil spirit be corrupted by the fever of journalism.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To Ted Sheila's magnificent energy in his behalf, her unflagging
+comprehension and sympathy, were steps by which he mounted blithely to
+his goal.  How <I>could</I> he fail with Sheila to stimulate him, to assist
+him, to believe in him?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And indeed, the <I>Star</I> did reward the efforts of both its new editor
+and his silent partner.  It made a triumphant debut, and it continued
+daily to fulfill the expectations which that debut had aroused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Toward the end of the summer, Ted at last drew a breath of complete
+security.  He was on Mrs. Caldwell's veranda at the time, and he and
+Sheila were alone together.  It was just such a night as the first one
+of his return to Shadyville; the moonlight poured prodigally downward
+upon them, showing to each the other's face, silver-clear; the scent of
+the climbing roses stole to them on the light wind; from kitchenward
+came the soft notes of black Mandy's song as she finished her evening
+tasks&mdash;"Weep no mo', my lady!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Everything was as it had been on that first night two months
+before&mdash;and yet everything was different.  Within those two months Ted
+had proved himself as a man&mdash;a man who could do his chosen work.  And
+Sheila&mdash;Ah, what had she not taught him&mdash;what had she not taught
+herself&mdash;of the woman's part in a man's work&mdash;a man's life?  The same?
+No, everything was different!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted was sitting at Sheila's feet, in what had become his accustomed
+place.  He glanced up at her, sweet and serene in the moonlight, and
+something rose within him as resistlessly as a mighty tide.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm winning!" he said triumphantly, "I'm winning!  But I couldn't have
+done it without you.  Oh, Sheila, you've been the making of me!  What a
+girl you are!&mdash;what a woman!  <I>You'd</I> always back a man up in his
+undertakings&mdash;if you loved him&mdash;wouldn't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh&mdash;if I loved him!&mdash;"  And she looked past him with dreamy eyes.  She
+had never looked like that before, though love had been named to her by
+others and in more persuasive language.  To back up a man in his
+undertakings&mdash;because she loved him&mdash;  Why, that would be <I>life</I>!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted had never had the superfine discernment of natures more delicately
+wrought than his, but he had the discernment of sex&mdash;as all young and
+healthy creatures have.  He saw her dreaming look, and he knew
+something of the kindred thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila"&mdash;and his voice was less sure and bold&mdash;"Sheila, have you ever
+been in love?  Is there&mdash;anybody else?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," she answered simply.  And she drew her gaze down from the stars
+to his upturned face.  That which was in her eyes made him catch his
+breath and close his own for an instant; but she was unaware of the
+shining thing he had seen&mdash;the soul, not only of one woman, just
+awakening, but of all womanhood, at once innocent and passionate, brave
+and piteous.  He had not needed any subtlety to perceive that&mdash;so frank
+and beautiful was its betrayal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila"&mdash;and he fixed his eyes upon her now&mdash;"Sheila, maybe the town
+does need me&mdash;as you said when I first came back.  I'll do my best to
+make it need me.  Because&mdash;because I want to earn the right to a home.
+I want to be able to&mdash;marry!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To&mdash;<I>marry</I>?" she whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He leaned forward and laid his hands upon her wrists&mdash;importunate hands
+that sent the blood swirling through her veins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Sheila&mdash;don't you understand?  <I>I</I> need <I>you</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment the world swayed around her.  Her heart was beating, not
+in her bosom, but in her throat&mdash;up, up to her dry and quivering lips.
+To back up a man in his undertakings&mdash;because she loved him!&mdash;that was
+what Ted was asking her to do for him&mdash;to do for him always.  Yes&mdash;and
+that was life!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, slowly, the world grew still once more; the night wind blew down
+the fragrance of climbing roses; again she heard the familiar
+refrain&mdash;"Weep no mo', my lady!  Oh, weep no mo' to-day!"&mdash;and now it
+seemed tender with the tenderness of insistent and protective love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And all the while Ted's hands were on her wrists, silently imploring.
+This was life!  Oh, she would never weep again&mdash;never again in her joy!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She bent toward him&mdash;as irresistibly as the rose above her head was
+drawn to the wind&mdash;and smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Sheila!&mdash;<I>when you look at me like that</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then Ted's face was against her breast, his arms around her.  She
+would never weep again&mdash;for <I>this</I> was <I>life</I>!
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Sheila had been married several months before she ceased to expect a
+miracle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had believed that moment of high rapture when, with Ted's face
+hidden against her breast, she had seemed to grasp life itself in her
+ardent young hands, to be but the forerunner of greater moments&mdash;of
+raptures and fulfillments compared to which the first awakening would
+appear no more than a pale shadow of joy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marriage, in some way mysterious and beautiful, would surely alter the
+world for her; nay, more, would transmute her own nature into something
+stronger, richer, happier, a wedded nature, wedded in its lightest
+moods, its deepest fastnesses.  She would wear Ted's ring upon her very
+soul, and her soul would thereby be changed and glorified.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Other wives&mdash;all wives, indeed, who marry at the dictates of their
+hearts&mdash;expect as much.  It is the way of women to dream and hope above
+the earth's level, and now and then, in a rarely perfect mating or in
+motherhood, their dreams come true.  But oftenest they wait as Sheila
+waited&mdash;unrewarded.  And after awhile they return contentedly to the
+lowland of everyday reality&mdash;where many paths are pleasant and their
+fellow travelers, though not knights errant, are usually faithful and
+kind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This, after a few months, Sheila did, too.  By that time she had begun
+to regard the first moment of acknowledged love as unique, one from
+which she had no right to ask more than itself.  It was enough to have
+had it.  It <I>had</I> been life&mdash;of that she was still convinced&mdash;but life
+at its high tide.  And the very existence of every day&mdash;of tranquil
+affection and homely duty&mdash;was none the less life, too, and good after
+its own fashion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So, missing the miracle, she set to work to discover a miracle in what
+she had; to find exquisite meanings in the fire upon her wedded hearth
+while her wedded soul remained cold and virginal.  And she had the
+better chance to warm herself beside that fire because it never
+occurred to her that Ted might be in the least responsible for its
+limitations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+About her choice of a husband&mdash;or rather, her acceptance of the husband
+whom fate had chosen for her&mdash;she had no misgivings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Sheila, are you sure?"  Mrs. Caldwell had inquired again and again
+in that heart-searching hour which had preceded her sanction of the
+engagement.  "Are you <I>sure</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Sheila had been sure, triumphantly sure.  Even then, with the
+girl's rhapsodies ringing in her ears, Mrs. Caldwell had insisted upon
+an engagement of six months&mdash;"To give the child an opportunity to break
+it," she had confided to Peter.  But the delay had proved unnecessary.
+At the end of the period imposed Sheila had been as sure as ever, and
+she was sure still.  Ted loved her.  Ted needed her.  Of course he was
+the right man for her!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If she had thought to receive more than marriage had given her, the
+fault was hers, she loyally decided.  She had always anticipated
+miracles.  She had always seen life as an enchanting fairy tale, with a
+marvellous climax hidden somewhere in the chapters yet unread.  But
+life wasn't a fairy tale; it was merely a bit of cheerful realism, with
+a happy, commonplace climax in accord with realistic standards.  It
+hadn't been fair to demand princes and palaces and winged delights of a
+bit of realism!  She knew now that her expectations had been childish
+and absurd; that she had asked for more than life had to give; that the
+joys of this world were simple, home-abiding things, without the wings
+for heavenly flights.  Not even love itself was winged, and it was
+better so&mdash;for thus she need not fear lest it fly away as winged things
+are wont to do.  She had prayed for ecstasy&mdash;which, at best, is
+fleeting.  Instead she had been granted a safe and quiet happiness.
+Was not destiny wiser than she?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But though she reconciled herself to the realities of life and of
+marriage, she could not reconcile herself to her own unchanged spirit.
+She had looked to find Sheila Kent a new being, serene, complete&mdash;and
+Sheila Kent was neither.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm just myself!" she admitted at last, when neither faith nor desire
+had availed to transform the fiber of her soul.  "I'm just myself
+still.  Ted used to think me a queer little girl&mdash;and I'm the same
+queer self now.  Other married girls are satisfied with their husbands
+and their houses and&mdash;their babies&mdash;and I believed I would be, too.
+But I'm not.  Marriage hasn't made me over&mdash;and it isn't enough for me.
+I want something wonderful&mdash;I want to <I>do</I> something wonderful.  I
+want&mdash;why, I want to <I>write</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed a solution of her perplexity&mdash;the conclusion that she still
+wanted to write&mdash;and she seized upon it with reviving fervor.  Her
+gift, singling her out from other girls, was the explanation of those
+unconquered spaces in her soul, spaces never destined for the foot of
+any man, however dear.  Genius, she had heard, was always celibate, and
+her genius, or talent, lived on in her inviolate, a thing yet to be
+reckoned with, yet to be appeased.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had not written during her engagement, nor since her marriage.  Not
+that she had deliberately renounced her ambitions, but that her days
+had been crowded with other things, with things that, for the time, she
+thought more vital.  Peter had remonstrated with her once or twice, but
+to no avail, and when she went from the flurry of trousseau and wedding
+to the more serious business of keeping house in the traditional
+vine-clad cottage&mdash;Mrs. Caldwell having persisted in the wisdom of
+separate establishments&mdash;he no longer protested at all.  An industrious
+young housekeeper and a blooming wife was obviously not to be condoled
+with over thwarted aspirations.  So certain unfinished manuscripts lay
+forgotten in the bottom of Sheila's bridal trunk&mdash;forgotten, or at
+least ignored&mdash;until the day when she fixed on them as the reason of
+her vague discontent.  Then she brought them forth with an eagerness
+that was, perhaps, the best answer to her self-analysis.  Of course she
+had wanted to write; without knowing it, she must have wanted, for
+months, to write!  Oh, life <I>wasn't</I> a bit of dull realism!  It was a
+fairy tale after all&mdash;a fairy tale of poems and novels, of gracious
+publishers and an appreciative public!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had never talked to Ted about her writing.  Somehow she had always
+been absorbed in his work, his ambitions.  He had all the initiative
+and enterprise that Shadyville, prior to his arrival, had lacked, and
+his labors and successes had consumed not only his own time and
+thoughts, but Sheila's as well.  She admired his energy; she was
+dazzled by the juggleries of his mediocre cleverness; she was proud to
+help him.  Like a strong, fresh wind he filled her world&mdash;and,
+incidentally, he was a wind that blew away all the delicate cobwebs,
+the gossamer filaments of her finer gift.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But now, for the first time since Ted's return to Shadyville, Sheila's
+individuality rose up within her and claimed something for itself.  She
+had wanted to write&mdash;and she <I>would</I> write.  There was no reason why
+she should not.  Women, nowadays, were wives and artists also.  Married
+women had "careers" as often as the unmarried.  In short, fame was
+still hers to conquer!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She set about conquering it at once&mdash;that was Sheila's way&mdash;and when,
+in the middle of a busy morning, some one tapped imperiously on her
+closed door, she went to answer the summons with an inky finger and
+dream-laden eyes.  But she opened the door to a vision that dispelled
+dreams by its more charming substance&mdash;a young woman whose smart,
+slender figure was clothed in a mode that had not yet reached
+Shadyville, and whose alert and smiling face seemed as unrelated as her
+garments to the sleepy little provincial town.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Charlotte!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said the vision gaily, "yes&mdash;<I>Mrs. Theodore Kent</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then the two girls were in each other's arms, laughing and
+chattering, and weeping a little, too, after the manner of
+girls&mdash;especially when there has been marriage and giving in marriage
+since their last meeting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had not seen each other for more than three years, for although
+Charlotte had been in America several times during that period, she had
+merely joined her family in New York for brief reunions, and had then
+hastened back to Paris where she was studying singing.  They looked at
+each other curiously after that first embrace, and, when they were
+seated in Sheila's sunny sitting-room, they fell at once into
+confidences covering those three separated years.  It was Charlotte, of
+course, who had food for conversation, but Sheila, as the bride, was
+the heroine of the occasion, even to Charlotte's broader mind.
+Marriage may not fulfill the ideals of high romance, but it can always
+cast a halo.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Charlotte at last, when she had heard the tale of Ted's
+perfections and achievements, "well, I'll wait and see what you two
+make of it before I give up my liberty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You wouldn't be giving up your liberty if you married the man you
+loved," protested Sheila staunchly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't know about that!  Suppose I married a man who resented my
+music?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But he wouldn't&mdash;if he loved you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!  Then Ted doesn't mind your writing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course not!" Sheila assured her.  "Why, I was writing when you
+came!"  And she held up the inky finger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charlotte surveyed the finger with evident respect: "That's right!  I'm
+glad you aren't going to be submerged by marriage.  I was afraid you
+might be.  And really, Sheila, you have talent.  The 'F&mdash;&mdash; Monthly'
+would never have taken that story of yours if it hadn't been
+exceptionally good.  I know Mr. Bennett, the associate editor, and his
+standards&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You <I>know</I> Mr. Bennett?" interrupted Sheila.  And her tone was
+reverent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Charlotte carelessly.  "I know a lot of writing folks in
+New York.  In fact I've brought one of them home with me&mdash;Alice North,
+the novelist.  Maybe you've read something of hers?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Something</I>?  Why, I've read everything of hers I could lay my hands
+on!  Oh, Charlotte, I <I>adore</I> her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So do I," laughed Charlotte, "not her books, but her.  She writes very
+well, but she's more interesting than her stories.  Now, Sheila, I'll
+tell you what you must do&mdash;you must let me have some of your things to
+show her!  She could be such a help to you if she found you worth the
+trouble.  Let me have a story or two now, and come up to-morrow
+afternoon to tea&mdash;and to hear what she thinks of them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila caught her breath.  "Oh, it's too presumptuous," she demurred,
+shyly.  "For <I>me</I> to bother <I>Alice North</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her eyes were shining, nevertheless, as if at sight of a long-promised
+land, and Charlotte presently departed with a couple of manuscripts for
+the touchstone of Mrs. North's criticism.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Ted came home that evening, he found a Sheila tremulous with
+excitement, her eyes shining still, her cheeks, which were usually
+pale, flushed to a vivid rose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Ted," she exclaimed at once, "Charlotte is back!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he assented good-naturedly, "I heard about it this morning and
+gave her a write-up with a picture."  For Ted invariably looked upon
+events in the terms of their newspaper value.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you know that she brought Alice North home with her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alice North?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Apparently he had not the slightest idea who Alice North might be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;Alice North&mdash;the novelist, Ted!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is she anybody special&mdash;anything of a celebrity?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is she?  Oh, Ted, you must read something besides newspapers!  Mrs.
+North hasn't been made a celebrity by the papers&mdash;somehow she's managed
+to keep clear of cheap notoriety&mdash;but there's scarcely a woman writing
+to-day whose work is better than hers.  She is
+really&mdash;<I>really</I>&mdash;distinguished!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Instantly he was "on the job," as he would have expressed it, at that
+revelation: "Well, she won't keep out of the 'Star'!  I'll have a story
+about her to-morrow.  Confound it!  I wish I'd known to-day!  But the
+Davises never let me know anything.  I found out by accident that
+Charlotte was home.  And such a time as I had getting her photograph.
+I don't believe that family care about their own town's paper!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila smiled.  She had a pretty accurate conception of the place that
+Shadyville must occupy on Charlotte's horizon&mdash;and on Alice North's.
+But she only remarked soothingly, "I can tell you all about Alice
+North.  I've read nearly everything she's written, and a number of
+magazine articles about her, too.  I'll get you up a good story about
+her&mdash;the sort of story she won't object to either."  Then her
+enthusiasm swept her from the subject of newspaper values to the true
+value of Mrs. North:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Ted, isn't it splendid for a woman to have a talent like that&mdash;a
+talent that's made her famous at thirty!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But there was no responsive enthusiasm in Ted's face, no leap of light
+in the eyes that met the fire of hers.  "I suppose so," he conceded
+grudgingly, "yes, I suppose it is.  But I don't care for that sort of
+woman myself&mdash;at least for that sort of married woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But why, Ted?  Why?  Her work doesn't interfere with her loving her
+husband!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It interferes with her making a home for him.  And <I>that's</I> a woman's
+work&mdash;making a home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Ted, maybe he doesn't want a home&mdash;or maybe they have a
+housekeeper."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted shrugged: "Oh, if it suits him to live in a hotel, or at the mercy
+of a hired housekeeper, it's all right.  But in that case, he's missing
+the best thing a man ever gets&mdash;I mean the kind of home a woman's
+<I>love</I> makes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At those words Sheila would have surrendered the argument&mdash;so easily
+was she swayed by a touch upon her heart.  But Ted was not through with
+the subject.  His masculine self-respect was aroused against this woman
+who was succeeding outside the sphere of strictly feminine occupation,
+and he was determined to show her, in her worst light, to Sheila.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has she any children?" he demanded belligerently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;at least, I think not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now you see that I'm right!" he exulted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the moment for yielding had passed with Sheila.  "I see nothing of
+the sort," she replied with a flare of temper.  "Her having
+children&mdash;or not having them&mdash;has no bearing whatever on the matter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, it has!  You mark my words&mdash;she hasn't had any children
+because she's wanted to spend all her time advancing herself&mdash;building
+up a tawdry little fame for herself!  I tell you, Sheila, talent's a
+bad thing for a woman&mdash;a bad thing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Ted&mdash;<I>I</I> write."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stared at her in naļve surprise.  Then his face softened into
+indulgent laughter.  "Why, kitty, so you do!  I'd forgotten that you
+scribble.  But you don't take it seriously.  I don't mind your playing
+at it, so long as you don't get the notion that it's the biggest thing
+in life."  And he laughed again and pinched her cheek&mdash;reassuringly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She didn't laugh in answer, however.  She only gazed at him with an odd
+intentness, as if she were seeing him for the first time.  Then,
+gravely, she inquired: "What would you think the biggest thing in life,
+Ted&mdash;if you were a woman&mdash;a woman like Alice North?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew her down to his knee and whispered into her ear.  She was very
+still for an instant, her whole body subdued, spellbound, by that
+whispered word.  Then, with a movement singularly untender, she
+withdrew from his arms and stood erect&mdash;free&mdash;before him.  The rich
+scarlet still flooded her cheek&mdash;now like a flag of reluctant
+womanhood&mdash;but he searched her eyes in vain for the glow that should
+have matched it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well&mdash;you'll think so some day!" he insisted gently.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Sheila was not naturally secretive, and it was a measure of the
+antagonism which Ted had aroused in her that she said nothing to him of
+her projected visit to Alice North.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had intended to tell him at once of Charlotte's kindly plan to
+interest Mrs. North in her work; she had been impatient to tell him,
+and her announcement of Charlotte's return, and Mrs. North's arrival
+with her, had been meant only as the preface to the confidence.  She
+had been so sure of his sympathy, of his ambition for her and his
+pleasure in this opportunity to test her power.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His real attitude toward the achievements of women she had never
+suspected.  He had so gladly and gratefully accepted her help in his
+own work, he had so generously acknowledged her ability, that she had
+never conceived of any sex distinction in his views.  She had been his
+comrade&mdash;now he would be hers.  And oh, she would make him proud of
+her!  She would see his eyes light for her as, sometimes, she had seen
+them light over the story of men's successes.  For Ted loved success.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If she looked forward to triumphs, he was always at the heart of them.
+Whatever she could do would be done more for his honor than for her
+own.  Whatever was rare and fine in her she had come to value first
+because she was his wife&mdash;and afterward for her own profit.  She
+imagined herself, crowned by Mrs. North's praise, returning to Ted to
+cry:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is the real, the true thing&mdash;my gift!  I will do beautiful work.
+Oh, dearest, I have more to bring you than I dared to believe!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So her impetuous mind had run onward to meet happy possibilities when
+Ted arrested it with the comment, "I don't care for that sort of woman
+myself&mdash;at least for that sort of married woman!"  And at the words,
+Sheila's dreams had fallen, like broken-winged birds, to the ground.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment&mdash;nay, through all the conversation that followed, a
+conversation that revealed to her with cruel clarity a phase of her
+husband's mind that she had not hitherto encountered&mdash;she was wondering
+if those dreams would ever rise again.  Rude and stupid blows from the
+hand she loved best had struck them down.  How could they recover
+themselves?  How could they sing and soar&mdash;those fragile, shattered
+things?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But even as she glimpsed them thus, broken, defeated, there surged up
+within her the strength of resistance.  Sweetly compliant in all the
+common affairs of her and Ted's joint life, she had, for this issue so
+vital to her, an amazing obstinacy.  Defeated?  She and her dreams?
+<I>No</I>!  Her dreams were her own, born of her as surely as the children
+of her body would be.  They were hers to save&mdash;hers to realize.  And
+she was strong enough to do it!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That had been her thought when she withdrew herself from Ted's knee.
+His whisper&mdash;"The greatest thing that can happen to a woman is
+motherhood!"&mdash;had inspired no tenderness in her.  For at that moment
+there was astir within her, violent and dominant, the impulse that is
+mightier than motherhood itself&mdash;the impulse of <I>creation</I>.  And it was
+none the less imperative because it demanded to mould with written
+words rather than living flesh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted's last gentle speech, his hurt expression when she turned coldly
+from him, moved her not at all.  For the time, he was not Ted, her
+beloved, but Man, her enemy.  True, she had not regarded man as an
+enemy before.  Peter, for instance, had been an ally without whom she
+could not even have fared thus far.  But Peter was not a husband; his
+masculinity had not been appealed to&mdash;nor threatened.  She saw now that
+men would always fight for the mastery of their own women, would always
+seek to impose sex upon them as a yoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ah, that black, bitter gulf of sex!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila, looking into it for the first time, shuddered with revolt and
+rage.  So <I>this</I> was life; this the end of such moments as her
+exquisite awakening to love.  To <I>this</I> the high and heavenly raptures
+lured one at last!  A bird in the wrong cage, impotently beating its
+breast against the bars&mdash;Sheila was like enough to such an one in that
+furious, unconsciously helpless hour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the next day, however, the fierce whirlwind of her astounded
+resentment had passed.  She began to see that Ted might be the victim
+of his sex as she was the victim of hers; that the real tyranny was not
+that of Ted over her, but of Nature over them both; of Nature who would
+use them each with equal ruthlessness for her own purposes.  But this
+perception did not daunt her.  Unhesitatingly, she arrayed herself
+against Nature now; she would save her dreams even from that!  And as
+Ted was a part of Nature's plan, she said nothing to him of her
+determination to fulfill herself in spite of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the afternoon she set out resolutely for Charlotte's.  It was
+summer, and Shadyville was at its fairest.  As Sheila trod the wide,
+tree-canopied streets, with their old-fashioned houses in fragrant
+garden closes on either side, a hundred tiny voices whispered to her
+messages of peace; of life that goes on from summer to summer; of
+growth, in the dark and choking earth, that springs at last upward to
+the sun.  But she did not hear.  For her there was neither comfort nor
+peace nor any joy in the processes and victories of mere life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she reached the Davis house, Charlotte and Mrs. North were on the
+veranda, clad brightly in a summer frivolity, and their air of leisure
+and gayety was oddly unlike the tense and passionate mood of Sheila
+herself.  In fact the whole scene&mdash;the porch with its fluttering
+awnings and festive flowers, the dainty tea-table that already awaited
+the guest, the two charming women presiding there&mdash;seemed far removed
+from the grave resolve and stormy emotions that Sheila had brought
+thither.  For an instant, as she paused at the gate, she felt herself
+absurd.  She had come to have afternoon tea with two women who were
+obviously of the big, conventional world&mdash;and she had brought her naked
+soul to them!  Acutely self-conscious, painfully humiliated, she would
+have retreated if she could, but Charlotte was already hailing her.
+And then&mdash;her hand was clasped in Alice North's, her eyes were meeting
+eyes at once so probing and so luminous that they opened every door of
+her nature and flooded it with light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila had never had a case of hero-worship, but as she put her hand in
+Mrs. North's, she fell, figuratively, upon her knees.  The very
+buoyancy and assurance of the latter's manner, which had, for an
+instant, chilled and rebuffed her, now appeared to her the outward
+manifestation of a brilliant and conquering spirit.  Like a devotee,
+she watched Mrs. North's quick, graceful movements, her vivid,
+changeful face; like a devotee she listened to her sparkling,
+inconsequent chatter.  This woman, handicapped by her womanhood, had
+done big things.  Any word from her lips, any gesture of her hand was
+something to admire and remember.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It never even entered Sheila's head that, although she had done great
+things, Alice North might not be a great woman.  It never occurred to
+her to ask <I>how</I> she had triumphed&mdash;at whose or at what cost.  She
+never even dreamed that one's life&mdash;just a noble submission to Nature,
+a willing and patient compliance with laws and purposes above one's
+own&mdash;might be the final and fullest expression of genius.  Alice North
+had written books&mdash;and Sheila was at her feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After awhile Charlotte tactfully left her alone with her idol&mdash;in whose
+footsteps she meant to walk henceforth&mdash;to <I>climb</I>!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've read your stories," said Mrs. North softly then.  It was the
+first mention of Sheila's work, and the girl quivered from head to
+foot.  She gazed mutely at the oracle&mdash;waiting for life, for death.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly Mrs. North leaned forward and caught Sheila's hands in hers.
+Alice North had never failed to be sensitive to drama; to play her part
+in it with sympathy and effect.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear," she exclaimed, and her voice was clear and thrilling, "my
+dear, you have it&mdash;the divine gift!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as they looked at each other, the eyes of each filled with tears.
+Alice North was indeed sensitive to drama&mdash;so sensitive that her
+counterfeit emotions sometimes deceived even her&mdash;and Sheila was shaken
+to the heart, to the soul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean&mdash;you mean&mdash;that I&mdash;" began the girl brokenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean," answered Mrs. North, "that you are already doing remarkable
+work&mdash;that you will go far&mdash;unless&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unless what?" breathed Sheila.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you let me advise you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, if you only will!  What shall I do?"  And Sheila bent trusting,
+obedient eyes upon her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do?  Dear child, I can tell you in a word.  You must renounce!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Renounce?" repeated Sheila vaguely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, renounce!"  And Alice North turned a face of pale sacrifice upon
+her&mdash;with that inevitable instinct for the dramatic.  Few women had
+renounced less than she&mdash;less, at least, of what pleased them&mdash;but at
+that moment, in the intensity of her artistic fervor, she believed
+herself an ascetic for her work's sake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The common lot of womanhood is not for you," she declared.  "You must
+live for your art!"  And her voice trembled with the touching
+earnestness that she had so easily assumed&mdash;and would as easily cast
+off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To Sheila, however, there never came a doubt of Mrs. North's deep
+sincerity.  She had listened, as if to a priestess, while the novelist
+proclaimed her sublime creed of renunciation, and she now offered the
+obstacle to it in her own situation with a sense of having fallen from
+grace in being thus human:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I'm married, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so am I.  But I am consecrated, nevertheless, to my art.  And so,
+my dear, must you be.  You must give yourself utterly,&mdash;<I>utterly</I>&mdash;to
+your art!  Art won't take less.  <I>Your</I> husband must live for
+<I>you</I>&mdash;instead of your living for him after the fashion of most wives.
+And you'll be worth his living for&mdash;I'm sure of that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I don't understand," faltered Sheila.  "I don't understand what it
+is I mustn't do for Ted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Alice North held her hands more closely and fixed her luminous eyes
+upon her&mdash;eyes which, to many before Sheila, had seemed to shine with
+the light of a beautiful soul: "You mustn't do for him the one thing
+that you and he will want most&mdash;you mustn't have children for him!  My
+dear, <I>you</I> must be a mother with your <I>brain</I>&mdash;not with your body.
+You can't do both&mdash;at least, worthily&mdash;and you must give yourself to
+creation with your mind.  There are women enough already to become
+mothers of the other sort!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila did not reply.  Slowly the glow faded from her face, from her
+eyes.  Slowly and listlessly she withdrew her hands from Mrs. North's
+fervid clasp and leaned back in her chair.  Clearly the supreme moment
+had passed; the flame of her ardor had flickered out.  Mrs. North
+glanced curiously at her.  An instant before, the girl had been
+radiant, tremulous with aspiration and with hope.  Now she was
+apathetic and cold, her spirit no more than a handful of ashes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The silence lengthened&mdash;grew heavy with meaning.  Alice North put out
+her hand again: "I trust I haven't intruded&mdash;offended?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no," said Sheila stiffly, "you have been very kind, and&mdash;I am
+sure&mdash;very wise."  But her frank gaze had grown guarded; her whole
+manner had become that of defensive reserve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, clearly, the great moment was over; the drama was ended.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"What a queer girl," remarked Mrs. North!  to Charlotte, when Sheila
+had gone.  "I predicted a phenomenal future for her&mdash;I had her tingling
+to her finger tips.  Then&mdash;quite suddenly&mdash;the light, the fire was
+quenched.  And do what I would, I couldn't kindle it again.  It was
+very strange&mdash;unless&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unless&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unless she's going to have a child.  I told her that she mustn't have
+children."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean," cried Charlotte incredulously, "that you advised her to
+shirk the greatest experience possible to a woman?  You advised her to
+forego <I>that</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Alice North lifted her pretty brows and shrugged her histrionic
+shoulders with an air of fine distaste.  "Really, Charlotte," she
+drawled, "I hadn't suspected you of being so primitive."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Walking homeward through the sweet summer dusk, Sheila was far from the
+listless, extinguished creature whom Alice North had described,
+however.  Never in her life had such a tempest of emotion swept through
+her being.  For she was face to face, at last, with life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The first night of Ted's courtship returned to her now; she smelt the
+fragrance of climbing roses; she felt his head again upon her
+breast&mdash;the indescribable first touch of love that is unlike all
+others!&mdash;she heard a voice deep within her exulting: "<I>This</I> is
+<I>life</I>!"  Ah, how ignorant she had been&mdash;how pitifully innocent!  To
+have thought <I>that</I> life!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For life was a thing that laid brutal, compelling hands upon you; that
+destroyed you and created you again; that rent you with unspeakable
+pangs, with unimaginable terrors, with frantic and powerless
+rebellions.  It was not joy; it was not peace; it was not fulfillment.
+It was a <I>force</I>.  Merciless, implacable, irresistible, it seized upon
+you and <I>used</I> you.  For that you were put into the world; for that you
+dreamed and hoped and struggled&mdash;for that moment out of an eternity,
+that moment of <I>use</I>!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she hurried onward, stumbling now and then with a clumsiness alien
+to her, the sense of lying helpless in the grasp of this force almost
+drove her to cry out.  More than once she lifted her hands to her
+mouth, and even then little shuddering murmurs broke from her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Helpless?  Oh, yes! yes!  For that had come to her from which there was
+no escape.  She was trapped.  She, too, was to be put to use.  Her own
+work must make way for Nature's.  She saw that now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her own work must make way.  For Alice North herself had said that one
+could not serve art and Nature, too&mdash;and Nature had exacted service of
+her.  She had been strong enough to defy Ted's tyranny; but, after all,
+she could not defeat Nature's.  Her work must make way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She let herself noiselessly into the house.  From the kitchen floated
+the sounds of the cook's evening activities, but otherwise the place
+was silent, and Ted's hat was not on its accustomed hook in the little
+hall.  She could be alone a while.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stole up the stairs to her bedroom, meaning to lie down in the
+quiet darkness, but once there, a panic assailed her, a senseless fear
+of the dim corners, the distorted shadows.  Besides, she wanted to see
+herself; she wanted to see if Ted, promising her beautiful things from
+motherhood the night before, if Mrs. North, warning her against it
+to-day, had known that she&mdash;that she was going to have a child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned on the lights and stood in their full glare before her
+mirror.  Searchingly she inspected herself&mdash;the slender figure that was
+as yet only delicately rounded, the cheek that showed just a softer
+curve and bloom, the eyes&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then she caught her breath in a sharp sob and leaned nearer to her
+reflection.  What was it&mdash;who was it&mdash;that she saw in her eyes?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For something&mdash;some one&mdash;looked back at her that had not looked back at
+her before; something&mdash;some one&mdash;ineffably yearning, poignantly
+tender&mdash;looked back at her with the gaze of a mystery&mdash;of a miracle.
+It was as if, within herself, she beheld another self; and this other
+self was reconciled to life, was in harmony with its divine purpose.
+Strangely enough, at that moment, her childhood's fancy of another self
+recurred to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Other-Sheila," she whispered, "Other-Sheila, is it <I>you</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While she leaned thus, waiting, perhaps, for the answer of that
+reflected self, she saw that Ted had opened the door behind her.  For
+an instant their eyes met in the mirror, and with that gaze Sheila's
+heart suddenly fled home to him.  He was the father of her child!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she cried, turning to him with outstretched, shaking hands and
+quivering face, "Oh, tell it to me again!  I <I>want</I> to believe it!
+<I>Tell me again that motherhood is the greatest thing!</I>"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+In that hour when Sheila, flinging herself into his arms, cried out to
+Ted, "Tell me again that motherhood is the greatest thing.  I want to
+believe it!" she struck a high note that, during the succeeding days
+and weeks and months, she could not always sustain.  And yet, from the
+moment when she attempted to reconcile her will to Nature's, she did
+begin to perceive that her sacrifice would have its recompense.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps she perceived it the more clearly because it was given to her
+to see what motherhood meant to other women.  For she was enough like
+the rest of humanity to value what others held precious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the day after her interview with Mrs. North, Sheila went to confide
+her expectation of maternity to her grandmother.  She found Mrs.
+Caldwell in her sitting-room, a peaceful, lonely figure, lifted, at
+last, above the stress and surge of life&mdash;and above all its sweet
+hazards, its young delight.  She turned a pleased face to Sheila:
+"Dear!  Ah, what would I do without my child?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the words, Sheila's news rushed to her lips:
+"Grandmother&mdash;grandmother&mdash;<I>I</I> am going to have a child!"  And then she
+was on her knees, and her face was hidden against Mrs. Caldwell's
+breast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was an instant of silence.  Then: "How happy you and Ted must
+be!" murmured Mrs. Caldwell, "how happy!"  And something in her tone
+touched Sheila more nearly than even her close-clinging arms, something
+that was at once joy for Sheila's joy and a measureless regret for
+herself.  Suddenly the girl, trembling in the fold of those gentle old
+arms, realized how far behind her grandmother lay all youth's dear
+hopes and adventures.  And she realized, too, that she herself held
+treasures in her hands&mdash;the treasures of youth and youth's warm love.
+After all, even if she must lay her work aside, she was happy.  Youth
+and love were hers&mdash;youth and love!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nor was it only from her grandmother that she received confirmation of
+her fortunate estate.  A few days later came Charlotte, to congratulate
+her upon Mrs. North's belief in her gift.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alice North says that you have a wonderful future before you," she
+told Sheila glowingly.  "I'm so glad for you!&mdash;so proud of you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. North said I had a future before me <I>if I did not have
+children</I>," corrected Sheila.  "She thinks I can't be a writer and a
+mother, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah," remarked Charlotte reflectively, "then that <I>was</I> why&mdash;"  She
+paused a moment, leaving the significant sentence unfinished, and then
+went on more earnestly, "Sheila, she was wrong!  Don't be persuaded to
+her views.  She judged you by herself.  Probably she couldn't be both
+writer and mother&mdash;she isn't really strong, you know.  But that is not
+true for all women.  Why, there have always been women who have done
+great things intellectually and had children, too!  Don't be
+discouraged; don't let yourself believe that you need lose your art if
+you should have a child.  You'd be all the finer artist for it.
+And&mdash;you are going to have a child, aren't you, Sheila?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila had been passionately shy about her expectancy of motherhood,
+but the grave directness of Charlotte's inquiry disarmed her, and she
+answered as frankly and simply: "Yes, I am going to have a child."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charlotte looked at her with an expression new to the shrewd blue eyes
+that were habitually so cool and smiling.  Then, with an impetuous and
+lovely gesture, she drew Sheila to her: "I'm so glad for you, dear!&mdash;so
+glad!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A little while before she had been glad for the promise in Sheila's
+work.  Now she used the same word, but how differently!  For her mind
+had spoken before, and now speech leaped from her very heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have never loved a man," she said presently, in her outspoken way,
+"I have never loved a man, but I hope that I may some day&mdash;and that I
+may have a little child for him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Mrs. Caldwell was not alone in her attitude toward love's
+consummation!  The desire for motherhood possessed not only the women
+of yesterday, of old-fashioned standards and ideals, but Charlotte,
+too; Charlotte, the "modern" woman incarnate, who had always appeared
+so self-sufficient, so bright and serene and cold, even so hard.  It
+seemed incredible that she should have confessed to the dreams of
+softer women, of women less mentally preoccupied and competent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila stared at her: "<I>You</I> feel that way?  You&mdash;with your music, your
+chances to study, to make a career for yourself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course I feel that way!  Every real woman does.  I want my music
+and motherhood, too, but&mdash;if I ever have to choose between them&mdash;do you
+doubt that I'll take motherhood?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was indignation in her tone; evidently she was wounded that
+Sheila had misjudged her&mdash;so strong was the mother-instinct, the sense
+of maternity's supreme worth, within her.  Realizing this, it appeared
+to Sheila that no one but herself&mdash;no woman in all the world&mdash;was
+reluctant for maternity.  After all, Ted had only asked of her that she
+should share the universal hope and joy of wifehood.  It was she who
+had demanded the exceptional lot; not he who had imposed a unique
+obligation upon her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With this conviction, the last flicker of her resentment toward him was
+extinguished, leaving her gratefully at peace with him, not only in the
+high moments, but even in those occasionally recurrent ones of
+rebellion and fear.  In the latter, indeed, she turned to Ted now for
+courage and strength, and in the fullness and tenderness of his
+response she felt herself more his than she had ever been.  But her
+resolve not to tell him about her talk with Alice North persisted.  It
+had been, at first, the resolution of a determined opposition to his
+views, but it endured through motives more generous.  Ted should have
+his happiness in approaching parenthood unspoiled.  He should not be
+hurt by knowing that she had ever looked forward to it with a divided
+heart.  She could at least conceal that she was unlike other women, and
+perhaps, in time, a miracle might be wrought upon her and she be made
+wholly like her sisters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps, too, in the fullness of time, her work and her motherhood
+might be adjusted to each other in her life.  As Charlotte had said,
+there were women&mdash;many of them&mdash;who were both artists and mothers.  She
+herself might be such a woman&mdash;some day.  She might convert Ted to
+this, and go forward to a destiny of complete fulfillment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But just now, with a sudden and intense accession of conscience, she
+yielded herself entirely to the new life that had sprung up within her.
+The sum of her strength belonged to it, she told herself, and she could
+give herself as completely as other women, whatever the difference
+between her mental attitude and theirs.  All the while, too, she prayed
+for her miracle; prayed that she might become altogether like other
+women, altogether like those glad mothers of the race.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did not pray in vain.  There came a day when, with her little son
+upon her arms, she whispered, "Oh, I <I>am</I> glad!  I am <I>glad</I>&mdash;glad!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Glad?  Ah, that was a poor, colorless word for the rapture that
+descended upon her.  Never was the ecstasy of motherhood granted a
+woman more utterly.  It was like an angel's finger on her lips,
+answering her questionings, satisfying her longings, silencing her
+discontents.  <I>This</I> was life, and it was not cruel and tyrannous, as
+she had thought, but infinitely gracious and benevolent.  It had used
+her, but it had used her for her own happiness.  For upon her arm lay
+her son!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That she ever could have wanted to escape motherhood, that she ever
+could have resented it, now seemed to her unbelievable.  She admitted
+it to be worth any renunciation, and she gave not one regret to the
+renunciation that she had made for it&mdash;the temporary renunciation of
+her work.  It absorbed her fully and gloriously; it flowed through her
+with her blood; it was a part of her body and the very fiber of her
+soul.  And it shone through her like a light: it was in the softer
+touch of her hand, the deeper note of her voice, the more brooding
+sweetness of her eyes.  She <I>was</I> motherhood, indeed; a young madonna
+whose halo was visible even to unimaginative Ted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Had the question occurred to him then, Ted would have said that no
+artist could surrender herself thus to maternity.  Peter Burnett,
+reverently watching, did say, "No one but a poet could be a mother like
+that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila had been very ill at the time of the child's birth, and a year
+passed before she regained her natural vigor.  It was, perhaps, the
+happiest year of her life.  Every now and then in the course of a
+lifetime, there come seasons of pure, untroubled joy, when all the
+practical concerns of ordinary existence pause for a little while, and
+the petty cares and worries make way, and even the commonplace
+pleasures stand aside, abashed.  Such a season of joy was Sheila's
+then.  She could never recollect it afterward without a quickening and
+lifting of her heart, and she knew at the time&mdash;Oh, very surely&mdash;that
+she had drawn down heaven to herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course it did not last.  As her strength increased and the every day
+business of living became more and more her affair, she dropped to the
+level of a normal contentment, and thus to the interests that had
+occupied her before the miracle was accomplished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eric, her little son, was well into his second year, however, before
+she felt the urging restlessness of her gift, and even then she denied
+the creative impulses stirring within her; she put them from her&mdash;while
+she longed to yield herself to them instead.  "Go away!" she said to
+them fiercely.  "Oh, go away before you spoil my beautiful peace!"  But
+for every time that she drove them forth, they returned the stronger,
+as if they would proclaim: "You can't be rid of us!  You may narcotize
+us with the sedative of your content.  You may banish us altogether.
+But we'll always waken!  We'll always come back!  For we're a part of
+<I>you</I>&mdash;just as much a part of you as your son is!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was true.  They were, indeed, a part of her.  She would always be
+different from other women after all&mdash;because of them.  She would
+always have to reckon with them; to appease them, or to deny them at
+her own bitter cost.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now there came the question: "Why deny them any longer?"  Eric had
+been a very healthy baby from the first; he had, also, an excellent
+nurse, a young mulatto girl who shared her race's enthusiasm for
+children.  In the kitchen ruled an old cook who brooked no interference
+from "Li'l Miss."  Obviously, neither her child nor her house demanded
+all of Sheila's time.  So in the quiet afternoons, when Eric had been
+taken outdoors, she began to write for an hour or two.  Surely, she
+argued, she now had a right to those two hours out of each twenty-four,
+especially since she did not take them from her husband, her son, or
+her home.  It was her own leisure, her own opportunity for rest, that
+she sacrificed, if sacrifice there was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But though she justified herself, she somehow said nothing about the
+matter to Ted.  She agreed with him now&mdash;Oh, warmly enough!&mdash;that
+motherhood was the greatest thing in life for a woman; but she did not,
+she never would, believe with him that it must be the only thing.  Nor
+should he believe it always, she told herself.  She would prove to him
+that a woman could be both mother and artist.  She would prove it to
+him, as she had dreamed of doing&mdash;but not just yet.  They loved each
+other so dearly, they were so happy together, that she shrank from
+disturbing their harmony by any discussion or dissension.  And
+discussion and dissension there would be before Ted could be converted.
+Amiable as he was in his healthy, hearty fashion, he would be
+intolerant and irritable about this.  So she worked on in secret; and
+for a couple of months nothing and no one was the worse for it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, when Eric was two years old, he was taken ill; suddenly, swiftly,
+terribly, as a little child can be smitten from rosy vigor to death's
+very brink.  The disease was scarlet fever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How can he have gotten it?" Sheila and Ted asked each other,
+bewildered and agonized.  But soon&mdash;only too soon&mdash;they knew.  Lila,
+the nurse, disappeared directly after the verdict was pronounced.
+"Afraid!" cried Sheila scornfully, "afraid&mdash;though she said she loved
+him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes'm," agreed old Lucindy, who had come from her kitchen to help
+nurse the boy with a loyalty that was in itself a scathing comment on
+Lila's defection, "yes'm, she's feared all right&mdash;but not ob gittin'
+fever."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was something savage in her tone at sound of which Sheila and Ted
+straightened from their little son's crib and looked to her for
+explanation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's feared," continued Lucindy, "'cause she knows <I>she</I> done gib dat
+chile fever takin' him to dem low-down nigger shanties she's allus
+visitin' at.  Dat's what Lila's feared ob."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She took the <I>baby</I> to&mdash;?"  It was Ted who tried to question Lucindy.
+Sheila could not, though she had opened her dry lips for indignant
+speech.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yassah, she sho did&mdash;jes befo' he was took sick.  She taken him to 'er
+no 'count yaller sister's&mdash;an' 'er sister's chillun's got scarlet
+fever.  I heared it dis mornin'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you sure, Lucindy?  Are you <I>sure</I>?"  It was still Ted who pursued
+the inquiry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Deed I'se sho, Marse Ted.  She tole me herse'f whar she'd been when
+she come back wid de baby, an' 'bout how cute an' sweet dey all say he
+is.  Course she didn't know 'bout de fever&mdash;it hadn' showed up on dem
+chillun yit&mdash;but she knowed mighty well Miss Sheila wouldn' want our
+baby in nigger houses <I>no-how</I>.  She knowed she was doin' wrong takin'
+him.  I sho did go fo' dat yaller gal, too!  She wouldn' never do it no
+mo'&mdash;not while Lucindy's a-livin'!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted turned to Sheila, and the expression of her white face startled
+him.  Much as he loved her, his heart hardened to her as he
+looked&mdash;hardened with a sudden, instinctive suspicion&mdash;and when he
+spoke, his voice was stern:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you know where Lila was taking the baby when she had him out?" he
+asked.  "Sheila, did you know?"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER X
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila, did you know?" repeated Ted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila shook her head.  Lila had had orders never to take Eric out of
+the yard without permission.  She had risked the disobedience, only too
+sure of her mistress's absorption.  For Lila knew the secret of those
+afternoons; she had not been a confidante, but she had been a witness.
+Sheila realized all this now, as she faced Ted across the crib of their
+little stricken son.  She realized that she had not known where Eric
+was because she had been engrossed in her work&mdash;and that not to have
+known, as things had come to pass, was criminal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, how could it have happened?" cried Ted.  And looking into Sheila's
+tortured face, sternness vanished from his eyes for an instant, and
+love and grief yearned toward her from them instead.  In that instant
+speech came to Sheila and the truth rushed out of her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It happened because&mdash;because I was up in my room and didn't overlook
+Lila.  It happened because I was up in my room, <I>writing a story</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was as if she had bared her breast to a sword&mdash;and he could not
+plunge it in.  In his turn he was silent; but his silence was scarcely
+easier to bear than the harshest upbraiding.  He stood there, gazing at
+her, and she knew all that was in his mind, in his heart.  And then,
+after a moment, he went out of the room, still without a word.  When he
+came back, several hours later, he was very gentle to her, but Sheila
+knew, nevertheless, that his father's heart condemned her, condemned
+her as she condemned herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Together they nursed their son, with Mrs. Caldwell and old Lucindy to
+help them.  And as Sheila watched her baby fight for the tiny flame of
+his life, her own heart, so much more burdened than Ted's, broke not
+once, but a thousand times!  He was so small, so weak, so helpless,
+that little son of hers, and he suffered.  That was what she felt she
+could not bear&mdash;that he should suffer.  Even his death she could endure
+if she must, she who deserved to lose him.  But his <I>pain</I>&mdash;&mdash;!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she went back and forth upon the ceaseless tasks of nursing,
+apparently so concentrated upon them, she was in reality living over
+days long past, the days before Eric's birth.  Clear and practical as
+was her grasp of the present and all its necessities, she was yet
+obsessed by her memories of that time before her child's coming; by her
+memories of it and her penitence for it.  In the beginning, she had not
+been glad.  It was upon that, quite as much as upon her later
+carelessness in trusting Lila, that her agonized conscience fixed.  How
+could she ever have hoped to keep her child&mdash;she who had not been glad
+of his coming?  It all sprang from that.  For if she had been glad
+enough in the beginning, the idea of writing would not have persisted
+with her; would not finally have led her to that negligence for which
+Eric might pay with his life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had not been glad in the beginning!  Over and over that sentence
+shrieked through her brain: She had not been glad in the beginning!
+She had not been glad!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She never spared herself by reflecting that she had not been reluctant
+for motherhood until Ted had shown his antagonism to the work that was
+already the child of her brain, and Mrs. North had, from her different
+viewpoint, justified his attitude.  She never conceded in her behalf
+that it had not even occurred to her, until then, to regard motherhood
+and art as conflicting elements, and that it was the shock of seeing
+them thus in her own life that had made her temporarily resentful of
+maternity.  She never excused or exonerated herself by that ultimate
+joy of motherhood which had possessed her so utterly.  She had not been
+glad in the beginning; later, she had not been glad enough to give
+him&mdash;her little, helpless son&mdash;all her life.  How, indeed, could she
+hope to keep him now?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Over and over this she went; and all the while she kept on about her
+tasks, deft, skillful, terribly calm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Caldwell observed her with an alarm hardly less than she felt for
+the child.  "It will kill Sheila if Eric dies," she said to Ted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he groaned, "I think it will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it, Ted?&mdash;the thing that's eating into her heart?  There's
+more here than even a mother's grief."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was writing a story when&mdash;when Lila exposed the boy to the fever.
+Of course, if she hadn't been&mdash;!  Oh, poor Sheila!&mdash;poor Sheila!" he
+ended brokenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For all blame had gone out of Ted; his gentleness to Sheila was no
+longer that of forbearance, but of an immense and inarticulate pity.
+It racked him that he could not stand between her and her contrition,
+her pitiful sorrow; it hurt him intolerably that he could not hold them
+from her with his very hands.  Almost he lost the sense of his own sick
+pain in watching hers.  Once he tried to take her in his arms and
+comfort her.  "Don't suffer so!" he pleaded.  "Don't suffer so!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she pulled away from him, denying herself the solace of his
+sympathy.  "I can't suffer <I>enough</I>!" she cried.  "I can <I>never</I> suffer
+enough to atone for what I've done!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came a night when they put Sheila out of the room&mdash;Mrs. Caldwell
+and Ted; literally put her out, with hands so tender and so firm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have a right to be with him when he dies!" she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila&mdash;he will need you to-morrow.  You <I>must</I> rest&mdash;for his sake."
+So they sought to deceive and compel her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," she insisted, "he will not need me to-morrow.  But he needs me
+now&mdash;to die with."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He may not die."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He 'may' not die.  You don't say he <I>will</I> not die!  Oh, he will
+die!&mdash;and he's too little to die without his mother!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then they put her out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted led her away to the room where she was to "rest" and shut her
+within it, and she lay down on the couch as he had bidden her to do.
+It was easy enough to be obedient in this, since she was barred out
+from the one place where she yearned to be.  Since she could not be
+there, it did not matter where she was or what she did.  It was easiest
+just to do what she was told.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She knew only too well that she had spoken truly when she had said that
+her little son might die that night.  She knew only too surely why she
+had been shut out.  And almost she submitted&mdash;the blow seemed so
+certain, so close.  The despair that resembles resignation in its
+apathy almost conquered her, as she waited for the hand of death to
+strike.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But while she waited, lying in the quiet darkness, there suddenly came
+to her the idea that she might still save Eric.  Morbid from grief and
+fatigue, she had not a doubt that his death was a "judgment" on
+herself; a punishment.  Because she had neglected him for her own
+selfish ends; nay, more, because she had not been glad of his coming in
+the beginning, God was about to take him from her.  She was mercilessly
+sure of this&mdash;sure with the awakened blood, the inherited traditions of
+many Calvinistic ancestors, the stern forefathers of her father.  Her
+own more liberal faith, her personal conception of a God benignant and
+very tender, went down before that grim heritage of more rigorous
+consciences.  But with the self-conviction springing from that
+heritage, there came, too, the suggestion that she might make her peace
+with God; that with sufficient proof of her penitence, she might
+prevail upon Him to spare Eric.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again and again the suggestion reached her, in the "still, small voice"
+which may have been the voice of her own inner self, or of the
+surviving, guiding souls of her ancestors, or of God Himself.  Again
+and again it spoke to her&mdash;whatever it was, from whatever source it
+rose; again and again, until it was still and small no longer, but
+strong and purposeful, and its message unmistakable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She could but heed it&mdash;thankfully.  And so she began to cast about in
+her mind for the proof of her contrition.  It could be no light thing,
+no trivial surrender of self.  It must be a sacrifice&mdash;a sacrifice such
+as the ancient tribes of Israel would have offered an incensed God.  It
+must be&mdash;she saw it in a flash!&mdash;it must be her work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for
+it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and
+not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee:
+for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish,
+and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This, then, must she do.  She must pluck out that thing which had
+offended her, which had betrayed her into a sin against her own
+motherhood, and cast it from her.  She must pluck out her gift and
+offer it up in expiation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so she knelt there in the darkness and tendered her sacrifice; so
+she thrust from her the thing which had been so dear to her; so she
+entered into her compact with God.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, God, grant me my child's life, and I will never write again.  I
+have sinned in selfishness and vanity, but I am repentant and will sin
+no more.  I have plucked out my right eye.  I have cut off my right
+hand.  I have cast my gifts from me forever.  Grant me my son's life,
+and I will never write again!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hour after hour she entreated God to make terms with her.  The night
+crept by, slow-footed and silent, but she was not aware of the passing
+of time, or of the deepening of the stillness within the house, or of
+the quivering of the sword above her head.  She no longer listened for
+sounds from that distant room.  She no longer strove to pierce the
+intervening walls with her mother's sixth sense.  She heard nothing but
+the voice which had counselled her; she strove for nothing but to obey
+that voice.  Her whole being concentrated itself into a prayer.  She
+was conscious only of herself and God, and of her passionate effort to
+reach Him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, God, <I>hear</I> me!  I have sinned, but I will sin no more.  My heart
+is broken with remorse.  I will never write again!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So she pleaded with God throughout the long night.  And pitiful and
+insolent as was her bargaining, God must have found in it something to
+weigh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For with the first light of the morning, Ted opened the door&mdash;and there
+was light in his worn face, too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila&mdash;<I>Sheila</I>!&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then they fell into each other's arms, sobbing&mdash;sobbing as they
+could not have done if their little son had died.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap11"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+With tragic sincerity Sheila had entered into the compact for her son's
+life, and she kept it to the letter.  She saw no reason why she should
+have a poorer sense of honor toward God than she had toward men and
+women; her child had been spared to her, and henceforth it was for her
+to fulfill her part, to keep her given word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had never understood, indeed, why people made&mdash;and broke&mdash;promises
+to God so lightly.  She had found them ready enough to complain if they
+considered God unjust to them, but they never seemed to think that it
+mattered whether they were "square" with God or not.  To them He was a
+sort of divine creditor who need not be paid.  They even made it a
+proof of reverence&mdash;a comfortable proof!&mdash;to place Him far above the
+consideration they had to show their fellow men.  This viewpoint was
+impossible to Sheila.  Morbid, hysterical, as her offered price for
+Eric's life had been, she felt herself bound, and she paid
+punctiliously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was easy enough thus to pay as she watched her child growing strong
+and rosy again.  His little life&mdash;Ah, what was it not worth?  A dozen
+times a day the memory of that night when she had believed that he
+would die sent her shuddering to her knees with fresh prayers and
+promises.  And always the recollection of that loss escaped roused in
+her a very passion of thanksgiving.  She had her son!&mdash;that was her
+answer to all the dreams which, unrealized, sometimes stole back to
+tempt her with their wistful faces.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Eric was well enough for her now and then to leave him&mdash;at first
+she could not leave him lest, with her sheltering hands removed, his
+life should flicker out&mdash;she gave burial to the little brain children
+that, for the child of her body, she had sacrificed.  Every bit of
+verse, every little sketch, and the unfinished story which was, in her
+sight, most guilty, and most dear of all, she laid away; not with
+ribbon and lavender and rites of sentiment and tears, but sternly,
+barely, ruthlessly, as one puts away things discarded by the heart
+itself.  She might have burned them less harshly, and that she did not
+was only because she conceived it a finer deed to keep them and resist
+them.  So she put her honor to the uttermost test.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was thus, and with her own hands, she poured her life into the mould
+Ted had desired for it; it was thus she thrust from her all that did
+not pertain to her husband and her child and her home.  Yet between Ted
+and herself not a word about it passed.  He never reproached her for
+what her writing had so nearly cost them; he never asked her to give it
+up; he never even inquired as to whether she were still pursuing it.
+He simply stood aloof from that element in her, with what queer mixture
+of disapproval and pride and magnanimity she could but guess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They continued to be happy together, the happier as the months passed
+and Ted saw her more and more his and Eric's.  In the beginning he had
+probably thought that, after the shock of Eric's peril receded, Sheila
+would try to write again; that fear must have lurked behind his
+non-committal silence; but time gave him his security about it.  Sheila
+never told him of the compact of that anguished night, but gradually he
+became as sure that she had given up her talent forever as if he had
+heard her pledge.  "Little wife!" he often called her, "Little mother!"
+And always it was as if he said to her, "What other name could be half
+so sweet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And she told herself that he was right.  Never had there been a better
+husband.  And to be loved by a man like that, a man clean and fine and
+kind; to be the mother of such a man's child, she was very certain was
+worth more to a woman than any other honors or fulfillments which life
+could bring her.  She had known that always, even when she first
+discovered&mdash;so bitterly!&mdash;that Ted was not in sympathy with her gift
+and her ambitions; and she knew it more surely as time went on.  There
+were moments when she wished ardently that the sympathy between them
+had been more absolute; when she thought that, happy as she was, she
+would have been happier if their tastes had gone hand-in-hand like
+their hearts.  But there was never a time when she would have exchanged
+Ted for any other man, or when she felt it possible to have done
+without him.  There are women who, married, feed their discontents with
+visions of what life could have been in freedom or with some other man
+than they have chosen.  Sheila was not of this sort.  Having crossed
+the threshold of marriage, she did not look behind her at the
+alluring&mdash;and elusive&mdash;road of might-have-been.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She hoped, now, for other children.  With this utter surrender of
+herself to the woman's life, there came to her the longing for many
+children, for all her arms could hold.  The sum of that creative force
+which, under different circumstances, would have flowed into her work,
+all its denied passion and vitality, was transmuted into the instinct
+of motherhood.  Because of her creative gift, there was literally more
+life within her, more life to bestow, and so, the channel of artistic
+expression being closed to her, she yearned to spend it all upon
+maternity; to have, indeed, as many children as her arms could hold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Had these desired children come to her, peace might have been hers
+finally and entirely.  But the desire was not granted.  Eric grew out
+of his babyhood to a fine, sturdy boyhood, and was still the only
+child.  And now Sheila, a woman of thirty and ten years married, began
+to feel again, and more strongly than ever in her life, the urge of her
+gift, the unrest of dreams stifled, thwarted, but never destroyed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had made a compact with God, and she continued to keep it; but more
+and more hunger stared out of her eyes and a nervous restlessness
+betrayed itself in her manner.  She was happy, but she was not
+satisfied.  Something clamored in her unappeased.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If she had lived in a large city, there would at least have been food,
+if not activity, for that clamoring, aching thing within her.  There
+would have been pictures and music and plays to lift her, at times,
+into the world of poetic beauty for which she longed.  But Shadyville
+could offer nothing to one of her mental quality; as a girl she had
+found diversion in its social gaiety, but as a matron, the mother of a
+nine-year-old son, even the social life of the town was restricted for
+her to card-parties and the doubtful amusement of chaperonage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For in Shadyville, the young married people early abdicated in favor of
+those still younger, those still seeking mates.  Society was, in fact,
+merely a means of finding one's mate, so primitive had the little town
+remained; companionship between men and women, save as an opportunity
+for the eternal quest, was unknown.  Wives and mothers sat placidly, or
+wearily, against the walls at dances, watching the game of man and
+maid, and slaked their thirst for entertainment, for stimulating
+comradeship, at the afternoon teas and bridge parties of their own sex.
+Now and then a reading club or a study class was organized, a naļve
+effort toward an understanding of things which Shadyville vaguely
+perceived to be of importance beyond its boundaries; and always the
+class or club died of insufficient nourishment.  Within thirty miles of
+a large town, the life of Shadyville remained uncorrupted&mdash;and
+unimproved; a healthy, simple, joyous affair of the love-quest in
+youth; a healthy, simple, and usually contented, matter of home-making
+and child-rearing later.  Sheila, having stepped over into the second
+stage with her marriage, was not supposed to feel any longings which
+her domestic existence could not satisfy; and feeling them, in defiance
+of Shadyville's standards and traditions, she could but suppress and
+starve them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me go down to the office every day and help you," she suggested to
+Ted finally, "I used to help you&mdash;before we were married."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Ted, whose limited ambitions had realized themselves and whose work
+had now settled into a comfortable routine for which he was more than
+capable, evinced no enthusiasm for the project.  She had helped him; he
+had never forgotten nor disparaged that.  But he did not need or want
+her at the Star office now, and he did need and want her in his home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have enough to do as it is&mdash;with Eric and the house," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Ted, I <I>haven't</I> enough to do," she insisted.  "There's nothing
+for me really to do in the house.  I overlook everything, but that
+doesn't occupy all my time.  And with Eric at school&mdash;don't you see, my
+dear, that it's something to do I need?  Don't you see how&mdash;how
+restless I am?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We ought to have more children!" he exclaimed wistfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she agreed, "yes, we ought to have more children.  But if they
+do not come&mdash;?"  And she stared before her, her hands lying empty and
+listless in her lap.  "If they do not come&mdash;?" she repeated presently.
+And now she turned her brooding eyes to his face and a purpose gathered
+and concentrated in them.  "I wonder if you could understand&mdash;" she
+began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he cut into the sentence: "I must hurry back to the office.  I take
+too much time for lunch.  Don't get discontented, little girl.  I'll
+take you down to Louisville for the horse show next week.  We'll have a
+bully spree.  That's what you need."  And he went off whistling
+blithely, sure that he had solved the problem of Sheila's "moods"&mdash;as
+he always called any symptom of depression in her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila watched him go, smiling.  "Of course he wouldn't have
+understood," she said to herself.  "And how I would have bothered him
+if I'd tried to analyze myself for him&mdash;poor dear!"  But the
+reflection, amused, yet wholly tender, did not end her unrest, her
+perplexity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a futile attempt to interest herself in duties about the house,
+she set out for a walk, hoping to capture something of the outdoor
+peace.  It was October, always an exhilarating month in Kentucky, with
+its crisp air and its flaming banners of red and gold, and soon her
+blood was stirred and her heart lightened, and she was swinging along
+at a brisk pace.  She had started in the direction of her grandmother's
+house, but suddenly she wheeled about and took to another street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Never since Eric's illness had her grandmother spoken to her of her
+writing, and she had been glad of the silence.  It seemed to her that
+if they talked at all, they who had been so close, so much would have
+to be said; she could not conceive of a reserve in anything which she
+undertook to discuss with Mrs. Caldwell at all.  Ted's views on the
+duty of a wife and mother would therefore have to be told with the
+rest, and she did not want to tell them.  Her grandmother would have
+little patience with them, she was sure.  As a devoted husband, most of
+all as the father of Sheila's child, Ted seemed to have won a secure
+place in Mrs. Caldwell's affection at last, and Sheila, who had clearly
+seen Mrs. Caldwell's original reluctance to the marriage, had no
+intention of jeopardizing that place now.  Understanding, sympathy,
+advice would have meant much to her, but she could not take them at
+Ted's expense.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So she walked on, away from her grandmother's house; onward until she
+left the town behind her and found herself upon the road leading to
+Louisville.  Just ahead of her, she saw, then, a familiar figure
+trudging along in leisurely fashion, the figure of Peter Burnett.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peter!" she hailed joyously.  And as he hastened back to her, her
+heart lifted buoyantly; her somber mood departed.  She did not say to
+herself, "<I>Here</I> is understanding," but she felt it.  A sudden warmth
+possessed her, and that other self of hers, so long banished&mdash;the
+Other-Sheila of dreams and visions&mdash;suddenly looked out of her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A constitutional?" inquired Peter.  And then, to her nod, "May I go
+with you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, Peter, do!  Let's have a good old-time talk!  Let's play I'm
+young again!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter grimaced: "You?  You're still a child!  But <I>I</I>&mdash;!  It's a
+sensitive subject with me nowadays&mdash;that of youth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It needn't be," laughed Sheila.  "You've discovered the fountain of
+eternal youth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And indeed, Peter at forty-six had changed curiously little from the
+Peter of twenty-eight.  Still slender and of an indolent grace, his
+aspect of youth had wonderfully persisted.  And having passed his life
+far more in contemplation than in struggle, his face matched his figure
+with a freshness rare to middle years.  He was, it must be admitted, a
+convincing argument in favor of laziness&mdash;except for the expression of
+his eyes; they had something of the look of Sheila's; their gaze seemed
+turned inward upon a tragedy of unfulfillment.  And unfulfilled, in
+very truth, was all the promise of Peter's attainments; of his
+exceptional parts.  He was still teaching rhetoric to little girls at
+the Shadyville Seminary, and, because he had not married, he was still
+leading cotillions.  He read his Theocritus as of old; he called often
+upon Mrs. Caldwell; sometimes he had an accidental meeting with Sheila,
+such as this.  So his years had passed; too smoothly to age him; too
+barrenly to content or enrich him in any sense.  No one appeared to see
+his pathos, but pathos was there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He fell into step with Sheila and they tramped onward together in the
+cool, bright air, talking with the happy fluency which they always had
+for each other.  And though Sheila said nothing of her problem, her
+restlessness, she felt all the while the comfort of her companion's
+understanding sympathy&mdash;for anything that she might choose to tell him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The road rose before them, a gradual, steady ascent; they reached its
+crest just as the sun grew low and vivid.  A glow was upon the autumn
+fields on either hand; tranquility and silence seemed to be everywhere;
+tranquility and silence except for a weird crooning that now floated to
+them, a crooning indescribably mournful.  And then they espied,
+crouching down at the roadside and almost at their elbows, a creature
+as weird and mournful as the sound.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Crazy Lisbeth," whispered Sheila.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lisbeth it was, Lisbeth grown old and more pitiful than ever; a ragged,
+unkempt being&mdash;yet strangely lifted above the sordidness of her rags
+and her beggar's life by her insanity.  Long ago she had ceased to work
+at all, her poor brain having become incapable of any continuous
+effort, however simple.  But she had resisted the obvious havens of
+asylum and almshouse, and contrived to live on in liberty by aid of the
+precarious charity of those who had once employed her.  She made her
+home in any deserted hovel that she could seize upon, going from one to
+another in a sad progress of destitution.  And whenever the days were
+fine, she still roamed the countryside, a desire upon her that would
+not let her rest, though her memory of her dead husband and child was
+now so vague and blurred that she no longer consciously sought them.
+To-day the desire that so tormented her was allayed.  For she held
+something in her arms, something that she rocked gently as she crooned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila went a step nearer, but Lisbeth did not look up or appear aware
+of her presence.  She was not aware of anything in the world but the
+treasure within her arms.  Watching, Sheila's eyes filled with quick
+tears and her throat ached with a pity almost unbearable.  For the
+thing in Lisbeth's arms was a battered doll, and the crooning was a
+lullaby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Very softly Sheila turned to Peter.  "Let us go back," she said.  "She
+hasn't seen us&mdash;she mustn't see us.  We must not wake her from her
+dream.  It's a doll she's rocking, and she's dreaming&mdash;she's dreaming
+it's a child."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They started back without speaking, hushed and saddened by what they
+had seen of another's tragedy; and as they went, Sheila was thinking of
+the occasion in her childhood when she had pretended to be Lisbeth's
+little daughter.  It had happened so long ago, but in all the years
+since then Lisbeth had been intent on the one dream, the one hope&mdash;that
+of motherhood.  All definite remembrance of the child she had borne and
+lost was gone from her clouded brain, but the instinct and desire of
+motherhood had remained; it had been life to her.  Her mind, flickering
+like a will-o'-the-wisp from one uncompleted thought to another, had
+been steadfast enough in that; her heart, detached from every human
+tie, had never faltered in its impulse of maternity.  The tears filled
+Sheila's eyes again, filled and overflowed so that Peter gave an
+exclamation of concern and dismay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor Lisbeth!" she murmured.  "Poor thing!  And I who have my child am
+discontented.  What is the matter with me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the question she had put to Ted long ago&mdash;after that other
+episode of Lisbeth&mdash;and he had been as bewildered as she.  But there
+was no bewilderment in the glance that met hers now.  Nevertheless,
+Peter did not answer her directly.  But after awhile he said musingly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A bird's wings may be clipped, but its heart can't be changed.
+Always&mdash;always&mdash;it is mad to fly!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap12"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Caldwell had grown very fragile that autumn; not as if she were
+ill, but rather as if she were gradually and gently relaxing her hold
+on life.  As yet no one but Peter had realized the change in her, but
+to him it was sadly evident, and he visited her oftener than ever,
+taking all he could of a friendship that would soon be his no longer.
+He had stopped to see her on his way home from the seminary, the day
+after his walk with Sheila, and it was upon Sheila that their talk
+finally turned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had a stroll with her yesterday afternoon," Peter remarked.  "It's
+rare luck for me to get any of her time nowadays.  Marriage swallows
+women terribly, doesn't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila's marriage has certainly swallowed her," admitted Mrs.
+Caldwell.  "I'm fond of Ted&mdash;really very fond of him, in fact&mdash;but I've
+always expected marriage to swallow his wife.  He's that sort of man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think he demands so much of her then?  I'd felt that it was the
+boy who stood between Sheila and all her old life&mdash;her old self."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, but isn't that just the way Ted has her so utterly&mdash;through the
+boy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter shook his head: "There's something I don't understand.  I
+understand <I>her</I>&mdash;to the soul!  But there's something in her life I
+don't understand.  I'm sure Ted's good to her.  I'm sure they love each
+other.  But she's not satisfied, Mrs. Caldwell.  The trouble is that
+she wants to write&mdash;and she doesn't.  I can't understand why she
+doesn't.  When Eric was a baby, it was natural enough that she should
+give up everything for him; but now it's unreasonable, it's absurd,
+that she doesn't take up her work again.  And I can't tell her so&mdash;well
+as I know the value of the gift she's wasting.  She isn't frank with
+me.  I can only talk to her about the matter in metaphors."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She isn't frank with me either, Peter.  But I'm a little more informed
+about the situation than you are.  Sheila was writing a story when
+Eric's nurse, taking advantage of not being overlooked, exposed him to
+scarlet fever.  That, I'm confident, is somehow responsible for
+Sheila's giving up her work."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter's face flushed darkly: "Do you think Ted reproached her for that?
+Do you think he blamed her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;I'm sure he didn't.  He was terribly, terribly sorry for her.  Ted
+is capable of generosity at times, Peter&mdash;I'm not fond of him for
+nothing!&mdash;and he was generous then.  But of course Sheila reproached
+herself.  I can imagine what she suffered, and how bitterly she
+censured herself.  I can imagine, too, that she's been atoning ever
+since.  It would be so like her to atone with her whole life for a
+mistake, an accident.  If she had married another man&mdash;it wouldn't have
+happened."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The mistake, the accident, wouldn't have happened?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, that might have happened in any case.  I meant the atonement."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," objected Peter, "you said Ted did not blame her.  How, then,
+could he be responsible?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He could let the atonement go on!  He isn't a subtle person, but I
+believe he's divined that, and let it continue.  I knew, before Sheila
+married him, that he would not care for her art.  I knew that he would
+resent any vital interest she might have outside of her marriage.  And
+knowing this, I've concluded that when her conscience worked along the
+line of his own wishes, it was too much for him; he simply couldn't
+help taking the advantage circumstances had offered him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yet you say he is capable of generosity!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Capable of generosity <I>at times</I>, Peter.  And so he is.  Most of us
+have our generosities and our meannesses.  Ted's like the rest of us in
+both respects.  The real trouble is that he's the wrong man for Sheila.
+If she had married you, the same accident might have happened, but the
+atonement wouldn't.  For <I>you</I> would have <I>wanted</I> her to write; you
+would have made her feel it wrong <I>not</I> to write.  It's not that you're
+a better man than Ted, either; it's that you're a better man for
+Sheila.  You ought to have married her, my dear.  I meant you to marry
+her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter rose hastily from his chair and walked to the window, standing
+there with his back to Mrs. Caldwell.  Very rigidly he stood, his hands
+at his side, tightly closed.  When he finally turned again into the
+room, his face was white.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why do you tell me that now&mdash;now that it's too late?" he asked.  And
+his voice shook with the question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At something in that white face of his, at something in his unsteady
+voice, Mrs. Caldwell grew very gentle: "Because I'm a blundering old
+woman, Peter dear.  But, since I have blundered, let us talk frankly.
+I did intend you to marry Sheila.  I plotted and planned for it from
+the time she was a little girl in your rhetoric class.  I believed that
+in a marriage with you lay her chance to be both a happy and a
+wonderful woman.  And then&mdash;Ted married her instead!  But there's still
+something you can do for her.  You can watch over her when I'm gone,
+Peter.  You can put out a saving hand now and then, if you see she
+needs it.  When I'm dead&mdash;and that will be soon, my dear&mdash;you'll be the
+only person in the world who understands her.  If I can feel that
+you'll always be there ready to help her, I can die in peace.  Bottled
+up genius is a dangerous thing.  Sometimes I am afraid for Sheila!  But
+if you'll promise to watch over her for me, I can die with my heart at
+rest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is nothing I would not do for you or for her!" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know that, Peter.  What wonder that I had my dreams about you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They were dreams, just dreams," he responded, and now he was speaking
+more easily.  "I wasn't the right man for Sheila after all.  If I had
+been, she would have realized it; she wouldn't have married some one
+else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How could she realize it&mdash;at twenty?  And she was barely twenty when
+she married.  Peter, there's a moment in a girl's life when,
+consciously or not, her whole being, soul and body, cries out for love.
+And if a man is at hand then&mdash;any presentable man&mdash;to answer, '<I>I</I> am
+love,' she believes him.  That moment came to Sheila&mdash;and Ted was
+there!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," cried Peter, "Oh, surely there was more to it than that!  Surely
+there was real love!"  And when she did not answer, he repeated
+earnestly, "Surely there was real love!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You plead for Ted?" asked Mrs. Caldwell with a touch of irony.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I plead for her.  Ted doesn't matter, and I don't matter.  But
+<I>Sheila</I>&mdash;Oh, I can't bear that she should have only a second-rate
+thing, an imitation.  I can't bear that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She thinks it's real love she feels for Ted.  And as long as she
+thinks so, Peter, she'll be happy.  What we have to do for her&mdash;what
+you have to do for her when I'm gone&mdash;is to keep her thinking that.  It
+isn't her baffled gift I worry about; it's the discontent her gift may
+rouse in her; the awful <I>vision</I> it may bring her.  I see so clearly
+how she was married&mdash;and she must <I>never</I> see!  If ever you find her
+beginning to see, you must blindfold her somehow.  I've often thought
+that women should be born blind&mdash;or that their eyes should be bandaged
+at birth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Horrible!" exclaimed Peter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;<I>kind</I>!  All the creatures of our love would be beautiful then;
+all the circumstances of our little destinies noble and splendid.  We'd
+create them so in our own minds, and disillusionment could never touch
+us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the truth we need, men and women," insisted Peter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's nothing so tragic as the truth&mdash;when it comes too late," said
+Mrs. Caldwell sadly.  "Your grandfather and I found out that.  He was
+already married, and I was on the eve of my wedding when&mdash;it happened.
+We might have run away together; ours was a real passion, Peter.  But
+people didn't do that sort of thing so readily in our young days.  They
+thought less of their individual rights then, and more of honor.  It
+seemed to us that it was sin enough ever to have realized what we felt;
+ever to have acknowledged it.  So we went on with our obligations, your
+grandfather and I.  He was a good husband, and I was a good wife.  Our
+lives were cast in pleasant lines, with dear, kindly companions, and we
+would have been happy if&mdash;if I hadn't, in a fatal hour, seen his heart
+and reflected it for him in my own eyes.  We would have been happy if I
+had been blindfolded!  As it was, we'd seen the truth, and to accept
+less was tragedy for us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were both free at last," said Peter.  "Why didn't you&mdash;Oh, why
+<I>didn't</I> you&mdash;take what was left to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear, we were already old.  Romance was still in our hearts, but we
+hadn't the courage to take it, publicly, into our lives.  We had felt a
+great love, and been brave enough to deny it.  But when we could have
+satisfied it honorably&mdash;we were afraid of the change in our lives; we
+were afraid of our children, of your father and Sheila's; we were even
+afraid of what the town would say!  In the beginning we had striven not
+to dare.  In the end we could not dare.  It is sad that we should be
+like that, isn't it, Peter?  It's sad that as the strength of our youth
+goes from us, the valor of our love should go too.  But it is so, it is
+so for all of us, my dear.  The day before your grandfather died,
+something flamed up in us again.  The courage of new life came to him,
+and he made me promise to marry him the next day.  But the next day he
+was&mdash;dead!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She fell silent, her eyes fixed broodingly upon the fire, eyes that
+looked strangely young.  Peter, silent too, was remembering that day
+before his grandfather's death; remembering Mrs. Caldwell's presence in
+the house, and the indescribable sense of some other presence also.  He
+had felt it so strongly, that other presence, that the whole house had
+seemed to him to be pervaded and thrilled by it.  His father was living
+then, and they two had spent the afternoon in the library, while Mrs.
+Caldwell had sat with his grandfather in the room above.  He had said
+to his father&mdash;he recalled it quite clearly&mdash;"I feel
+something&mdash;<I>something</I>&mdash;in the very air."  And his father had appeared
+startled and had replied, "Perhaps death is in the air."  But Peter
+knew now that it had not been death he had felt; that it had not been
+death that had filled the air as if with rushing wings and shooting
+stars and invisible, ineffable glories.  It had not been death; it had
+been love.  And glancing at Mrs. Caldwell's musing eyes, something like
+envy came into his own.  He went to her, knelt, and kissed her thin old
+hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After all, you <I>had</I> love," he murmured.  And then, "I wish you had
+been my grandmother.  I <I>wish</I> you had."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Peter!" she cried.  "Oh, Peter!  Peter!"  And suddenly her arms
+were around his neck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she clung to him, her tears on his face and her heart's secret in
+his hands, he almost told her; he almost said what he had resolved
+never to say.  And yet he did not.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's never loved her," concluded Mrs. Caldwell when he had gone.
+"There was a moment when he looked as if&mdash;but he's never loved Sheila.
+If he'd loved her&mdash;ever&mdash;he would have told me."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap13"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Had Mrs. Caldwell seen Peter pacing the floor of his little hotel room
+that night, she would have been less certain that he did not love
+Sheila.  She had said to him, "There's nothing so tragic as the
+truth&mdash;when it comes too late!"  And it was this tragedy with which
+Peter grappled now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had not known that he loved Sheila until Mrs. Caldwell told him that
+he should have married her; but those words had been for him a
+revelation; an illumination of the last ten years and more.  Suddenly
+he saw, as if a searchlight had been flung upon them, the innermost,
+secret depths of his own heart&mdash;saw them filled with the image of
+another man's wife.  So swiftly, so entirely without warning had
+self-knowledge dawned upon him that the cry had been wrung from him,
+"Why do you tell me this now&mdash;when it is too late?"  But after the one
+betraying exclamation, he had put all his strength into the attempt to
+conceal his discovery.  Mrs. Caldwell had spoken of the honor of her
+generation as of a thing that had not survived, in its purity, to a
+later one.  Yet Peter's sense of honor was too scrupulous to permit him
+the confession to anyone that he loved another's wife.  To the single
+end of concealment he had set himself through the rest of that
+interview.  He had gone through it as through some nerve-racking
+nightmare, struggling for self-control as one struggles for safety in
+dreams of horrid peril.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He must not admit that he loved Sheila!  He must not admit that he
+loved her!  That was what he had told himself over and over, fighting
+all the while for the mastery of his face, his voice, lest they
+proclaim what his lips did not utter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yet in spite of the struggle, in spite of the sense of awful calamity,
+of absolute wreckage, that had descended upon him, he had been keenly,
+piteously conscious of every word that Mrs. Caldwell had said; and he
+had realized fully the impossibility and the irony of the task she had
+imposed upon him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having failed to marry Sheila himself, he must now undertake to keep
+her in love with the man who had married her!  This was all which was
+required of him; this was <I>all</I>!  His devotion to Mrs. Caldwell had not
+faltered; but now, facing his tragedy alone and in the freedom to
+suffer, he felt a great bitterness toward his old friend for her
+request.  It seemed to him incredibly stupid that she should think for
+an instant that he, an unmarried man, could assume the post of guardian
+over a wife's love for her husband.  It implied, in the first place, an
+intimacy which Sheila was far too fine-grained to permit; for however
+confidential she might become on the subject of her work, she would
+never be confidential with him in regard to Ted.  Whatever he might
+perceive, she would never give him the opportunity to say to her, "I
+think that your affection for your husband is waning.  Let us put fresh
+fuel on the fire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It implied, too, that request of Mrs. Caldwell's, a sharing of Sheila's
+life which Shadyville would never tolerate; which his own awakened
+heart could not tolerate.  He could not be much with Sheila henceforth.
+For once, Shadyville's narrow restrictions would be right.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So, he told himself, Mrs. Caldwell had been stupid.
+And&mdash;unconsciously, of course&mdash;she had been cruel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet&mdash;she was leaving Sheila, leaving her to an essentially alien
+companion.  What wonder that, in her passionate solicitude, she had
+reached out to the one person whose understanding sympathy she could
+count upon?  What wonder that, however unpractically, she had made an
+appeal to one whose heart she had divined better than she knew?  What
+wonder, even, that he had made her a sort of promise?  "There is
+nothing I would not do for you or Sheila!" he had said to her; and that
+was true.  There was nothing he would not do for them&mdash;if he could.
+Only&mdash;Ted himself must keep what was his own!  He had been man enough
+to win Sheila; now he must keep her!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted had been man enough to win her; and he, Peter, had not been!  That
+was what he realized now&mdash;with measureless self-scorn.  <I>He</I> had not
+even been man enough to know that he loved her; much less man enough to
+make her his.  And now, because he could not make her his, his life was
+charred to ashes&mdash;but his soul was an anguished, unquenchable flame.
+He had long thought that he knew the worst of himself; his
+discreditable indolence; his reluctance for effort and conquest; his
+insufficient courage to follow his emotions into poverty; and that
+negligible fineness of his which had held him back from advantages that
+he could not repay with genuine emotion.  He had known all that of
+himself, calling it his worst, and feeling a certain pride in it, too,
+as in a failure that was of more delicate fiber than the successes of
+others.  But he had never really known the worst of himself until now.
+For the worst of him was that he had not recognized the true love of
+his life when it came to him.  Those early fancies of his for girls
+whom he deemed too poor to marry&mdash;what had they been but fancies
+indeed?  He had despised himself once or twice for not committing
+himself, but what was the offense of failing a mere fancy compared to
+the offense of not recognizing the one true love when it was in his
+life?  He would have had courage enough to follow it to the world's
+end, in sharpest poverty and hardship, but he had so sheltered himself
+from any mischance in love that he had not known love when it came.
+Blind fool that he was, he had not known it when it came!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Even now he could not tell just when it had come.  Looking back along
+the years, it seemed to him to have been there always, for every memory
+of Sheila, since her little girlhood, took him by the throat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw her as he&mdash;and Ted!&mdash;had seen her one April day when she was but
+twelve years old; a slender, black-haired, dreaming-eyed child, lying
+upon the pale, spring grass and looking up into the flowering
+cherry-tree branches above her head; a child who was herself an
+embodied poem, so akin she was to all of April's magic, to the spring's
+lovely miracles.  He saw her, too, in his class-room, eager, earnest,
+exquisitely responsive to every perception, every thought of his own; a
+little girl while he was already a man, and yet his comrade, his
+comrade in every phase of life had he but discerned and willed it!  He
+saw her as a young girl, with her pure eyes and her generous mouth and
+her sweet, slender throat; a being still untouched by life, but
+beautifully ready, touchingly desirous for life's shaping hands.  And
+he saw her as she had been yesterday, walking by his side, the woman at
+last&mdash;yet strangely immature, incomplete.  He had thought her immature
+and incomplete because she had not developed her gift.  Now there came
+to him another thought&mdash;bred of all those flashing pictures of her in
+which she seemed so much his own&mdash;the thought that she was incomplete
+because she had not really loved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was impossible that she should really love Ted; Ted who could give
+neither comprehension nor response to the greater part of her nature.
+It was impossible!  He had felt that at the time of her marriage; he
+remembered now how resentfully!  He had felt it when Mrs. Caldwell had
+shown him&mdash;only too convincingly&mdash;how that marriage had occurred.  He
+had cried out to Mrs. Caldwell that Sheila must have loved Ted, but he
+had realized, then, that she had not.  And he realized it now.  It had
+been love's hour with her, but it had not been love.  It had not been
+love because he himself, who could have given her such a love as she
+needed, who could have compelled such a love from her, had failed her.
+Back and forth he paced in his little room; a creature caged, not by
+mere walls, but by an irreparable mistake; a creature agonized and
+helpless.  For it was too late for this vision of utter truth now.  His
+life was spoiled&mdash;and hers!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, he had spoiled her life!  For a little while, he forgot his own
+disaster in contemplating hers.  He had said that he was not the right
+man for her; but with all his soul and all his brain and all his blood,
+he knew that he was the right man for her.  Throughout her whole life
+she had turned to him with that simple trust which is bred of love, or
+at least of potential love, alone.  She had said to him once&mdash;long
+ago&mdash;with an innocent and tender wonder, "There is nothing I cannot
+tell you, Peter&mdash;nothing!"  And that had been true&mdash;until Ted had lured
+her into bondage.  While she had been free, there had not been a door
+in her heart or her spirit that would not have opened at his touch.
+She had been his&mdash;his for the taking!  And he had not taken her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had left her to Ted; to Ted for whom so many doors of her nature
+must be closed forever.  He had left her to that most terrible
+loneliness of all&mdash;loneliness in a shared life.  The thoughts that she
+could not speak to Ted&mdash;how they must beat about in the prison of her
+mind; how they must cry for release, for answer!  He seemed to feel
+them against his own temples, those unuttered thoughts that were
+Sheila's very self; he seemed to feel their ache, their hunger.
+Nothing would be born of those thoughts now; that gift of expression
+which had been a part of Sheila's soul would go barren to the grave.
+This was one of the wrongs he had done her&mdash;but it was not the worst.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the worst that had befallen her through him, he told himself, was
+not that her gift had missed expression, but that she herself had
+missed the blinding glory of true love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was immature, she was undeveloped, because he had not made her his.
+And he wanted to make her his.  Oh, my God, he wanted to make her his!
+His life was charred to ashes, but his soul was the quivering,
+torturing flame of his passion.  It would not be quenched; it would
+not, in the least, be stilled; it drove him about the shabby little
+room as if it were literally a flame from which he must try to
+escape&mdash;though he knew he could not.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had broken his heart over the disaster to Sheila's life, but as the
+night advanced and his passion flared the fiercer in hours securely
+dark and secret, self rose up within him and shrieked and cursed over
+his own disaster.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He wanted her!  He was forty-six years old; not too old to love, but
+far, far too old to love calmly.  The desires of half a lifetime were
+in him, desires that had lain low and fed upon his years until, in
+their accumulated strength, they were terrible&mdash;wild beasts that tore
+him, fires that burned him to the bone.  And they were strangely
+compounded of instincts evil and lawless&mdash;when felt for another man's
+wife&mdash;and longings wholly innocent and sweet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the first time he longed for a home.  He looked about his tiny,
+dingy room with a feeling of desolation, seeing in his mind so
+different a place&mdash;a home with her.  He longed for simple, innocent
+things&mdash;her face across the table from him at his meals; her little
+possessions scattered about with his; the sound of her step in the
+rooms around him.  And he longed to reach out in the night and touch
+her; he longed to reach out in the night and take her into his arms.
+He wanted&mdash;and now soul and flesh merged in one flame&mdash;he wanted her to
+bear him a child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Back and forth he paced, his nails digging into his palms, his teeth
+cutting his lips, driven by the flame that could never be extinguished,
+never be satisfied.  And all the while, he pictured her in his arms; he
+pictured her with his child at her breast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, suddenly&mdash;and quite as plainly as if he were in the room&mdash;he saw
+<I>Ted's</I> child, and he staggered toward a chair and fell, sobbing, into
+it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How long those horrible sobs shook him he did not know.  He felt
+himself baffled, beaten, inconceivably tortured.  He watched the gray
+morning steal into the room as one who has kept a death vigil beside
+his best-loved watches it.  A new day had come, but there was no hope
+in it for him.  There was no hope for him&mdash;though his days should be
+ever so many.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He fell asleep at last, sitting there in his uncomfortable chair, with
+the cold light of the dawn creeping over his haggard face, and he
+dreamed that Ted came into the room and said, "Sheila needs you.  She
+needs you to keep alive her love for me."  And in the dream, he
+answered, as he had really answered Mrs. Caldwell the day before,
+"There is nothing I would not do for her."  So vivid was all this that
+when he opened his eyes and found Ted actually in the room, he was not
+in the least surprised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You left your door unlocked," Ted explained apologetically, "and I
+came on in.  Mrs. Caldwell died in the night&mdash;and Sheila's gone to
+pieces.  She's been asking for you.  Would you mind going to her for a
+bit?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's nothing I would not do for her!" replied Peter, in the words
+of his dream.  And for an instant he thought he still dreamed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's awfully good of you.  You look done up, Burnett.  But if you're
+equal to it, I'll be grateful to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he gazed at Peter, whose face was gray still, though the morning
+light was now golden, Ted added to himself, "Poor chap!  He's growing
+old."  To him it would have been incredible that Peter's scars had been
+won in youth's own great battle&mdash;the battle with love.  A certain
+complacency stole warmly through him then, ruddy and robust as he knew
+himself to be, a complacency that led him to lay a kindly, solicitous
+hand on the older man's shoulder; and so intent he was upon his
+self-satisfied kindliness that he did not see Peter wince at the touch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You do look done up, Burnett.  Maybe I ought not to ask you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Peter cut him short.  "I'd do anything for Sheila," he repeated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After all, this was left to him, Peter reflected; it was left to him to
+do things for Sheila.  And perhaps he would find nothing she needed of
+him impossible.  The love that had been so dark with the dark and
+secret hours could have its white vision, too.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap14"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Peter had felt that he could not be much with Sheila henceforth; that
+neither his own heart nor conventional Shadyville's standards would
+permit it.  But Sheila herself ordained otherwise, and under the
+circumstances of her bereavement, Peter could but obey her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Never had Sheila been so lonely as in the weeks immediately following
+Mrs. Caldwell's death.  Whatever reserves of speech had existed between
+the two in these latter years, there had been no reserve of feeling, of
+comprehension.  Close friends they had always been; and if Sheila was
+alone in a shared life, so far as her marriage was concerned, she had
+had a satisfying refuge in her grandmother's sympathetic companionship.
+Now, with that companionship lost to her, she began to feel, as she had
+never done before, the limitations of her marriage.  Her nervous
+restlessness increased and sharpened to a positive hunger which Ted's
+affection and compassion were powerless to alleviate.  In her loss and
+sorrow he could do nothing for her, earnestly as he tried.  It was as
+if he could not reach her, and she realized it with amazement.  If he
+had not compelled from her the greatest passion of which she was
+capable, he had certainly won love of a kind from her, love warm and
+sincere, and their life together had bound her to him with such ties of
+loyalty and habit and common experience, with such dear memories of
+young tenderness and joy, that she had never doubted the completeness
+of their union.  That he could not reach her now, that he could bring
+no peace to her in her trouble, seemed to her unexplainable&mdash;until she
+recalled the fact that he and Mrs. Caldwell, though fond of each other,
+had not been really near each other in spirit.  Theirs had been a
+pleasant, light affection, an amiable, surface relation, bred of the
+accident of their connection rather than of any genuine attraction
+between them.  Remembering this, Sheila assured herself of its being
+the reason that Ted could not comfort her for Mrs. Caldwell's death.
+There was so much in her grandmother that he had never seen, so much of
+which he could not speak at all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peter, on the other hand, had been almost as dear to her grandmother as
+she herself had been&mdash;almost as dear and quite as near.  He had a
+thousand sweet and intimate memories of Mrs. Caldwell, and he suffered,
+in the loss of her, a grief akin to Sheila's own.  So to Peter she
+turned.  With the perfect unconsciousness of self that a child might
+have shown, she made her demands upon him, upon his pity, upon his
+time; and if he did not come often to see her, she sent for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was really strangely unworldly, and in this renewed comradeship
+with her old friend, she saw nothing for anyone to criticize.  Neither
+did she recognize in it any danger for Peter or herself.  Peter had
+always been there in her life, an accepted and unexciting fact.  She
+did not allow for change in him or herself in the ten years of her
+marriage, years during which they had met hut seldom and casually.  She
+had simply resumed the way of her girlhood, her childhood, with him,
+never considering that it might now be surcharged with peril for them;
+never for an instant fearing that she might some day find herself
+unable to do without him.  She needed him; he was at hand; and she
+demanded fulfillment of her need.  He brought her the consolation that
+Ted could not bring her; he gave her aching heart peace.  Repeatedly he
+displayed a disposition to efface himself, after the first days of her
+mourning were over, but she would not have it so.  In her innocence she
+still insisted on his frequent presence, and was sometimes puzzled and
+hurt that he evinced so little gladness in being with her.  That he had
+the look of one harassed almost beyond endurance, she did finally
+perceive, but she understood it not at all, and at last dismissed it
+from her mind as something outside her province.  Men had worries,
+worries about money and trivial things like that, she reflected.  Peter
+was probably bothered about something of the sort, something that did
+not greatly matter after all.  A real trouble he would have brought to
+her; of that she was sure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So the winter passed in a close companionship between them, and it was
+to Peter's honor that she knew neither her own heart nor his at the end
+of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted it was, and not Peter, who made the situation impossible of
+continuance.  Ted it was who plucked from it, at least for Sheila, its
+concealing innocence.  He had been cordial to Peter; at first he had
+even been grateful to him, seeing Sheila comforted by him.  But after a
+time he grew tired of Peter's face at his dinner table two or three
+times a week; he wearied of finding Peter in his little sitting-room
+whenever he came home particularly early; he sickened, with a sudden
+and profound distaste, of having Peter drawn into all the intimate
+concerns and happenings of his own and Sheila's life.  Not for a moment
+did he suspect Sheila of any sentimental inclinations toward Peter, for
+he fully appreciated and trusted her fidelity.  But he thought her
+behavior foolish and imprudent, and in spite of his trust in her, he
+<I>was</I> jealous of this friendship which so absorbed and satisfied her.
+Why should she require a man's friendship at all?  Why should she
+require anyone but himself and Eric?  And having once questioned thus,
+his patience speedily gave way, and a climax ensued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sheila," he said to her one day, a day when he had come home to
+discover Peter reading Maeterlinck to her, "Sheila, why on earth do you
+have Burnett here so much?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because he's my friend&mdash;my dear old friend," answered Sheila, her eyes
+clear with the surprise of a clean conscience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wouldn't a woman friend do as well?"  Ted was trying to hold himself
+in check, but something in his words or his tone made Sheila stare, and
+he repeated, with a touch of asperity, "Wouldn't a woman friend do as
+well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The only woman friend I have whom I really care for is Charlotte&mdash;and
+she won't be here until April."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you'd better wait for her.  You'd better wait for her&mdash;and see
+less of Burnett."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you mean?" she asked.  And now her puzzled eyes grew
+steel-cold with intuitive resentment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean that you'll get yourself talked about if you go on as you're
+doing at present.  A married woman can't be so much with a man not her
+husband <I>without</I> being talked about."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is absurd!" she retorted, and her voice was as cold as her eyes;
+it put miles between them.  "Peter has always been my friend.  He's
+been like one of my family to me all my life.  He's more than ever like
+a relative to me now that all my own people are dead.  It's absurd to
+suggest that our friendship could be so misinterpreted.  It's <I>low</I> to
+think of such a thing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Low or not, it's <I>wise</I> to think of such things.  You'll get yourself
+talked about if I let you.  But I'm your natural protector, and I
+<I>won't</I> let you.  I forbid you to have Burnett here as you've been
+doing.  <I>I forbid you</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am to tell him that?" she inquired scornfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're to tell him nothing.  He'll soon stop coming if he's not asked.
+The fact is, I don't believe he's wanted to come so often.  You're the
+one to blame, Sheila.  You've invited him&mdash;you've sent for him when he
+hasn't come of his own accord."  And then, as they faced each other in
+their unaccustomed hostility, Ted added, with a final flare of wrath,
+"<I>You've run after him&mdash;that's what you've done</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As if he had struck her, Sheila's face went livid, then scarlet.  She
+opened her lips to answer, but no sound came.  So, for an instant, they
+looked at each other, silent, motionless, transfixed by this horror
+that had risen between them, this horror of anger&mdash;almost of hate.
+Then Ted took a step toward her; already he was contrite: "I didn't
+mean that.  I lost my temper and went too far.  Forgive me, Sheila!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she did not say that she forgave him.  She only said: "Never speak
+to me of this again&mdash;never in all our lives!"  And then she turned from
+him and walked out of the room, leaving him to feel himself far more at
+fault than he had ever believed her to be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But though her pride, her insulted innocence, had carried her unbroken
+through the interview, she was in reality cruelly humiliated.  That
+final sentence of Ted's anger&mdash;"You've run after him&mdash;that's what
+you've done!"&mdash;rang in her ears for days afterward, shaming her as only
+the very proud can be shamed.  It was not true of her, she told
+herself; it was not true&mdash;but it was hideous that it could have been
+said of her nevertheless.  That Peter had never thought it of her, she
+was confident.  It was impossible that Peter should misunderstand her
+in anything.  But she dreaded seeing him with the accusation in her
+mind.  She could not meet him now without an acute and painful
+self-consciousness.  Her happy friendship with him was changed, was
+forever spoiled.  At last she wrote to him, telling him not to come to
+see her for awhile&mdash;not to come until she should bid him.  After she
+had sent the note, however, she suffered more than before, feeling that
+she had brought constraint between them, that she had suggested to
+Peter, by her request that he stay away from her, the same unworthy
+thoughts about them that Ted had flung at her.  Far, far worse than
+meeting him was the growing certainty that she had made him
+self-conscious about their friendship, too; that she had shown it to
+him as possible of degrading misconstruction.  For he would read from
+her note, carefully though she had refrained from reasons or
+explanations, just what had happened.  Peter would never comfortably
+miss a thing like that; sensitive and subtle to a degree, he could
+never be spared by mere omissions, by lack of plain and definite
+statement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was unbearable that such a situation should have come about.  Not
+for a moment did she forgive Ted for creating it.  But she lived on
+with him in cool outward harmony, realizing that in marriage one may
+have to endure hurt and disappointment, and being much too high-bred a
+woman to take her revenge in petty breaches of courtesy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That she was disappointed in Ted, as well as hurt by him, she now
+admitted to herself for the first time.  It is curious how some final
+and serious issue between two people living together will cast a light
+on all the past; will disclose anew, and more flagrantly, lapses and
+shortcomings and injuries that had once seemed trifles and been ignored
+or condoned or forgotten.  Thus Sheila now looked backward along the
+years of her marriage and saw how Ted had failed her in understanding,
+in generosity, in any selfless consideration and love.  Small instances
+of his selfishness recurred to her and promptly became as signposts
+directing her to greater ones.  His care for his creature comfort, his
+innocent vanities, his rather smug pleasure in his success&mdash;things
+which she had smiled over with a tender lenience&mdash;served now to remind
+her that he had never taken any account of her preferences, of her
+independent possibilities, of her talent; that he had not, at any time,
+made the least effort to comprehend or share her interests.  He had
+used her in his own work, and he had dismissed hers with a wave of his
+hand, as he might have pushed away a child's toy.  Whatever he had
+discerned of her mental quality and power, he had regarded only in its
+relation to himself; if she had been wonderful for him, she had been
+wonderful as his helpmate, not as the individual.  He had wanted her to
+be wife and mother only, and he had accomplished that.  With anything
+else in her nature, in her life, he had had neither tolerance nor
+patience nor sympathy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course she went too far in her arraignment of him.  She forgot, in
+her sudden bitterness, the warmth and kindness of his heart, the
+staunchness and integrity of his character, his desire and attempt to
+shield her from all things harsh and hard&mdash;even though he shielded her
+in his own particular way!&mdash;and the very real sincerity of his love for
+her.  She forgot that, by his own standards, his own conception of a
+husband's duty, he had honestly and steadfastly done his best for her.
+She saw her whole life fed to his selfishness as to an insatiable
+monster; and most terrible of all, she knew that she saw too late.
+Their marriage was made.  As a husband Ted was formed and could not be
+changed.  If, in the beginning, she had had a clearer conception of his
+nature; if she had had a stronger sense of her own rights as an
+individual and the courage to assert those rights, everything would
+have been different.  She would never have been subdued to mere
+wifehood and motherhood if that had been.  She would never&mdash;she saw it
+now!&mdash;she would never have made that compact of renunciation with God!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was to the matter of that compact she came at last&mdash;inevitably.  And
+she said to herself, over and over now, that she would never have made
+it if she had known herself and Ted better in the beginning.  She would
+never have made it because she would not have seen her work as a guilty
+thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nor had her work been a guilty thing!  No woman watched her child every
+moment; at least no woman did so who could have the relief of a nurse.
+She might as readily have been paying an afternoon call or playing
+bridge when Eric was exposed to scarlet fever.  It was just an accident
+that she had been writing then instead of doing any one of a dozen
+other things of which Ted would have approved.  Yes, it was an accident
+that she had been writing then, she repeated to herself.  But back of
+that accident had been her morbid conscience and Ted's
+narrow-mindedness; and together they had translated it into a crime.
+Thus she had been driven into the compact with God for Eric's life&mdash;the
+compact that had ruined her own life.  Her morbid conscience and Ted's
+selfish narrow-mindedness had wrought together for the frustration of
+her gift, of her happiness.  And it was upon Ted that she put far the
+greater share of the blame.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oddly enough, though she saw her husband so plainly now; though she
+censured his faults so unsparingly and regretted so passionately her
+own mistakes with him&mdash;mistakes of weakness, of cowardly submission,
+she told herself&mdash;she did not, even now, take the final step of
+considering what might have been if she had not married him; of what
+might have been if she had married some one altogether more congenial
+and unselfish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Charlotte who thought of that for her.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap15"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It was toward the end of April that Charlotte arrived in Shadyville.
+She had never lived in Shadyville since her first flight from it to
+boarding-school.  After school had come New York and Paris, where she
+had studied singing; and for the last five years she had been on the
+concert stage, filling engagements all over the continent&mdash;much to the
+distress of her family who, though inordinately proud of her, could not
+understand why any woman with plenty of money at her disposal should
+work.  Charlotte had always decided things for herself, however, and
+once convinced that her happiness lay in the active pursuit of her art,
+no one could dissuade her from it.  Certainly no penniless woman could
+have worked harder or with more zest than she.  Musician to her
+finger-tips, and with a remarkably beautiful, silver-clear soprano
+voice, she had also the modern woman's desire to earn her living; to
+justify her existence by doing something well.  An independent and a
+busy life was necessary to her, and it was impossible to see her
+without realizing that she had chosen wisely for herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To Shadyville she had always seemed a brilliant figure; now, as a
+successful professional singer, she was a dazzling one.  Even Sheila
+was a little awed by her, although the two had kept up their
+childhood's friendship during all these years of separation and of such
+diverse interests.  Every now and then Charlotte descended on
+Shadyville for a brief visit to her parents, and then she invariably
+took up with Sheila their dropped threads and wove a new flower into
+the pattern of their affection.  On this occasion she came to Sheila
+with more than her usual warmth, divining what a grief Mrs. Caldwell's
+death must have been to her, and she watched her friend, as the days
+passed, with an increasing solicitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To all appearances everything was well with the Kent household.  Sheila
+and Ted seemed to be on the best of terms; Eric had grown into a fine,
+healthy, handsome little lad, particularly fond of his proud mother;
+prosperity, as Shadyville measured it, fairly shone from the charming
+and well-ordered little house.  Certainly all appeared to be well with
+Sheila, yet Charlotte was not satisfied about her.  Six months had
+passed since Mrs. Caldwell's death, and though Charlotte allowed for
+the sincerity and depth of Sheila's mourning, she rejected a sorrow
+already somewhat softened by time as sufficient cause for the change
+she found in Sheila.  There was something else, something of an
+altogether different nature, that was responsible for the hunger of
+Sheila's eyes, the restlessness of her manner.  Charlotte remembered,
+with a rush of indignation, Sheila's unfulfilled ambitions, her wasted
+gift.  That was the trouble; of course that baffled gift of Sheila's
+was the trouble.  And something must be done about it.  She was with
+Sheila when she came to this conclusion, and immediately she acted on
+it, impulsive, decisive creature that she was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What of your writing, Sheila dear?  I can't recall your speaking of it
+to me for a long, long while."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh&mdash;<I>that's</I> over!" replied Sheila, with unhappy emphasis.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a warm May afternoon and they were sitting on Sheila's veranda.
+Out on the lawn Eric and another boy of his own age frolicked about
+like a couple of animated puppies.  Sheila pointed to them:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You remember what Mrs. North said&mdash;that a woman couldn't be both
+mother and artist?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I told you that wasn't true!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It has been true for me, Charlotte."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It needn't be now.  While Eric was a baby, it may have been true for
+you, but there's no reason in the world why it should be now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, it <I>is</I> true for me now&mdash;it will be true for me always.  And
+yet&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then, because disillusion and bitterness were strong upon Sheila,
+Charlotte got the whole story out of her, from the first revelation of
+Ted's attitude toward a married woman's art to the final climax of
+Eric's illness, her self-blame and her renunciation of her work.  Even
+while she told it, she knew that she would reproach herself afterward
+for disloyalty to Ted, but the sheer relief of confiding it to a
+sympathetic listener was too much for her scruples.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never heard of anything so outrageous in my life!" exclaimed
+Charlotte, when the story was ended.  "It's barbarous&mdash;<I>barbarous</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not a word of her final clear vision of her husband, her belated
+disappointment in him, had Sheila uttered.  For that at least she had
+been too loyal.  But already she repented having betrayed his views in
+regard to the married woman-artist.  So well she knew what Charlotte
+must think of them, indeed, that she now felt impelled to a defense:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course it hasn't been Ted's fault&mdash;you mustn't feel that he's to
+blame."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mustn't I?" asked Charlotte drily.  And then, "My dear girl, he <I>has</I>
+been to blame&mdash;absolutely, unforgivably to blame.  It makes me wild to
+think of his narrow-minded, pig-headed selfishness.  And that you
+should have given in to it&mdash;!  Oh, Sheila, Sheila, where is your
+independence, your sense of your rights as an individual, a human
+being?  Are you a cave woman&mdash;that you should be just your husband's
+docile chattel?"  And Charlotte sprang from her chair and began to pace
+the veranda, urged by the fierce energy of her anger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I said it had been Ted's fault&mdash;this spoiling of your life," she went
+on presently, "but it's been your fault, too, Sheila.  It's been your
+fault for giving in to him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," pleaded Sheila, "I didn't give in to <I>Ted</I>.  I gave in to
+circumstances.  Seeing that Eric was ill&mdash;that he might die&mdash;because
+I'd neglected him in order to write was what conquered me.  That was
+what drove me to the vow to renounce my work&mdash;if Eric was spared."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charlotte came and stood before her then: "Sheila, you know as well as
+I do that you'd never have made that vow if the sense of Ted's
+disapproval, his condemnation, hadn't been working on you.  You know
+that it was merely an accident that you were writing when Eric was
+exposed to scarlet fever.  You know that if you <I>hadn't</I> been writing,
+you would have been reading or sleeping or paying calls, and that if
+you'd been doing any of those things, you wouldn't have thought
+yourself guilty because you'd taken an hour off from the hardest job a
+woman has&mdash;the mother-job&mdash;even though Eric did suffer by it.  You know
+you'd have recognized that there are just so many cruel mischances in
+life, and that Eric's illness was one of them.  You know that it was
+<I>Ted</I>, back of circumstances, that influenced you to make your vow of
+renunciation!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was what Sheila had so recently told herself, and she could not
+refute it now.  Looking into her downcast, acquiescent face, Charlotte
+continued: "As for the vow&mdash;that's nonsense!  It's mere morbid,
+hysterical nonsense.  God never exacted it of you.  He's never held you
+to it, you may be sure.  If He's wanted anything of you, He's wanted
+you to use the talent He's given you.  If you've been at all at fault,
+it's for wasting your talent.  You <I>have</I> wasted it&mdash;you've wasted it
+to please Ted.  You've wasted it because you've allowed yourself to be
+intimidated and bullied by Ted.  That's the whole trouble!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Charlotte&mdash;," began Sheila.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've spoken the truth," insisted Charlotte firmly.  "You can't deny a
+word I've said."  And then, flinging out her hands with a gesture of
+despair, "The worst of it is that it's too late to help matters now.
+You'll go on in the same way&mdash;letting Ted bully you&mdash;to the end of your
+days.  There's never been any chance for you with him.  Your chance was
+with Peter Burnett.  It's Peter you should have married!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must not say that," objected Sheila quickly&mdash;and a little
+unsteadily.  "You must not say that, Charlotte.  It's ridiculous.  And
+it's dreadful, too.  Ted and I love each other&mdash;we <I>do</I> love each
+other!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Charlotte was no longer inclined for argument.  She answered
+Sheila's protest with a smile&mdash;no more.  Suddenly she seemed to be
+through with the subject of Sheila's life, and perching upon the
+railing of the veranda, she looked off into green distances with a gaze
+singularly vague and pensive for her.  Sheila watched her admiringly,
+noting her erect slenderness, her spirited, keenly intelligent face,
+the clear blue of her eyes, the warm gold of her hair in the sunshine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's you Peter should marry," said Sheila lightly, when the silence
+between them had lengthened uncomfortably.  "You'd be just the wife for
+him, Charlotte!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charlotte turned toward her, and there was no mistaking her earnestness
+and her sincerity.  "I'd marry him to-morrow!" she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Charlotte, I never <I>dreamed&mdash;my dear</I>!&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't be sorry for me," Charlotte interrupted warningly.  "Don't be
+sorry for me.  I may marry him yet!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And a moment later, she was swinging down the street, as serene and
+independent as if she had never known&mdash;much less, confessed&mdash;the pain
+of unrequited love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Sheila looked after her, she noticed again the gold of her hair, the
+beautiful, free carriage of her shoulders&mdash;and now she felt no pleasure
+in them.  Rather was she conscious of a sharp little pang of envy, and
+with it, sounded the echo of Charlotte's last words&mdash;"I may marry him
+yet!"  Charlotte was a splendid, gallant creature; she <I>might</I> marry
+Peter.  And then Sheila, feeling that envious pang again and still more
+sharply, demanded of herself in swift terror: "Am I jealous?&mdash;<I>am I
+jealous of Charlotte because Peter may come to love her</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, it couldn't be that!&mdash;it couldn't!  It was impossible that she
+should be jealous about any man but her husband.  For she and Ted loved
+each other&mdash;they <I>did</I> love each other, whatever had been their
+mistakes with each other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She called Eric to her, and he left his playmate on the lawn and came,
+smiling.  She caught him to her, with a sort of frightened passion:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kiss mother, darling!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked back over his shoulder at the boy who was waiting for him.
+"With him there?" he inquired reluctantly, already shy of caresses
+before his own sex.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Sheila, usually the most considerate and tactful of mothers, amazed
+him now by ignoring his hint.  Still with that terrified passion, she
+kissed him not once, but many times&mdash;her son and Ted's!  Her son and
+Ted's!  Then, leaving him standing there in his astonished
+embarrassment, she went into the house and up to her own room, there to
+sit and stare before her at things unseen, but all too visible to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Ted had been right after all; right in objecting to her being so
+much with Peter.  It <I>had</I> been unwise; moreover, it had been wrong,
+all that companionship of the past winter.  For it had brought her to
+this; it had brought her so to depend upon Peter that she could not be
+happy unless he was often with her; it had brought her so to care for
+him that she could not think of him in relation to another woman
+without jealousy.  It had brought her to this&mdash;and she was a wife and
+mother!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had been ashamed when Ted had told her that she would get herself
+talked about in connection with Peter, and still more ashamed when he
+had accused her of "running after" Peter.  But that had been an
+endurable shame, for at the heart of it had been self-respect, the
+indestructible pride of perfect innocence.  But the shame that surged
+over her now was the agonizing shame of guilt, the shame of utter
+self-scorn, self-loathing.  She&mdash;a wife, a mother!&mdash;cared for a man not
+her husband; cared for him in a way that made it torment to her to
+think of his marrying another woman.  Hideous and unbelievable though
+it was, she cared for him so much.  She had cared for him even while
+she was declaring to Charlotte&mdash;and later, to herself&mdash;that she loved
+her husband.  She cared for Peter&mdash;even now, facing the truth and
+admitting it, she would not use the word, love&mdash;she cared for Peter,
+and she was Ted's wife, the mother of Ted's son.  Not even the touch of
+that little son had been powerful to blind her.  She cared!&mdash;she
+<I>cared</I>!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment her face went down into her hands, and the hopeless grief
+of unfortunate love mastered her, tore her throat with its sobs, burned
+her eyes with its bitter tears.  But presently her head was up again,
+and with shaking fingers she was bathing her eyes, concealing as best
+she could the ravages of that instant's surrender.  She had no rights
+in this thing; she had not even the right to suffer.  Ted or Eric might
+come in at any moment, and they must not see that she had wept; she was
+theirs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had no right to suffer.  There could be only one right course in
+this; to fight, to crush out of herself what she was not free to feel,
+to put between herself and Peter some barrier that could not be
+destroyed.  There was Ted, there was Eric&mdash;they should have been
+barriers enough.  But they had not been barriers enough, and there must
+be another.  There must be something&mdash;some one&mdash;more, to keep her safe,
+to hold her heart, her thoughts, from this forbidden haven.  There must
+be something&mdash;some one&mdash;else&mdash;.  And then her mind leaped to Charlotte.
+Charlotte loved Peter; she had practically admitted that.  Well, she
+should marry him&mdash;as she'd said that she might do.  Though it broke her
+own heart, Charlotte should marry Peter.  She herself would arrange it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did not pause to consider that Peter might not want to marry
+Charlotte, that he might not be happy in doing so.  She did not pause,
+yet, to question&mdash;she did not dare to question, indeed&mdash;whether Peter
+turned her own love.  She was intent upon but one end: to protect
+herself from what she felt for him, from what she would continue to
+feel for him as long as he was free.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With this haste and need and fear upon her, she wrote to him, asking
+him to come to her the next afternoon.  It would be their first meeting
+since Ted's ban upon their friendship, and she realized, with fresh
+humiliation, that in spite of everything, she was glad of this chance
+to be with Peter.  She realized that she could scarcely wait until the
+morrow should bring him to her.  Because she was thus glad, she almost
+decided not to send her note after all, and then&mdash;lest she would
+not!&mdash;she hurried out and mailed it herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Somehow she got through dinner and the evening.  She heard Eric's
+lessons and tucked him away for the night with a bedtime story and the
+kisses that, when no one was looking on, he was eager enough to
+receive.  She listened to Ted's anecdotes of the day and responded with
+a mechanical vivacity.  Then, at last, she was hidden by the night,
+freed by the night&mdash;though she lay by Ted's side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had no right to suffer, but she did suffer now.  As Peter had done
+months before, she suffered through the darkness.  But with her there
+was no yielding to dear visions of a forbidden love, as there had been
+with him; there was no picturing of life as it might have been with
+him; no thrilling to the imaginary caresses and delights of a passion
+which, in her married self, was wholly unworthy.  Rather was the night
+a long battle with the love that it so shamed her to find within
+herself.  Thus, in this distress of her soul, she was at least spared
+the physical torture which Peter had endured.  Not for an instant was
+her love for Peter translated, in her mind, into physical terms; she
+neither imagined nor desired its touch; in her guilt there was a
+strange innocence&mdash;an innocence characteristic of her.  She would go
+through life unaware of the grosser aspects of things; under any
+circumstances, however equivocal, she would be curiously pure.  In one
+thing only did she fall now to the level of less idealistic beings; in
+spite of her struggle to the contrary, she wondered, at last, if Peter
+loved her.  She dared and stooped, in the privacy of the night, to
+wonder that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Peter came to her the next afternoon, he found her haggard, but
+very quiet, very calm.  Beneath her calmness, however, he divined the
+stir of troubled depths, and he carefully kept to the surface; ignored
+his long banishment; took up one impersonal topic after another for her
+entertainment; and was altogether so much the safe, unromantic,
+delightful old friend of the family that, but for the hammering of her
+pulses, he would have persuaded Sheila that the distress of the past
+night was a mere, ugly dream.  But because she could not look at him
+without a catch of her breath; because she could not speak to him
+without first pausing to steady her voice; because all her tranquility
+was but desperate and painful effort, she knew the night was no dream,
+but even more of a reality than she had thought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peter," she said at last, with attempted lightness, "Peter, I'm going
+to meddle with your destiny."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling at her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That smile of his almost cost her her self-control, so dear it was to
+her.  But she went on bravely enough: "I'm going to secure you a wife."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He threw up his hands in dismay.  "Don't try," he pleaded.  "You could
+never find a wife to suit me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I <I>have</I> found one who's sure to suit you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've actually selected her?&mdash;you have her waiting for me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She nodded, trying to smile back at him now with a deceiving gayety.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I know who the fair lady is?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course.  She's&mdash;Charlotte!  She is just the woman for you, Peter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never," he said promptly.  "She is charming and clever and handsome
+and kind, <I>but</I>&mdash;she's not the woman for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peter"&mdash;and Sheila dropped her pretense of playfulness&mdash;"Peter, she's
+all that you need.  She'd make a great man of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At this late date?" he inquired a little ruefully.  "She'd make a
+great man of me at forty-six?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, she would.  Charlotte's very&mdash;strong.  She could accomplish
+anything she wished.  She'd do much for a man&mdash;with a man&mdash;if she loved
+him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have no reason to believe that she loves me," said Peter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps I shouldn't tell you, but <I>I</I> have reason to believe that&mdash;she
+loves you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He leaned forward and searchingly studied her face: "I'm sure you are
+mistaken.  But&mdash;granting that Charlotte may love me&mdash;is it for her sake
+that you want me to marry her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For hers&mdash;and for yours.  I want to see you in a home of your own,
+Peter&mdash;with a wife to love you, with children.  I want&mdash;I want you to
+be happy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I would not be happy if I married Charlotte."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Peter?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because I do not love her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You would come to love her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, Sheila&mdash;I am not free to do that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you&mdash;do you love some one else?"  And her voice shook now in spite
+of her attempt to keep it firm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he answered quietly, "I love some one else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some one you can&mdash;marry?"  She could not look at him, but question him
+she must.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;not some one I can marry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The room was very still for a moment; but she seemed to hear the sorrow
+of his voice echoing and re-echoing through it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will get over that in time," she whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will never get over it," he answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now she looked at him.  She had wondered if he loved her; looking
+into his sad eyes, she knew.  A sob swelled her throat and broke from
+her lips.  And then they sprang up and faced each other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So they stood, gazing at each other.  And though they neither spoke nor
+touched each other, the heart of each was clear to the other&mdash;more
+clear, indeed, than speech or touch could have made them.  So they
+stood, looking into each other's eyes, and unbearable pain and
+unbelievable ecstasy were mingled in those few, silent moments.  Then
+the ecstasy died; the pain became cruelly intense.  And more than pain
+shone dark in Sheila's eyes; fear crouched there, and Peter saw it.
+She loved him&mdash;and she was afraid of him.  More intolerably than
+anything else, that hurt him&mdash;that she should have to be afraid of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peter," she said&mdash;and her voice trembled so that he could scarcely
+understand her words, "Peter, I want you to marry Charlotte for&mdash;<I>for
+my sake</I>."  And her fear stared at him out of her eyes, stared at him
+and implored him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was asking him to put Charlotte between them.  He realized that
+now.  She was telling him that Ted and Eric were not enough to keep
+them apart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will do it&mdash;or something which will answer as well," he assured her
+gently.  "You may trust me for that, Sheila."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then, still without touching her, without even looking at her
+again, he was gone.  He was gone and everything was ended for them&mdash;for
+them who had not known even the beginnings.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap16"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Peter had engaged to dine with Charlotte that night, but after his talk
+with Sheila, his first impulse was to excuse himself.  It seemed to him
+impossible to get back, at once, to the safe level of everyday life, of
+commonplace affairs.  It seemed impossible, too, to meet Charlotte
+without betraying embarrassment.  But after an hour's solitude, he had
+sufficient command of himself to fill the appointment, and he appeared
+at the Davis house with all his usual placidity of manner.  After all,
+he had to go on as if nothing had happened, and it was as well, he told
+himself, to begin immediately.  That was, perhaps, the worst of secret
+disasters like his and Sheila's&mdash;that one had to go on as if nothing
+had happened; that one had to wear, from the first, a bright mask of
+concealment.  But it was, in a way, the best, too&mdash;this necessity for
+taking up tangible, practical matters, for continuing duties,
+obligations, enterprises that, perforce, diverted at least a part of
+one's mind from the contemplation of an inner tragedy.  There was
+effort in having to talk, to listen intelligently, to laugh, but there
+was relief, too, and the sense of safety that, when adrift on chaotic
+seas, one feels at the touch of something solid.  So he talked and
+listened and laughed with conscientious care.  And watching Charlotte
+across the dinner table, he considered Sheila's plea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he had said to Sheila, he thought Charlotte clever and handsome and
+kind.  Whole-heartedly he liked and admired her; he enjoyed her; he was
+stimulated by her.  He was even prepared to admit that, if she would
+marry him, she might actually make something of him, middle-aged though
+he was.  His attainments, his really brilliant qualities of mind, were
+there to build with&mdash;and she was, by nature, a builder.  He could see
+her taking hold of his life and creating out of its hitherto negative
+stuff a thing worth while.  He could see her thus active for him and
+with him, and feel a certain pleasure in the picture.  To think of
+himself as dear to a woman like Charlotte could not but touch a man
+pleasantly and warmly.  And yet, thus touched, thus drawn, he knew
+still that his whole-hearted admiration and liking would never be
+followed by whole-hearted love.  His passion for Sheila had gone too
+deep to be effaced.  Unhappily for himself, he was not one of those
+whose heart can be enlisted sincerely more than once.  He looked across
+the table at Charlotte and noted the strong, rich gold of her hair, the
+dark, definite blue of her eyes, the gracious lines of her shoulders;
+he heard her clear, positive, courageous voice, her blithe laughter; he
+looked and listened and thought of her as his&mdash;and his heart clung to
+its dream of a woman far less compellingly vital and lovely.  Against
+Charlotte's vivid reality, he set a little ghost with a pale face and
+wistful gray eyes and a plaintive voice, a little ghost too sensitive
+to be quite strong, too shy to be self-confident and self-sufficient,
+too tender to be altogether brave; and with this very sensitiveness,
+this shyness, this uncourageous tenderness, the little ghost held him.
+She held him because her eyes were wistfully gray instead of
+triumphantly blue, because her voice was hauntingly plaintive instead
+of firmly buoyant; she held him because in her soul there was a strain
+of weakness, of timidity, of childlike helplessness and innocence that
+to him was at once piteous and exquisite.  She held him by all those
+qualities&mdash;and shortcomings&mdash;most unlike Charlotte.  He saw that
+Charlotte was, as Sheila had asserted, just the woman for a man of his
+indolent, dallying temperament; he saw that he needed such a woman.
+But he saw, too, that Sheila needed him, that she had always needed
+him, that she would always need him; and from that consciousness of her
+need he could not wrench himself free.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He would never be free of his little, pale ghost.  If he married
+Charlotte, it would be for Sheila's sake.  <I>If</I> he married
+Charlotte&mdash;&mdash;!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, he might marry Charlotte.  Sheila had said that he could, and
+perhaps she had been right.  In these later years, since Charlotte had
+been a woman, a cordial friendship had sprung up between them.
+Whenever she had been in Shadyville, he had been much with her, and in
+her absences there had been letters.  For several years, whether in
+Shadyville or away, she had been a presence in his life; they had many
+tastes and interests in common; she was kind to him&mdash;encouragingly
+kind.  It seemed probable that he could marry her; at least there was
+ground for trying to do so.  Yet how could he offer less than his best
+to a creature so fine, so honest, so loyal as he knew Charlotte to be?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That something weighed on his mind, that he was observing her with
+unwonted gravity, Charlotte perceived before the dinner was over.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Afterward she took him with her into the garden and they sat down there
+in the mild spring night, surrounded by flowers, regarded by
+innumerable stars.  The night, the flowers, the stars, all appeared to
+be conspiring for Charlotte.  They created an atmosphere of poetry for
+her; they threw over her a glamour that, with her obvious type of
+beauty, her downright and positive nature, she had missed.  It was as
+if the night, with its stars and flowers, were striving to invest her
+with that subtler allurement which, in Sheila, was so poignant and
+enchanting to Peter.  And instinctively Charlotte took up the night's
+cue; sat a little in shadow; spoke with unusual softness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What have you been thinking of so seriously all evening?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've been wondering," said Peter, "whether a man whose heart is
+committed, in spite of himself, to a hopeless love, has any right to
+marry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charlotte did not answer at once; she stirred, moved deeper into
+protecting shadow.  "That depends, I believe, on whether he's sure that
+the love his heart is committed to is really hopeless&mdash;will be hopeless
+always," she replied finally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the case I was considering&mdash;the man is sure of that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then he would get over his unfortunate love in time&mdash;wouldn't he?
+Ill-fated love does not often last forever.  Life&mdash;life is more
+merciful than that, isn't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was his chance with her; he realized that she was giving it to
+him&mdash;giving it to him understandingly and deliberately.  He had only to
+agree that an "ill-fated" love&mdash;that his ill-fated love&mdash;would die at
+last.  But he could not take his chance like that.  He could not be
+less than honest with her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He would never get over it altogether," he said.  "The woman he could
+not marry would always be&mdash;dearest to him.  And, granting that, would
+it be fair for him to ask another woman to take what was left of&mdash;of
+his affection?  Would it be fair to ask her to take&mdash;a spoiled life?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She might feel that what was left of his life was well worth
+having&mdash;the woman he <I>could</I> marry.  She might feel that&mdash;even if he
+had suffered much, missed what he supremely wanted&mdash;his life need not
+be spoiled after all.  She might feel that she could prevent its being
+spoiled.  If he were frank with her, and she felt like that about it, I
+think it would be fair for him to marry her&mdash;perfectly honorable and
+fair."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It could not be happiness for her," argued Peter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps not.  Perhaps she could do without happiness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That would require a great love of her," said Peter gravely, "a great
+love for a man who could not give a great love in return."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she agreed, her voice very low now, but as clear and steady as
+ever, "yes, it would require a great love from her.  But it is not
+impossible to find a woman who can feel a great love without hope of a
+full return."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was still in her sheltering shadow, but upon Peter's end of the
+garden seat the moonlight, unchecked by the trees, streamed white and
+strong.  She looked into his face, fully revealed to her now, and she
+realized, before he spoke, that he was going to refuse her sacrifice;
+she realized it because she saw in his face a deeper emotion for her
+than he had ever shown before.  He loved her not enough&mdash;and yet too
+much!&mdash;to marry her.  She saw that and was prepared for his next words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To such a woman the man I have in mind could not give less than his
+best," he said.  And there was no longer any question, any hesitancy in
+his tone.  "To one so generous no man could be ungenerous&mdash;I should
+have known that!  Perhaps," he went on, with a note of distress and
+apology, "perhaps such things should not be talked about.  Perhaps it
+is&mdash;humiliating&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To me the truth could never be humiliating," she answered, with quick
+reassurance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then it is best to speak it?" he pleaded, as if for
+self-justification.  "Then it is best to speak it, after all?  For it
+does make things&mdash;plain; it does show one the right, the decent course."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's best to speak it," she assented kindly; and she held out her hand
+to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He lifted her hand and kissed it.  And when he spoke again, his voice
+faltered: "When a man knows a woman like you, Charlotte, he sees that
+happiness&mdash;or unhappiness&mdash;doesn't matter so much as he's thought.
+There are other things&mdash;better things&mdash;to live for.  You've found
+them&mdash;and now I'm going to find them, too, my dear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So, for the second time that day, Peter went from a woman who loved
+him.  The night and the stars and the flowers had done their best to
+quicken his pulses; to blur his vision of the truth; to blunt his sense
+of absolute, unswerving honor.  But in the end Charlotte herself had
+defeated what the night was fain to do for her with its witchery; she
+had defeated the night's intents with her measureless honesty and
+generosity&mdash;to which Peter's own generosity and honesty could but
+respond.  To use a woman like Charlotte as a barrier between himself
+and another woman was impossible to him.  Neither for Sheila's safety,
+nor for any benefit to himself, could he do a thing so base.  He
+recognized now that marriage with Charlotte&mdash;even without that utter
+love he had given to Sheila&mdash;might be a gracious, even a happy destiny
+for him.  But having found her so ready to sacrifice herself, he could
+not sacrifice her.  He could not rob her of the chance of being loved
+as she could love.  Such a love might come to her some day; he could
+but leave her free for it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he walked homeward along the silent, wide street, other gardens than
+Charlotte's flung their fragrance to him; the night still whispered to
+him of the sweetness of being loved, of all those compensations from
+which he had turned away.  But he was not allured; he was not
+vanquished.  His course stretched before him&mdash;through the befogging,
+unmanning sweetness&mdash;to daylight and self-respect and an uncompromising
+sincerity of life.  It stretched before him farther than he could
+descry&mdash;as far as the great fighting, suffering, achieving world.  Mrs.
+Caldwell had once told him that he had never grown up, and that some
+day he would have to grow up; that there could be no escape for him.
+She had been right about it.  Until now he had not grown up.  Not even
+in his love for Sheila and the pain of it, had he grown up.  He had
+been like a child playing in a garden, and though the sweetest rose
+there had torn him with its thorns, he had stayed on in the garden.
+But now he was a child no longer; there had been no escape from growing
+up.  He had put it off a long time&mdash;more than half his lifetime
+perhaps&mdash;but he had not been able to put it off forever.  And now,
+yielding at last, he was willing to leave his garden; he was willing to
+go out into the world of men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he neared the hotel where he lived, he met Ted Kent, quitting his
+office&mdash;going home to Sheila.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At once Ted stopped and put out his hand.  For in his mind no hostility
+against Peter had lingered.  Indeed, on the occasion when he had
+upbraided Sheila about Peter, he had felt very little animosity toward
+Peter himself, and several months having passed in a strict compliance
+to his wishes on Sheila's part, the whole matter had almost vanished
+from his memory.  His was not a nature to cherish resentment, to brood
+over fancied wrongs; he liked to be at peace with all his fellow-men
+and upon genial terms with them.  He was animated by a distinct
+cordiality toward Peter now, as he extended his hand to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Been calling on the girls, Burnett?" he inquired jovially.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On one of them," admitted Peter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, it's been a long while since I did anything like that&mdash;a long
+while.  And I'm not sorry either.  There's nothing like your slippers
+and your pipe and your paper at home!  When I have to work late, as I
+did to-night, it's a real hardship.  Have a drink with me before I go
+on?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks," said Peter pleasantly, "but I'm in a bit of a hurry.  I've
+got to pack up.  I'm leaving town in the morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leaving town?  For a vacation?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, for work.  I've had a job offered me in New York.  Brentwood, of
+the Brentwood Publishing Company, has been asking me to come to them
+for years, and I've finally decided to go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"High-brows, aren't they&mdash;the Brentwood Company?" Ted questioned,
+somewhat impressed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps you'd call them so.  They publish real literature&mdash;a good many
+translations; that's what they want me for."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, well," pursued Ted, still detaining him, "and so you're going to
+leave little old Shadyville for good!  And after spending all your days
+here, too&mdash;after making so many friends.  I believe you'll miss us,
+Burnett!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sure I shall," agreed Peter, with patient courtesy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then why go?  It may be a good change for you in ways, but I'm
+convinced there's more to be said against it than for it.  For the life
+of me, I can't see why you're doing it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Peter, a little drily, "you wouldn't see, Kent.  But I'm
+sure it's the only thing to do.  Tell Sheila I think so, please, and
+that I send her my good-byes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You aren't going to tell her good-bye yourself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid I can't."  And as Peter spoke, he was acutely conscious of
+all that Ted did not see, of all that he would never understand.  "I'm
+afraid I can't&mdash;I start early in the morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right!  You know what's best for yourself, no doubt.  Sorry you
+can't say good-bye to Sheila, though&mdash;she cares a lot for you, as much
+as if you were one of the family.  I'll give her your message, but
+she'll be disappointed that you didn't deliver it yourself.  Good luck
+to you, old man, and don't forget us!"  And shaking hands again, Ted
+went cheerfully on his homeward way, serenely unaware of the
+sorrow&mdash;and of the irony!&mdash;that had confronted him from Peter's quiet
+eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Up in his little room, Peter began to carry out his sudden plan for
+leaving Shadyville.  It was true that he had had an offer, more than
+once, from Brentwood.  Brentwood had been a chum of his at college, a
+friend who had never ceased to remember and appreciate him.  The offer
+was still open, and it solved Peter's problem.  He had told Sheila that
+he would marry Charlotte or do something else that would answer as
+well.  He found that something else in going away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had not many possessions; shabby clothes&mdash;with an air to them;
+shabby books&mdash;that shone with their inner grace.  The books took
+longest, and when he had finished packing them, it was dawn.  He went
+to his window and watched the slow coming of the light, and in that
+silent, gray hour, he felt himself more alone than he had ever been.
+Everything seemed to have been stripped from him; this town where he
+had been born, and where generations of his family had been born before
+him; his friends; the little room, so dismantled now, that for years
+had been his home-place; all these&mdash;and his hope of happy love.  He
+remembered how, in his early, romantic boyhood, he had hoped for
+that&mdash;for happy love; and now that hope was gone and everything was
+gone with it.  Everything was gone because of Sheila; he had given up
+everything that she might be safe, that she might have peace&mdash;the
+peace, at least, of being unafraid.  He thought of her now with a calm
+tenderness&mdash;as if, having given so much for her peace, he had somehow
+gained peace for himself, too.  And then he thought of Charlotte, and
+it was for Charlotte, not for Sheila, that tears&mdash;a man's slow,
+difficult tears&mdash;forced themselves into his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Charlotte was strong.  It was her strength that had roused strength
+in him; strength to leave the garden, to escape the insinuating,
+ensnaring sweetness of the night and go forth into the daylight world
+of men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And just then the first ray of sunlight touched his window sill,
+touched it and stole within the room.  The day had come; and though he
+was forty-six years old and not born for fighting, a sudden elation
+seized upon Peter's sad heart&mdash;as if the finger of the sunlight had
+touched it, too.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap17"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Sheila had thought herself acquainted with loneliness in the days
+immediately following her grandmother's death&mdash;days when she had had
+the consolation and companionship of Peter's frequent visits; but after
+Peter left Shadyville, she knew loneliness indeed.  Charlotte had taken
+flight to Paris soon after Peter's departure, and there remained in
+Sheila's small world not one to comprehend the depths of her, the real
+needs and desires and aspirations of her mind and spirit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To all outward seeming, her life flowed on in its usual channels; she
+occupied herself with her housewifely duties, with her care for her
+husband's and child's well-being; she exchanged visits with her
+neighbors and went to afternoon tea-parties.  Certainly her life
+appeared to flow on smoothly enough, but in fact it did not flow at
+all&mdash;that which was really the life current; it was checked, stemmed,
+thrown back upon itself in a tempestuous flood.  Heart, mind, spirit,
+all had come up against an obstacle which there was no surmounting, no
+eluding&mdash;the indestructible obstacle of a mistaken marriage.  Those
+were the bitterest days of Sheila's existence&mdash;the days when all the
+vital, matured forces of her throbbed and surged and clamored, prisoned
+things that beat in vain against the walls of circumstances.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Worn out at last by this inner rebellion and conflict, she began to
+question whether she might not write once more.  What she felt for
+Peter must forever be suppressed; must, if possible, be crushed out
+altogether; for her heart, importunate though it was with her woman's
+maturity, there could be no satisfying outlet.  And in her
+conscientious recognition of this, in her resolution to abide by it,
+her very genuine affection for Ted&mdash;despite all the differences of
+temperament that divided them, despite even her realization and
+resentment of the wrong his selfishness had done her&mdash;was her greatest
+source of strength.  But though she thus armed herself with her
+affection for her husband, though she so strove for utter loyalty to
+him, the suppression of her gift was no part of her conception of
+wifely duty now.  And, thanks to Charlotte, she no longer regarded her
+compact with God for Eric's life as a thing sacred and binding.  Even
+before Charlotte had expressed herself so vigorously on the subject,
+Sheila had, indeed, grown to see that her vow to renounce her gift had
+been unfairly wrung from her by a too effective combination of accident
+and Ted's opinions.  And after Charlotte had cried out upon that vow as
+"morbid, hysterical nonsense," after she had exclaimed that Sheila's
+only fault had been in wasting her gift, it was but a step for Sheila
+to the conclusion that her vow could not&mdash;<I>should</I> not!&mdash;bind her.  At
+last she saw herself free for work, if not for love; she saw herself
+the more free for work because love must be denied.  Her work should be
+her recompense; she had earned it now, as all things worth the having
+must be earned&mdash;by what one suffers for them.  And she believed that
+her work would be the better for all that she had suffered, all that
+she had endured.  It would be the better for that secret, unceasing
+ache of her heart for a love forbidden to her; and it would be the
+better for all the hours of pure suffering for itself alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had suffered for the loss of her work&mdash;Oh, very really!  Even
+through years that had been altogether happy otherwise, the
+restlessness and hunger and depression of a talent unappeased had come
+upon her at times, come upon her almost unbearably.  Though she had set
+her little son between it and her, it had reached her; it had harassed
+her unspeakably with demands that she had, perforce, refused to
+gratify.  The sudden note of a violin, the sight of a flowering tree
+pearly against an April sky, a glimpse of tranquil stars through her
+window at night&mdash;such things as these had been enough to bring her
+gift's importuning and torment upon her.  Earnestly and sincerely as
+she had tried to steel herself from such importunity and torment, they
+had come upon her again and again; they still came; they would come
+always&mdash;unless she flung off the shackles of that foolish, unnecessary
+vow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fling off its shackles she did, with a sudden, blessed sense of liberty
+and strength.  With neither confession to Ted, nor any attempt at
+concealment, she set herself to write.  For the first time since her
+marriage&mdash;at least since her motherhood&mdash;she felt her life, in some
+measure, her own.  That she made no announcement of her independence to
+Ted was significant of the complete independence she had begun to feel.
+Perhaps it was significant of it, also&mdash;of the extent to which she
+conveyed, without words, her emancipation&mdash;that Ted, discovering, in
+the ensuing days, what she was about, said nothing of it either.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she sat down, at last, to her writing-table, to her clean sheaf of
+paper, it was with the conviction of her individual rights spurringly
+upon her.  But though she was finally so sure of her right to set free
+her gift, she felt within her no stir and flutter of a thing mad to fly
+and now released to do it.  No winged words sprang upon her paper to
+leave bright traces of a heavenly flight.  At the end of a long,
+uninterrupted morning, there was upon her paper no word at all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not for lack of ideas did the paper remain thus bare.  There were ideas
+enough and to spare in the treasure chamber of her brain, ideas long
+hoarded, but still fresh with the glamour of their first conception.
+There was one idea which had especially tantalized and allured her
+through years of resistance on her part, an idea for a story really
+insolently quiet and unpretentious&mdash;because its stuff was such pure
+gold.  How that gold would shine through the cunningly chosen medium of
+her simple, unassuming phrases!  She had seen it shining so through all
+the time that she had resisted it.  But now&mdash;though she gave herself
+unreservedly to the cherished idea, though she turned over and over,
+with a passionate preoccupation, the little golden nugget of it&mdash;the
+simple, delicate phrases that were to reveal, to exploit it, did not
+appear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had always written with a singular ease, and it seemed strange to
+sit before her tempting pages and write not a word.  But on the first
+morning, she felt no alarm.  After all, it was but natural that she
+should have to spend some time in coaxing it out to the light&mdash;that
+talent of hers so long confined.  It was but natural that it should not
+have courage to soar and sing at once.  But on the second day her paper
+was as empty as before; it lay upon her table like a useless snare for
+some wild and lovely bird that no longer had vitality enough to flutter
+within reach of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now, sitting at her writing-table in vain for several days, fear
+seized upon Sheila, fear that she would not name or analyze.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, as one grew older, one often wrote differently, with more
+difficulty.  She had heard that, she reflected eagerly.  She had heard
+that deliberate, intellectual effort had often to succeed the flushed,
+panting rush of youthful inspiration.  This was probably the case with
+her now; of course it was, indeed.  She must undertake the effort; she
+must accept and master a new method.  Then all would be right with her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so she went about deliberately translating the gold of her idea
+into those dreamed-of words which were so fitly to interpret it.  She
+went about it with an energy, a will to accomplish the feat, that
+should have been sufficient to achieve miracles.  If there had been,
+hitherto, a strain of weakness in her, she was now all strength.  And
+by that sheer strength&mdash;of purpose, of determination&mdash;she sought to
+realize her dream of perfection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now the white sheets on her table were no longer barren.  Slow, painful
+writing covered them.  She wrote and discarded, and wrote again.  Day
+after day, she sat there at her table, engaged, as she came at last to
+perceive, in her final, her ultimate tragedy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For when the thing that she had visioned as a little golden masterpiece
+was finished, she knew it for what it was.  There was no felicity of
+phrase, no cunning art of construction, no conviction of truth, no
+throb of vitality within it.  As surely as a still-born child had it
+been brought into the world dead.  And it was incredibly ugly and
+deformed.  There was not a gleam of gold upon it!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She recognized all this with unsparing clearness.  Not one illusion was
+left to her, not one merciful deception; with a single glance at her
+completed story, illusions and self-deceptions were swept from her&mdash;and
+hope was swept from her with them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her gift was dead&mdash;or, at the least, it was forever ineffectual.  There
+would be no more mad, glad flights; no more songs high in the sunlit
+heavens.  The flights and songs and ecstasies were over for all time.
+Not for an instant did she cheat herself with sophistries of an
+eventual recovery.  She knew that if it lived at all&mdash;this gift of hers
+which had once been more alive than she herself&mdash;it would but live
+within her as the pain of a thing balked and futile, restless still
+perhaps, but not restless with any power.  Always&mdash;always now&mdash;the too
+exquisite note of a violin, the sight of blossoming trees at dawn, of
+silver, inscrutable stars at night would waken in her the hunger, the
+grief, of the unsatisfied.  There would never be a time when she could
+look on poignant beauty with the peace of one who is herself a part of
+all beauty&mdash;having created something beautiful.  For the ultimate
+calamity had befallen her; her gift had been killed, or hopelessly
+maimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Under the tremendous impact of this blow she was curiously unresentful.
+She wondered a little how it had happened.  She wondered if she had
+suffered too much, suffered to the point of numbness&mdash;a thing fatal to
+one whose work had been fine largely through her capacity for emotion;
+or if the habit, the superstition, of her vow, persisting within her
+after the vow itself had been cast aside, had thus finally broken the
+wings of her talent.  She wondered if her marriage alone, or her
+motherhood, or her shamed and hopeless love for Peter had been most
+disastrous to her.  She had been conscious of them all as she had sat
+there trying to write.  Eric's face and Peter's had drifted between her
+and her pages.  Ted's cold declaration that talent was a bad thing for
+a married woman, and her own impassioned promise to God to renounce her
+work for Eric's life had both drowned for her the voice of her gift.
+It was as if all these factors in her destiny had had too much of her;
+it was as if they had claimed her too entirely and tenaciously ever to
+release her.  Even in silence and solitude and a belated sense of
+liberty and rights, she could not be free of them.  She could not
+decide whether one or all of them had been responsible for this final
+frustration.  She wondered&mdash;and then she ceased to wonder at all.  She
+knew that the frustration had been accomplished&mdash;and that she was
+suddenly too weary even to cry out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was at the moment when she realized all this fully, when she sat
+staring at the deformed and lifeless thing which she had brought forth,
+that a letter from Charlotte was handed to her.  It came from New
+York&mdash;where was Peter.  Sheila opened it with shaking fingers&mdash;and
+found what she desired:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+I have seen Peter [wrote Charlotte] and he seems to have fitted
+himself, very happily, into the right place.  I say happily, but I do
+not use the word literally, for Peter is scarcely happy.  But he is
+appreciated here, and he likes his work.  I'm sure you'll be glad of
+that.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+As for happiness&mdash;I sometimes question whether those of us who catch a
+glimpse of a happiness perfect and transcendent ever experience the
+reality.  I doubt, in fact, if any reality could stand, unimpaired, by
+that vision.  It may be that we have to choose between the
+vision&mdash;beheld for an instant and forever remembered&mdash;and an earthy,
+faulty, commonplace little happiness.  We may have to choose between a
+fairy tale that can never be anything but a wonderful fairy tale, and a
+grubby reality that will spoil fairy tales for us evermore.  If that be
+true, Peter is not to be pitied.  He is manifestly one of the chosen;
+he's had his matchless vision; he still believes in the fairy tale.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+I told you, once, that I might marry him&mdash;in spite of him, as it were!
+Now I know that I will never marry him.  But you must not be sorry for
+me, my dear.  I, too, have had my vision.  I'll always believe in the
+fairy tale.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Sheila laid the letter down&mdash;beside the stillborn child of her gift.
+And fleetingly she saw again the pure gold of her idea&mdash;saw it gleaming
+through the misshapen thing she had actually fashioned.  After all,
+though she could never create masterpieces, she had had her vision of
+them; that, at least, had been vouchsafed to her.  And she had had her
+vision of the perfect love; not even unspeakable sorrow and humiliation
+had dimmed it.  She, also, was one of the chosen; she would always
+believe in the fairy tale.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap18"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It is, perhaps, only after we have put many dreams and hopes behind us
+that we stumble upon life's real gift to us.  And thus it happened for
+Sheila.  It was as if, seeing that she held out her hands for gifts no
+longer, life capriciously resolved to thrust one upon her.  But beneath
+the apparent caprice was a fine justice&mdash;for life was at last kind to
+Sheila through her son.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Eric grew older, there sprang up between them such a comradeship as,
+even in her gladdest moments of motherhood, Sheila had never foreseen.
+He was a manly boy, fond of other boys and of boyish sports, but for
+all that his companionship with his mother persisted, and as he matured
+somewhat, deepened into an intimate, understanding relation such as
+Sheila had not thought to know again.  Their kinship was not of the
+flesh only; that was the thing that Sheila began presently to see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was then that she began to dream once more; to visualize a future
+beyond her own unrealized future.  But she didn't so much as stretch
+out a shaping hand; she didn't say an illuminating, a determining word.
+She remembered instances&mdash;many of them&mdash;of children's lives having been
+moulded by their parents, and with pitiful mischance.  She had known
+men and women who, with entirely unconscious tyranny, had thrust
+ready-made destinies on their sons and daughters, saying in extenuation:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We want our children to do all the brave deeds we've failed to do.  We
+want them to fulfill our defeated ambitions and to become what we have
+never become.  We want to save them from our mistakes and our regrets.
+We haven't done much with our own lives&mdash;but we're going to live again,
+more wisely and effectually, in our children's lives."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so they had advised and coerced, and destroyed individuality and
+independence, and extinguished, only too often, the very joy of life
+itself by striving to transfer the flame to a vessel of their own
+choosing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This she must not do to Eric, Sheila told herself.  From the despotic
+impulse of parenthood&mdash;queer mixture that it was of too zealous love
+and a thoroughly selfish desire for a second chance through the medium
+of the child&mdash;she must protect Eric.  Therefore she restrained herself;
+she simply waited&mdash;as she might have waited for a seed to spring up
+from the secret sprouting place of some deep garden bed.  It requires a
+sort of earthy, benign patience thus to hold back one's hand and
+passively wait&mdash;especially when one has, in spite of oneself, the
+dominating parent instinct!&mdash;but Sheila forced herself to it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then, when Eric was fourteen years old, the seed sprang up through
+the soil and turned its face to the light.  The boy came to Sheila one
+day, obviously bent upon a confidence.  Shy, hesitant, shamefaced he
+was, but so eager.  She wanted to kiss him as he stood there before
+her, awkward and winsome, a little too tall for his knickerbockers,
+child and adolescent contending in his face and the flush of some
+portentous thing upon his cheek.  She wanted to kiss him&mdash;but she
+didn't.  For she divined that the moment was for sterner stuff than
+kisses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mother, here's&mdash;here's a story I've written."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That was all; but Sheila saw her own youth, her hopes, her dreams in
+his eyes.  What there was in her eyes she did not know, but at
+something there Eric suddenly exclaimed and put his arms around her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then Sheila knew that she was crying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not a marvellous story&mdash;that first effort of her young
+son's&mdash;but <I>something was there</I>; something that raised the crude,
+immature pages above immaturity and crudity and made the little tale
+better than itself.  And sensing it&mdash;that evanescent, impalpable, but
+infinitely promising thing&mdash;she saw the future shining through the
+present.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it was not to Eric that she went first with her discovery.  She
+longed to make the boy's path smooth for him before she sped him on it,
+and so she went first to Ted, story in hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted had not desired talent in his wife.  Would he desire it in his son?
+Would he cheer and encourage, would he even tolerate, a dreamer, a
+poet, a worker in mere beauty?  Would he ever regard art as more than a
+shadow of life?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila sought him now to learn that&mdash;with Eric's story to plead for
+itself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted was in his den, a place sacred to those masculine pursuits and
+possessions which he did not share with her.  Only for momentous
+affairs did she invade the shabby, comfortable, littered room, and now
+Ted glanced up at her from his pipe and papers with serious expectancy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd like you to read this," she said, holding out the little
+manuscript.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now?  Is it important?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, now.  It is very important.  I must have a talk with you when
+you've read it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took it from her, and she sat down to await his verdict.  The story
+was short.  Her suspense could have lasted but a little while.  But
+Eric's fate was at stake, and the minutes seemed as laggard as years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had given up her own talent; that it was now a crippled thing
+within her was because she had renounced it, long before, for Eric's
+life.  But she would not easily sacrifice Eric's talent&mdash;if talent he
+really had.  She was prepared to fight for it, if need be.  Yet, as she
+watched Ted, reading with inscrutable face, her heart grew heavy within
+her for dread of dissension, of struggle between them.  That hot,
+rebellious heart of hers had come at last to a sort of peace.  The
+affection between herself and Ted, in the past few quiet years, had
+become for her, unconsciously, more and more of a haven.  She had given
+up much to the end that she and Ted might live together in harmony, and
+she sickened now at the prospect of conflict.  For at conflict, old
+wounds would open, regrets long firmly suppressed would rush upon her,
+a devastating flood.  If she had to fight for Eric, she knew that she
+would fight with the strength of old bitterness, bitterness that she
+had striven to outlive.  And she could not bear that this should
+happen.  She could not bear that her affection for Ted should be thus
+jeopardized.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She remembered, as she sat there, the anger she had felt toward him
+when he had condemned Alice North for her art&mdash;and, however innocently,
+through Alice North, herself.  She remembered how indignant she had
+felt, how hurt and <I>divided</I>.  And she remembered, too&mdash;thinking,
+against her will, of Peter&mdash;how divided from Ted she had felt in later
+years, in years not so long gone that she could recall them calmly.
+She remembered how she had come, finally, to see Ted, and his part in
+the destruction of her talent, all too clearly&mdash;and how her heart had
+turned from him then to one whom she had no right to love.  She had
+driven her heart back to its appointed path; she had constrained it to
+its duty&mdash;in so far as the heart can be constrained.  She had even
+achieved the supreme triumph of keeping alive for Ted, through
+disillusion and passionate resentment, that very real affection with
+which they had begun life together&mdash;but she trembled now at thought of
+any further pressure being brought to bear upon it.  It was as if she
+held out her hands to her husband, crying: "Oh, let me love you!  Do
+nothing that shall make it impossible for me to love you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet&mdash;though conflict between them should destroy the love she had
+so endeavored, in spite of everything, to feel&mdash;if Ted opposed Eric's
+gift, there must be conflict.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For she considered what her own unappeased gift had cost her&mdash;the
+hunger, the restlessness, the pain.  She considered how, throughout all
+the years of her marriage, she had suffered her gift's insistence and
+its reproach.  She thought of how she had never been able to look upon
+the miracle of the spring, the majesty of the stars, without an aching
+heart.  All beauty had been transmuted for her into unassuageable
+sorrow&mdash;because she had been born to create beauty and had failed of
+her destiny.  And it would be transmuted into sorrow for Eric,
+too&mdash;unless he were given the freedom she had foregone.  He, too, would
+face the stars with an aching heart; all high and exquisite creation
+would be for him the material of suffering&mdash;unless he were allowed to
+create also.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had nerved herself to any effort, any struggle that might be
+necessary, when Ted at last laid down Eric's story and turned to his
+desk without a word.  Was there as little hope as that?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ted?" she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait," he answered, rummaging in a drawer of his desk, with his back
+toward her.  And his voice sounded queer&mdash;almost as if it were choked
+with tears.  "Wait, Sheila."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rose, directly, and walked toward her, and his face was queer, too,
+unsteady with some rarely deep emotion.  Thus he had looked when he
+first bent over her after Eric's birth.  That flashed through Sheila's
+mind, touched her to sudden faith in his being, now, what she prayed to
+have him.  Then she saw that in his hand he had, not Eric's story, but
+a bulky package of yellowed manuscripts, tied clumsily with a faded
+ribbon.  In such fashion a romantic man might have tied love letters.
+But Ted was not romantic, and, never having been separated from him at
+any time since their marriage, she had written him no letters.
+Besides, these papers were large, business-like sheets.  She stared at
+them curiously.  What had they to do with Eric and Eric's future?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But to Ted they had their significance.  He carefully untied the dingy
+ribbon and spread the loosened pages on the table before her&mdash;and she
+noticed that his fingers were shaking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look," he said, in that queer, blurred voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She picked up one of the discolored pages&mdash;and her own writing
+confronted her; for the page was from the unfinished story she had been
+working on when Eric was taken ill with scarlet fever&mdash;the story that,
+in obedience to her vow, she had put aside, still uncompleted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Ted&mdash;<I>Ted</I>&mdash;!"  But even then she did not understand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I found them," he explained, furtively stroking the shabby sheets, but
+attempting a bluff and off-hand tone, "I found them&mdash;Oh, years
+ago!&mdash;just stuck off in a cupboard <I>like trash that nobody wanted any
+more</I>.  And so&mdash;because I <I>did</I> want them&mdash;I brought them down here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>You</I> wanted them?" Sheila gasped.  "But, Ted&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then he had her in his arms, and his eyes&mdash;full of the tears he had
+tried to repress&mdash;were gazing down into hers!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you suppose I realize what you might have done?  Don't you
+suppose I've seen what you've given up for me&mdash;for me and Eric?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She could not speak.  She could only gaze back at him, incredulous
+still of the comprehension that he had so long concealed from her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've been a selfish brute, Sheila," he went on.  "I've craved all of
+you for myself and my child, and I've had all of you.  It's been my
+man's way, I reckon, for I couldn't have helped it.  If I had it to do
+over again, it would be just the same&mdash;though I'm ashamed of myself
+now.  Of course I didn't ask you to give up your writing, but I'd quite
+as well have asked you.  For I guessed that you'd done it&mdash;after Eric
+had scarlet fever&mdash;and I <I>let</I> you, without a word.  I've let you
+sacrifice your talent ever since, too&mdash;needlessly.  Yes, I've <I>let</I>
+you&mdash;for I've seen the whole thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had sometimes felt that the tragedy of her life had been in all
+that Ted had not seen.  Now, finding that he had seen so much more than
+she had ever suspected&mdash;so much of what had been profound suffering to
+her&mdash;she might readily have blamed him more than she had ever done
+before.  But generosity rushed out of her to meet his
+generosity&mdash;belated though his was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no," she interrupted, "it isn't that you let me give up my work.
+The fault isn't yours.  That awful night&mdash;when it seemed that Eric
+would die&mdash;I offered my work for his life&mdash;I offered it to <I>God</I>!  That
+was why I didn't write afterward."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ted fixed pitying eyes upon her: "You poor little girl!  Was it as bad
+as that with you?  I knew I was taking advantage of your conscience,
+but I never dreamed you'd carried your remorse so far.  Did you really
+believe you had to buy God's mercy?  Oh, no, dear.  It's only your
+husband that's seized the opportunity to extract a sacrifice from your
+Puritan conscience.  But with all my selfishness, I haven't stopped
+you&mdash;I haven't been the end of your talent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She started to tell him of her late emancipation from that unnecessary
+vow of hers; to tell him that she had tried to write again&mdash;and
+discovered that she could not.  But she did not tell him after all.
+For that could only hurt and shame him&mdash;in the hour of his penitence.
+So she was silent, and he continued with appealing eagerness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I haven't been the end of your talent," he repeated.  "Don't you
+realize, dear, that your talent isn't ended at all?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean&mdash;Eric?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I mean that you've handed on your gift to Eric.  And he's going
+to have the chance I wasn't unselfish enough to let you have.  Don't be
+afraid for him&mdash;he's going to have his chance, And he'll know what to
+do with it!  I believe you'll be the mother of a great man&mdash;and that
+Eric will probably be the father of great men.  I believe it will go on
+and on and on&mdash;what you are, what you might have done."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, Ted&mdash;Eric is only a child.  We cannot be sure yet&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe!" he insisted.  "I believe <I>this</I> is to be your work&mdash;the
+work I haven't stopped."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as she listened, there came to her, too, a faith in Ted's prophecy.
+Her gift would have its fruition in Eric&mdash;and perhaps in Eric's sons
+and his sons' sons.  She was granted a vision of a torch passed on from
+one trustworthy hand to another throughout the years; and beholding
+that vision, she was aware that nothing she had suffered mattered at
+all.  She could face the stars now with a heart at peace.  She could
+watch the earth's miracles, feeling herself a part of them.  From the
+earth sprang flowers; from her flesh had sprung her son&mdash;her son who
+had been born to carry on the torch.  She had created beauty
+indeed&mdash;beauty that would outlive her life in her son's art.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Even Peter's image was blurred for her as she beheld her supreme vision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then she recalled Charlotte's words: "I sometimes question if those
+of us who catch a glimpse of a happiness perfect and transcendent ever
+experience the reality.  I doubt, in fact, if any reality could stand
+unimpaired by that vision."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Charlotte was mistaken.  There were visions which became realities;
+this final vision of hers would become a reality&mdash;and it would be none
+the less perfect and transcendent for that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sheila laid her hands on her husband's shoulders.  "I'm glad that I've
+lived!" she said.  And again, with a little sob, "Oh, my dear, I'm glad
+that I've lived!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="finis">
+THE END
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Torch Bearer, by Reina Melcher Marquis
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TORCH BEARER ***
+
+***** This file should be named 32394-h.htm or 32394-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/3/9/32394/
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</BODY>
+
+</HTML>
+
diff --git a/32394.txt b/32394.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b124f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32394.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5938 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Torch Bearer, by Reina Melcher Marquis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Torch Bearer
+
+Author: Reina Melcher Marquis
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2010 [EBook #32394]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TORCH BEARER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TORCH BEARER
+
+
+BY
+
+REINA MELCHER MARQUIS
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+
+1914
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
+
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY HUSBAND
+
+
+  FOR WITHOUT HIS HEARTENING FAITH IN MY
+  WORK, HIS GENEROUS SYMPATHY WITH IT,
+  AND HIS DISCERNING CRITICISM OF IT, THIS
+  BOOK WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN WRITTEN.
+
+
+
+
+THE TORCH BEARER
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Peter Burnett stood on the top-most of the broad white steps leading to
+the "Shadyville Seminary for Young Ladies."  He had just closed the
+door of that sacred institution behind him, and with a sigh of relief
+which was incompatible with the honors of his professorship.  But Peter
+had never duly valued his position of instructor to Shadyville's
+feminine youth, though his reverence for scholarship was deep and
+sincere.
+
+It was Friday afternoon, and freed from the chrysalis of his
+bread-winning duties, he was about to spread his wings for the flight
+of his inclination.  He looked out on the April greenery of the town
+with the fastidious gaze of one who has the world to choose from; for
+though he was a poor young school-master, clad in a shirt that had been
+darned too often, he was also a Burnett of Kentucky and born to a
+manner of leisure and arrogance.
+
+Slowly, and with this manner at its best, he began to descend the
+steps.  His whole lax figure assumed an air of indolence that, for all
+his lack of imposing proportions, subtly invested him with distinction,
+and he set a dallying, aristocratic foot upon the quiet street.  In
+that descent he triumphed over the mended shirt--and forgot it.
+
+From Friday afternoon until Monday morning--the brief interval when
+little girls are reprieved from lessons--he had indeed the world to
+choose from; or, to be accurate, the social world of Shadyville, of
+Kentucky, and of the larger south.  Within that radius he might take
+his amusements where he would and it was a matter of some amazement to
+those less privileged than he that he made such unspectacular use of
+his opportunities.  Why, thought they, should Peter Burnett waste his
+holidays over a country walk or a copy of Theocritus when he might be
+fashionably golfing, dancing a cotillion or flirting at a house party?
+Not that Peter neglected these pursuits--being a more astute young man
+than his reserved face and tranquil gray eye would indicate--but that
+he paused occasionally in the round of them for what his admirers
+considered less worthy diversions.
+
+And he was pausing now, as he loitered along the wide, silent street
+with its trees in pale, sweet leafage and its old-fashioned houses
+showing a prim gayety in the bloom of their garden closes.
+
+He loved this street which stretched the length of the town; beginning
+in homes of a humble sort; breaking, a little farther on, into a
+feverish importance as it ran along before the doors of the shops;
+gathering dignity unto itself as it gained the site of the Shadyville
+Seminary; and finally advancing, in the evolution of a social
+consciousness, through the select upper end of town, where it spread
+itself ingratiatingly beneath the feet of the "prominent citizens" and
+clung smugly to well-trimmed hedges instead of skirting shop doors, and
+dingy fences.  Peter called its course its "rise in life"--so obvious
+was its snobbery, its persistent climbing; but his ridicule was the
+tolerant ridicule of affection.  He knew the street like the nature of
+an old friend; he saw it like the face of one; and if he laughed now
+and then at its weaknesses, he was none the less certain to enjoy its
+company.
+
+To walk along _with_ a street--not merely upon it--was one of his
+favorite pastimes, and this afternoon he pursued it in great
+contentment, with no thought of what its end should be, nor any
+definite desire.  For it was his theory that to walk with a street,
+divining its moods and discovering its little dramas, was in itself an
+adventure, and need not lead to one.
+
+But though he was content to stroll with the street, particularly in
+this pleasant neighborhood of its upper end, he soon halted, perforce,
+at the greeting: "Peter, you _won't_ pass me by?"
+
+It was a blithe voice that addressed him, pretty and clear, but it was
+not the voice of youth; and Peter, glancing toward the veranda whence
+it came, saw sitting there an old lady who was like the voice, pretty
+and blithe and brave, though with no affectation of a youth long gone.
+His face lighted at sight of her, and he hastened up her garden path.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Caldwell!" he cried, both hands extended.  And then, with
+pleased alacrity, he settled himself upon the step at her feet.
+
+"It's worth while taking a walk up this way," he remarked
+appreciatively.
+
+"Now confess," laughed the old lady, "confess that _I_ am not the
+adventure you are seeking this afternoon!"
+
+"I wasn't seeking one at all," disclaimed Peter, "but I couldn't refuse
+a divine accident."  And as she shook a chiding head at his flattery,
+he went on firmly: "It's the wayside adventures like this which have
+long since decided me to start out with none in view.  The gods
+presiding over a wayfarer's destiny always offer him something better
+than he could have provided for himself!"
+
+"Oh, Peter!  Peter!" protested the old lady, "what a book of pretty
+speeches you are!"  But the two smiled at each other with the happy
+understanding of friends to whom disparity of years was no barrier.
+
+"And how does your garden grow, Mistress Mary?" Peter presently
+inquired.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell looked out upon her trim flower beds where bloomed tulip
+and crocus in April festival.  "My silver bells and cockle shells grow
+very well," she answered, in the spirit of the rhyme, "but"--and her
+delicate old face quivered into an anxious quickening of life--"but,
+Oh, Peter!  I fear my pretty maid grows too fast for her own good."
+
+"Sheila?  Then you've seen?"  And Peter sat up eagerly, shedding the
+garment of his indolence.
+
+"Then you've seen!" returned Mrs. Caldwell.  "But what have you seen,
+Peter?  What do you think of her?"
+
+"I think," said he slowly, "that she has the most delightful mind I've
+ever encountered."
+
+Pride leapt into Mrs. Caldwell's eyes, but, as if to make quite certain
+of him, she demurred: "She's only a little girl, Peter--only a little
+twelve-year-old girl."
+
+"Yes," he assented.  "That's why I'm so sure of her quality.  At her
+age--to be what she is!  Why, Mrs. Caldwell, her mind is like light!
+And it isn't just a wonderfully acute intelligence either.  She has the
+feeling, the intuition, too.  It's as if she thinks with her heart
+sometimes!"  And his face glowed as it never did save for something
+precious and rare.
+
+"Have you considered her future?" he added.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell smiled: "What do you suppose I'm living for?"
+
+"To make her like you, I hope," answered Peter gallantly.  His
+grandfather had loved Mrs. Caldwell, and his appreciation of her was
+inherited.
+
+"To make her so much wiser!"
+
+"Wiser?"  And Peter looked fondly up at the lovely old face above him.
+For it was lovely, lovely with living, with the very years that might
+have withered and spoiled it.  To him the wisdom of such living was
+beyond compare.
+
+But she insisted: "Yes, so much wiser.  Peter, in my youth it wasn't
+ladylike to be too wise.  I had a few womanly accomplishments.  I
+sewed.  I sang.  I read Jane Austen and Miss Edgeworth and Charlotte
+Bronte.  And I gardened a little--with gloves on and a shade hat to
+protect my complexion.  And sometimes I made a dessert.  Peter dear, I
+was a very nice girl, but--!"  And she flung up her hands with a
+gesture that mocked at her futility.
+
+"Sheila can never be nicer!" he persisted loyally.
+
+"Oh, yes, she can--if some one wiser than I teaches her!"
+
+"I," said Peter importantly, "I teach her rhetoric at the Shadyville
+Seminary.  '"I," quoth the sparrow, "with my little bow and arrow!"'"
+
+Mrs. Caldwell leaned forward and touched his shoulder.  "I'm very
+serious," she said.  "Here's my little orphaned Sheila--my dead boy's
+child--with no near kin in the world but me.  And I'm not fit for the
+task of helping her to grow up.  Oh, Peter, will _you_ help?"
+
+"You know I will!  At least, I'll try."
+
+She smiled at him through her earnestness.  "Your rhetoric isn't
+enough," she warned him.  "All you know isn't enough.  You'll have to
+keep on learning too, Peter, if you're really going to help her."
+
+"I will," he promised again.  "I'm twenty-eight, and a lazy beggar--but
+I can still learn."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell drew a quick breath of relief: "Thank you, Peter.  To
+tell you the truth, I've been really a little frightened lately."
+
+"About Sheila?  But she's so sweet!"
+
+"And so strange!  She isn't like a child.  And it's not because she's
+outgrowing her childhood, for she's not like a young girl either.
+Peter"--and Mrs. Caldwell's voice sank to a whisper now, as if she
+communicated a dangerous thing--"Peter, she's like--_a poet_!"
+
+Peter laughed outright at her timid pronouncement of the word.  "But is
+that so terrible?" he teased.  "All poets are not mad, after all."
+
+"Oh, you may laugh.  I dare say my terror of a thing like genius is
+funny.  But it's genuine terror, Peter.  What should I do with a poet
+on my hands?  I tell you, I'm not wise enough to--to trim the wick of a
+star!"
+
+"Well," he suggested comfortably, "she may not be a poet.  What makes
+you think she's likely to be?"
+
+"You know how she reads--quite beyond the ordinary little girl's
+appreciation?"
+
+"Yes--but she may have an extraordinary mind without being a genius of
+any sort.  And I'm responsible for her reading.  It isn't so precocious
+after all.  I've just given her simple, beautiful things instead of
+simple, silly ones."
+
+"But, Peter, I've another reason besides her reading.  She goes off by
+herself and sits brooding--dreaming--for hours at a time.  I've come on
+her unexpectedly once or twice and she didn't even realize that I was
+there--she was so rapt.  She looked as if she were seeing visions!"
+
+"Perhaps she was," said Peter softly.  "I've seen visions in my time,
+and I'm no poet.  Haven't you--when you were as young as Sheila?
+Confess now--haven't you?"
+
+But Mrs. Caldwell resolutely shook her head: "Not like Sheila does.
+And neither have you, Peter.  Sheila is different from you and me.  You
+know her mother was Irish--full of whimsical fancy and quaint
+superstitions."
+
+"Ah, I had forgotten about her mother."
+
+"Of course.  You were only a boy when she died."  And her eyes filled
+with slow, remembering tears as she went on, "She always believed in
+fairies--even when she was face to face with a reality like death.  And
+Sheila believes in them, too, though her mother didn't live long enough
+to tell her about them.  She never says anything about it, but I know
+that she has a whole world which I can't share--the dream-world her
+mother bequeathed to her."
+
+"But that's beautiful!" cried Peter.
+
+"Yes," she admitted, "it's beautiful.  But, Peter, it's sad for me
+because--because I can't follow her there."
+
+She fell silent for a moment, her eyes wistful and anxious; and
+suddenly he saw the pathos of age in her face as well as its finely
+tempered beauty, the pathos of all the closed doors that would open no
+more--among them the door of fairyland.
+
+"It's true," she said bravely, as if they had looked at those closed
+doors together and she were answering his thought.  "I'm an old woman
+and I've lost the way to fairyland.  So I want you to go with Sheila in
+my place.  I want you to guard her dream--and keep _her_ safe, too.
+I'm afraid for her, Peter--I'm afraid!"
+
+"Dear Mrs. Caldwell, how can I walk where your foot is too heavy?"  And
+Peter's voice was very gentle.
+
+"Ask your poets that.  I was never one for the poets.  I can sew a fine
+seam and make my garden grow--nothing more.  But you have the store of
+poetry--and you have youth."
+
+"There," said Peter, pointing to a lad of fourteen or thereabout who
+was coming toward them, "there is what Sheila calls youth."
+
+"And there," retorted Mrs. Caldwell, "is what _I_ call the heavy foot.
+But Theodore Kent is a good boy.  He's just not good enough for Sheila.
+I can't understand the child's liking him!"
+
+Theodore came up to them briskly, his cap off, his yellow-brown hair
+shining in the sunlight with a vigorous glory, his face ruddy and
+smiling.  His body and his features were alike, strong and somewhat
+bluntly fashioned, the body and the features of the very sturdy,
+closely akin to the earth's health and kindliness.
+
+"Where's Sheila, Mrs. Caldwell?" he asked, happily unconscious of a
+critical atmosphere.
+
+"In the back garden.  What do you want, Ted?"
+
+He lifted a battered volume.  "She promised to help me with this
+rhetoric stuff," he announced, quite unabashed at the admission of
+Sheila's superior cleverness.
+
+"Well, run along and find her."  And Mrs. Caldwell glanced at Peter as
+if to add, "Didn't I tell you he wasn't good enough for Sheila?"
+
+"But what, after all, does an understanding of rhetoric amount to?
+What has it done for _me_?" murmured Peter, answering the glance.  And
+then, as the boy still lingered before them, "I'll go with you, Ted.  I
+must make my bow to Sheila before I leave."
+
+The back garden belied its humble name.  The kitchen windows opened
+upon it, it is true, but they did not discourage its prideful aspect.
+Indeed, it might just as well have been a front garden, for it had
+never been the shelter of the useful cabbage and its homely relations.
+The young grass was close-cropped with the same care that had been
+bestowed upon the front lawn, and simple, gay flowers flourished in
+bright beds and along the smooth walk.  Toward the end of the garden,
+and as if for a charming climax, several cherry trees shook blossoming
+branches to the spring wind.
+
+And beneath those trees lay Sheila, her eyes lifted to their bloom, a
+still, enraptured little figure, quite unconscious that intruders were
+drawing near.
+
+At sight of her, Peter halted and laid a staying hand on Ted's arm.
+"Don't speak to her!" he whispered.
+
+And so the two stood and looked at her, and yet she did not stir nor
+grow aware of their presence.
+
+She was a slender little shape, lying there on the fresh grass--a thin
+child, with a pale face and black hair braided away from it; a child
+who was not actually pretty, nor, to the eyes of the casual observer,
+in any other way remarkable.  But to Peter she seemed touched, for the
+moment, with the glamour of enchantment, this small dreamer communing
+with her fays.
+
+"Don't speak to her!" he said again, as Ted moved restively.  "She's as
+far away as if she were in a different world," he added softly, and
+only to himself.
+
+But Ted, overhearing, nodded comprehendingly.  "Sheila does make you
+feel like that sometimes, even if she _is_ standing right by you all
+the time.  She's queer--Sheila is.  But," and he spoke boastfully,
+though still in the cautious undertone Peter had used, "but I always
+call her back!"
+
+Peter looked down at him, at the frank, wholesome, unimaginative face,
+fatuous now with the vanity of power.
+
+"_I_ always call her back!" the boy repeated proudly.
+
+"Yes," said Peter slowly, "you--and people like you--will always call
+her back.  But not this time, Ted--not this time.  I'll help you with
+your rhetoric myself.  Sheila has better things to think of just now."
+And putting his hands on the boy's shoulders, he turned him about for
+retreat.
+
+It occurred to Peter then that he was fulfilling Mrs. Caldwell's trust,
+but he shook his head dubiously, nevertheless.  He had saved one dream,
+but--the future was long and the people like Ted were many and
+intrepid.  Suddenly he saw what life might do to a being like Sheila
+and something of the fear and tenderness that Mrs. Caldwell had felt
+smote upon his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+It was on a Saturday of late October that it happened--the adventure
+which, in after years, Sheila was to see as so significant.
+
+Sheila and Ted had gone to the woods with a nutting-party--a party too
+merry to do much but frolic, and eat as they gathered.  By afternoon
+their baskets were not nearly full, and Ted surveyed his own with
+chagrin.  He liked to accomplish what he set out to do, not because he
+was particularly industrious, but because a sense of power within him,
+partly sheer physical vigor and partly a naturally dominant will,
+demanded deeds for its satisfaction.  If he could stay an hour longer,
+if he could go a little deeper into the woods, he could fill his
+basket, he reflected; whereas now--and he looked with contempt and a
+genuine distress at his meagre store of hazel nuts.
+
+In his discontent he had already lagged behind his companions.  The
+other children had set their faces homeward; Sheila walked just ahead
+of him, her arm around the waist of Charlotte Davis, a girl of her own
+age whom she had taken, with solemn vows, for her dearest friend.  He
+might call the two girls, he thought, and together they could soon have
+a fine harvest, but his inclination rejected Charlotte almost as
+quickly as the idea occurred to him.  For Charlotte, with her pert
+little freckled nose and her shrewd blue eyes, was not a comrade to
+Ted's taste.  She had never shown him a proper reverence, and he was at
+the stage when a boy desires feminine tribute even while he affects to
+scorn it.
+
+Charlotte had never understood him.  Or was it what he did not
+suspect--that she had always understood him too well?  At any rate she
+had a disconcerting way of gazing at him, her head cocked impudently on
+one side, her eyes half speculative, half amused.  And her sharp,
+teasing tongue was even more disconcerting than her naughty, quizzical
+stare.  He could imagine, from past experience at her hands, what would
+happen now if he included her in his plan.
+
+"What do you want of more nuts?" she would ask, with the inquiring
+innocence that he had learned to distrust.  "Haven't you got all you
+can eat?"
+
+"Yes, but--" he would begin to explain.
+
+And she would interrupt him in the middle of his sentence with:
+
+"Oh, I see!  You just want to do more than anybody else, don't you?
+Theodore Kent always does more than anybody else!  Don't he, Sheila?"
+And this with a great show of admiration.  Yet even to Sheila, whose
+loyal mind conceived with difficulty of any disrespect to him, the
+mockery of the apparent admiration would be obvious.
+
+Yes, that was what would happen if he invited Charlotte to stay, and he
+felt himself flush at the fancied conversation.  But he would ask
+Sheila.  She really admired him!  She appreciated him!  If she was
+sometimes queer, she was a nice little thing in spite of that.
+
+"Sheila!" he called.
+
+She paused and looked back at him.
+
+"Come here a minute," he urged.  "I want to tell you something."  And
+when she would have drawn Charlotte with her, he added: "It's a secret."
+
+At which transparent hint, Charlotte flung off Sheila's arm and marched
+on, singing maliciously:
+
+  "Ted has got a secret--secret--secret!
+  Like a little gir-rul--gir-rul--gir-rul!"
+
+
+And hearing himself thus effeminized, Ted winced and wondered if he had
+not better have asked her after all.
+
+Sheila came up to him with a troubled face.  The feud between him and
+Charlotte always hurt and bewildered her.  "You've made Charlotte feel
+bad," she chided reproachfully.
+
+But with Charlotte's taunt still ringing in his ears, Ted was ruthless:
+"Fiddlesticks!  If she feels bad about that, she's silly.  And I can't
+tell secrets to silly girls."
+
+Sheila was sorry for Charlotte, but she began to feel vaguely flattered
+on her own account: "What's the secret?"
+
+"I know a place--just a little way back yonder--that's _fat_ with nuts!"
+
+Sheila looked disappointed.  It seemed, at this hour, rather a poor
+secret.  But Ted, still with the air of honoring her above all others
+of her sex, went on: "I'm going back and get some.  And"--this
+impressively--"I'm going to let you come with me!"
+
+Sheila brightened at the magnanimous offer, but a moment later grew
+uneasy: "Grandmother would be scared if I didn't come home with the
+others."
+
+"How'd she find it out?  Your house is farthest.  She won't see the
+rest of 'em."
+
+"But--but when I tell her--" said Sheila uneasily.
+
+"You _needn't_ tell her!  Don't you understand?  She'll never know you
+_didn't_ come home with the others!"
+
+Ted had a scrupulous personal honor, a pride, as it were, in his
+integrity.  He told the truth about his own transgressions and paid the
+piper without complaint.  But for others his truth was sometimes
+equivocal, his morality comfortably lax.  And these lapses from grace
+on his part always filled Sheila with a shocked dismay.
+
+"Oh," she protested, "I couldn't do that!  Why, it would be _lying_!"
+
+"Fiddlesticks!  Where's the lie?  You wouldn't _tell_ one!"
+
+"It _would_ be a lie," persisted Sheila.  "It would be a lie if I let
+her think what wasn't so."
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" he pronounced again.  But he looked at her approvingly,
+nevertheless.  Sheila was always "square," and he liked her the better
+for it.  "Well, you go along with Charlotte, then," he added
+regretfully.
+
+But he had tempted her more successfully than he knew, and her mind was
+busily working toward some compromise with her conscience.  She cast an
+eye in the direction Charlotte had taken, and that glance decided her.
+"Charlotte's out of sight," she said.  "I--I believe I'll stay,
+Ted--_but I'll tell when I get home_!"
+
+It was late afternoon when they did at last start homeward--with
+baskets as full as Ted had predicted.  Going through the bright-hued
+woods, where the scarlet and burnished yellow of long-lived leaves
+still flaunted ribbons of flame and the dead and dun-colored broke
+crisply beneath their feet, they fell amicably silent, trudging briskly
+along with the impetus of health and hunger.  Ted's silence was the
+content of a body drenched all day in sunshine and clean, cold air, and
+now deliciously placid; but Sheila's quiet was of a different quality.
+For her the woods were full of mysteries and miracles; she was sure
+that little people, as quick and elusive as shadows, darted hither and
+thither at her very feet, and that enchantment was spread there like a
+fine-spun web.  As she walked onward, brooding over things unseen and
+yet so surely true for her, there recurred to her a dream of the night
+before, and so vivid was her remembrance of it that she seemed to be
+dreaming a second time.
+
+In the dream, oddly enough, she had been walking through these same
+woods.  Here and there she had seen a bright leaf blowing; she had
+heard her own footsteps on the brittle leaves beneath; a slender shaft
+of sunlight--the last of the day--had stolen downward and touched her
+like a long finger.  Then, suddenly, the golden finger had withdrawn
+and the dusk had fallen, not gradually, but in swift, downward billows
+of mist that flooded upon her and blinded her.  She had closed her eyes
+against them for a moment, and when she opened them again, the mist had
+disappeared, leaving her in a space of clear gray light.  Through this
+light some one had come toward her, a shape at first vague and
+ethereal, as if it were a lingering spirit of the mist, but gathering
+substance and definite outline as it advanced until it became the
+figure of a woman with arms that reached toward her for embrace.
+Involuntarily Sheila's own arms had reached forth in answer; she had
+taken a stumbling step forward; through the pale light there had
+glimmered on her, for an instant of revelation, the shadow's face.
+
+_And she had wakened with the cry: "Mother!"_
+
+A strange dream, especially for a little girl whose mother had died
+soon after her birth.  But that dead mother had always been a dear
+familiar of Sheila's thoughts; her picture had been like a living
+companion.  And though the sleeping vision of her had driven the child,
+startled to the very soul, to her grandmother's bed, now, as she trod
+the woods that had been the scene of the dream-miracle, she remembered
+it without fear.
+
+"What if, after all, dreams sometimes came true?"  The thought
+quickened her breath, but not her feet.  In the night she had fled from
+a dream too poignant, but now she felt no impulse for flight.  Rather,
+she delayed her steps, thrilling as she recognized about her the
+dream's landmarks.
+
+For now there arose before Sheila's dazed eyes that rare and marvellous
+phenomenon of a dream reproduced, at least in its physical aspects, by
+reality.  And in such an experience, given perhaps to one in a
+thousand, it is the reality that seems to tremble--threatened by some
+older and stronger truth--beneath one's feet.  So it trembled now for
+Sheila as she saw again those features in the face of the woods that
+had impressed her sleep.
+
+Here were the few rich leaves, fluttering lightly in the evening wind
+as they had fluttered in her dreaming vision of them!  And now her
+heart fluttered with them, so much stranger than the dream itself was
+its incredible repetition.
+
+There--just ahead--yes, surely! there was the same long finger of pale
+sunlight striking downward through the stripped trees!  Presently she
+would pass beneath its touch, feeling it faintly warm upon her
+cheek--as she had felt it in her dream!
+
+Afterwards would be the dusk.  And then--_what if dreams came true_?
+
+She was not afraid, but instinctively she drew nearer the boy beside
+her.  "Ted," she breathed, in an awed whisper.
+
+"Huh?" he asked, roused from his own silent well-being.
+
+But she did not answer, and he strode cheerfully on without troubling
+himself to question her again.  "What if dreams come true?" she was
+saying within herself, but she could not, after all, put the thought
+into words for Ted to scoff at.
+
+And then, before she reached it, the finger of sunlight vanished and
+the dusk was upon her, not swiftly billowing, but slipping softly
+downward like a silken veil.  She was not afraid, she told herself, but
+the dusk chilled her and she shivered.
+
+After the dusk--if dreams came true!--would be--  And then her heart
+seemed to stop its beating.  For dim in the distance, but coming toward
+her through the trees, there walked a shadow.  And even while she
+watched, it gathered shape and substance unto itself; it ceased to be a
+floating fragment of mist and became a woman!
+
+But now Sheila's heart began to beat again--riotously.  Her
+hesitations, her unacknowledged fears, were succeeded by a sense of
+exquisite exultation.  The miracle was at hand--and she rushed upon it.
+
+"Ted!"  It was not a whisper this time, but a cry, and the boy turned
+sharply.  But Sheila had already started forward, calling wildly:
+"_Mother!  Mother!  Mother!_"
+
+And though the woman was still but a distant figure, she heard that
+piercing call and answered it with one as clear and passionate:
+
+"_My little girl!  I'm coming!  I'm coming!_"
+
+For an instant Ted stood motionless, struck to the earth by that simple
+horror of the unusual, the abnormal, which the very sane and
+unimaginative always feel.  Then, with a single bound, he overtook
+Sheila and laid a detaining hand on her shoulder: "Sheila, _stop_!
+It's Crazy Lisbeth!  I know her voice!"
+
+He was right.  The advancing figure was not the beautiful mother-spirit
+of Sheila's dream, but a flesh and blood mother who, years before, had
+lost her husband and only child, and become crazed by her grief.  Ever
+since then her heart had been wandering on a piteous quest for her
+dead, and her wits with it.  And because she was very poor and quite
+harmless, suffering only the illusion that she would sooner or later
+find her husband and little daughter, the town was kind to her; set her
+to work when she would; fed her when she would not work; and left her
+free for her sad and futile search.
+
+Sheila and Ted knew her well and no fear of her had ever touched them
+before, but now, as she came onward with her insanity strong upon her,
+both terror and repugnance seized on Ted.
+
+"She thinks you're her child," he said angrily.  "And no wonder!  What
+made you do such a thing?"
+
+Sheila turned to him with her explanation on her lips--the whole
+confession of her dream and her momentary belief that it had come
+true--but at sight of him looking at her so protectingly and yet so
+severely, her impetuous words faltered and grew cold.
+
+"I--I was thinking of my mother," she stammered shyly.
+
+The unexpected reply embarrassed him.  He wanted to scold her, but at
+this mention of her dead mother he could not.  So he only dug his foot
+into the ground and gazed toward Lisbeth, who was now almost upon them,
+stumbling in her happy haste.
+
+"We can't run away from her," said Sheila.
+
+"She thinks you're her child!" he protested again, but less harshly.
+
+"Yes," admitted Sheila gently, "like I thought she--"  And then, at
+some sudden counsel of her heart, she exclaimed: "You stay here.  I'll
+know what to do!"
+
+It seemed to Ted an unbelievable thing that he saw happen before him
+then.  For Sheila stepped quickly forward to meet the hurrying, pitiful
+creature who sought her; stepped forward and straight into the woman's
+arms.  As he stared, a shudder of disgust shook Ted from head to foot.
+"It's horrible!" he muttered to himself.  "It's horrible for Sheila to
+let Crazy Lisbeth hug her!"  But he could not go and draw Sheila away.
+His repulsion would not permit him to approach the spectacle that
+excited it.
+
+And meanwhile the little girl was murmuring, still in the fold of
+Lisbeth's arm, words that he could not understand, but that drifted to
+him with the soft sounds of pleadings and promises.
+
+"Sheila!" he called peremptorily.
+
+She did not reply, but talked on to Lisbeth, interrupted now and then
+by the latter, but evidently not discouraged in her purpose of
+persuasion.
+
+"Sheila!" Ted called again, and this time uneasily.
+
+And now she answered, over her shoulder, and with a motion that held
+him back: "We're going home!"
+
+At that he understood what she was bent upon.  She had been coaxing
+Lisbeth to go home.  But why should she concern herself about one who
+was used to roam the whole countryside at any hour of the day or night,
+walking unmolested in the desolate safety of her affliction?  Why,
+above all, should Sheila go home _with_ her?
+
+For that, apparently, was what Sheila meant to do.  She had already
+started onward with her self-appointed charge, and though the woods had
+grown more shadowy, Ted could see the two figures plainly, walking
+close together and linked by the woman's arm.  That arm about Sheila's
+shoulder--Crazy Lisbeth's arm!--set him shuddering again as violently
+as the first embrace had done.  It was an affront to every fiber of his
+thoroughly normal being.  But still he could not go nearer to remove
+it; by the law of his own nature he had to stay outside the circle of
+Lisbeth's madness and Sheila's folly.  And his sense of responsibility
+had, perforce, to appease itself with his following them at a discreet
+range--a distant and sulking protector.
+
+It seemed to him, as he strode on behind them with irate steps, that
+they would never get out of the woods.  Little woodland sounds, a
+snapping bough, a breaking leaf, a scurrying squirrel, sounds that he
+would not ordinarily have noticed, now startled him into fright.  The
+gradual failing of the light oppressed him almost to panic; and when
+the early twilight settled somberly over the woods, such weird, moving
+shadows rose up all around him that he would fain have taken to his
+heels had he not feared what lay before him more.
+
+Crazy Lisbeth scrubbing his mother's kitchen floor was only a harmless
+"innocent," the pensioner of his condescending pity; but Crazy Lisbeth
+in the woods at nightfall--Ah, then she became a different and a
+dreadful creature, one to shake the heart and alarm the nerves of the
+bravest.
+
+Sheila appeared to think otherwise and to find Lisbeth docile enough,
+for despite Ted's conviction that the homeward way was interminable,
+these two went steadily onward and at a fair pace.  And after no long
+interval their attendant knight had the satisfaction of following them
+from the covert of the woods into the open spaces of the town.
+
+Here Ted's alarms left him, abruptly and completely.  He could have
+laughed aloud at the bogies he had escaped.  His self-respect came
+swaggering back, and with it the determination to assert a belated
+mastery of Sheila.  She was not a block ahead, and now he hailed her.
+
+But as she had done in the woods, she merely called to him over her
+shoulder: "We're going home!"
+
+Crazy Lisbeth lived on the other side of the town, in a mean little
+cottage that more fortunate householders had deserted.  It was a long
+walk there and the hour was already late, seven at the least.  A vision
+of Mrs. Caldwell watching for Sheila flashed across Ted's mind and
+strengthened his resistance against this further perversity.
+
+"You must go with me right away!" he exclaimed, hastening after Sheila.
+"Your grandmother'll be scared to death!"
+
+"Oh," cried Sheila, stopping now, but with her hand still resolutely
+gripping Lisbeth's, "Oh, I know it, Ted!  But I can't help it!"  And
+though her tone was sharp with distress, she turned obstinately on.
+
+There was nothing for him but to follow her to the end of her
+adventure.  Ted knew it from experience.  Sheila in one of her moods,
+obsessed by some "queer notion," was immovable, though sweetly
+reasonable at all other times.  So with a bad grace he went on in her
+wake, beset now, not by fear, but by keen resentment of the whole
+absurd situation.
+
+Thus they came at last, the ill-assorted trio, to Lisbeth's cottage,
+sitting lonely and unlit by lamp or fire upon a bare hillside.  Sheila
+and Lisbeth paused, and Ted stopped, too, still a few yards from them,
+but expectant of some further freak and ready to spring forward with a
+rebuke that would end the mad episode on the spot.  But just then the
+moon swung slowly out from some prisoning cloud, flooding the hillside
+with light, and as Ted saw Lisbeth's face, he forgot his intention of
+remonstrance and could but stand and gaze.
+
+For a moment he thought that the woman before him could not be Crazy
+Lisbeth at all, and then he thought that the moonlight tricked him.
+But of one thing he was sure; be the cause what it might, he saw a
+Lisbeth magically and beautifully changed.  Foolish and pathetic and
+middle-aged she had been only yesterday, but to-night love and joy had
+had their way with her for a little while and had transformed her
+almost into youth and comeliness again.  Unconscious of Ted's watchful
+and hostile presence, as she had been from the first, she turned to
+Sheila with a simple and moving tenderness:
+
+"Come," she said, opening her gate.
+
+But Sheila stood motionless, her face soft with a pity that could no
+longer protect.
+
+"Come," urged Lisbeth, "come, darling precious!  This is home!"
+
+But Sheila did not stir.  "I--I can't," she answered gently.
+
+"You can't?  _You can't_?  Oh, it's been a dream!--a dream!--a dream!
+You're not real--you're never real!  I see you--and see you--and see
+you!  _But when I reach you, you're not real--not real_!  I believed it
+was different this time--but it's always the same!  _You're not real_!"
+
+And with that despairing cry, the Lisbeth whom Ted knew so well stood
+there before him again, old and foolish and piteous, whimpering softly
+and plucking at her ragged dress.
+
+Sheila put her hand on the bent shoulder--bent to its long burden.  "I
+_am_ real," said the child in a clear, steadfast voice that somehow,
+penetrated Lisbeth's sad whimsies, "I _am_ real!--and I'll come back!"
+
+"You'll come back?"  And Lisbeth ceased her whimpering and laid
+pleading hold on her.  "You'll come back?  I don't believe you're real
+now--I _can't_ believe it any more!  But I don't mind that if you'll
+come back anyway.  You will?  You promise?"
+
+"I promise," answered Sheila.  "If you are good--if you go straight
+into the house--I'll come back."
+
+Lisbeth looked at her for an instant with an odd shrewdness in her poor
+foolish face.  Then she nodded, evidently satisfied with what she saw.
+"I'll be good," she agreed.  "I'll go in.  Oh, my pretty darling!  My
+dearest precious!  Lisbeth will be good!"  And after a quick clasping
+of Sheila, she went obediently into the mean little house and, without
+even a backward glance, closed the door behind her.
+
+Sheila stepped toward Ted.  "I'll go home now," she said wearily.  Then
+she added, as if she were stretching out a wistful hand to his
+sympathy: "Oh, Ted, she thought--until the last--that I was her little
+girl!"
+
+"Yes," he said, all his resentment returning, "and you let her!  You
+_let_ her, Sheila!  How could you do such a thing?"
+
+"But it comforted her.  It comforted her to think so, Ted."
+
+"She wasn't comforted when she thought you weren't real!"
+
+"Yes, she was--even then.  She was when I promised to come back."
+
+"You can't keep your promise."
+
+"Why can't I?"
+
+"Your grandmother won't let you.  You know that as well as I do.
+'Tisn't your place to comfort Crazy Lisbeth, and Mrs. Caldwell will
+tell you so.  Her troubles aren't any of your business."
+
+"They are!" cried Sheila, with an anger now that matched his own, "they
+are--because I understand how she feels!  I haven't any mother--and
+Lisbeth hasn't any child.  Don't you see that it's just the same for
+both of us?  And _her_ little girl may be comforting _my_ mother up in
+heaven right now!"
+
+"And she may _not_!" he retorted,
+
+"I believe it!" she proclaimed, carried away by the imaginary scene she
+had evoked.
+
+"Well," said Ted, with his most exasperating tone of superior
+intelligence, "_I_ don't!"
+
+She glanced up at him as he trudged beside her, his face firm with his
+substantial beliefs, his feet sturdily treading a very solid earth.
+And though she was only a little girl, unlearned in the finger-posts of
+character, Sheila felt what she could not name nor analyze.  She
+remembered that she had almost told him her dream, and she shivered at
+the thought.
+
+"No," she remarked ruefully, "you don't believe anything that you can't
+_see_, do you, Ted?"
+
+"I don't believe lies!" he replied crisply, "not even when I tell 'em
+myself."
+
+"_Lies_?" she repeated in astonishment.
+
+He stopped and faced her.  "Look here!  You said you couldn't let your
+grandmother think you came home with the rest of 'em when you didn't
+because that would be lying."
+
+"Yes," agreed Sheila with conviction.
+
+"But you let Lisbeth think what wasn't so!"
+
+The words flashed their accusation at her with unmistakable clarity.
+"Yes," she assented once more, slowly, "I did."  And then, with pained
+surprise, "Why, that _was_ a lie, wasn't it?"
+
+"And now," finished Ted ruthlessly, "you're making up lies about heaven
+for yourself!  What's the matter with you, Sheila?"
+
+They had reached Mrs. Caldwell's gate, and for a moment they stood
+staring at each other, the question hanging in the air between them.
+Then there came to Sheila a swift, inward vision of the contradictions
+of her own temperament, a vision untempered by the merciful knowledge
+that, in the final analysis, all human nature is very much alike.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "what _is_ the matter with me?"
+
+And with a sob, she fled up the path to the house, leaving Ted
+frightened, ashamed, and more bewildered than ever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The moment when Sheila had that terrifying inward vision of her own
+inconsistencies marked the beginning of her self-consciousness.  For a
+while this was acute and painful.  She was always afraid of finding
+herself, quite unintentionally, involved in a labyrinth of untruth, and
+her conscience, which passionately rejected any dishonesty that it
+perceived, was continually occupied in analyzing her emotions and
+impulses, her most guileless thoughts and her simplest actions.
+
+"I am naturally a liar," she told herself solemnly.  "I must watch
+myself all the time--because I am naturally a liar!"
+
+But she said nothing of her self-revelation and ensuing struggles to
+Mrs. Caldwell.  It was a thing to be overcome in shame and silence, and
+alone, this innate wickedness of hers.
+
+Her shame was indeed so genuine that she met Ted, for the first time
+after he had shown her failing to her, with deep reluctance.  He must
+have been thinking of her awful tendency ever since they had parted--as
+she had been.  And he could not possibly respect her!  But to her
+amazement, he greeted her with his usual manner of untroubled good
+fellowship.  Clearly, she had not sunk in his estimation.  She was
+astounded, and shocked at him as well as at herself, until it occurred
+to her that he might have forgotten the matter altogether.  This was
+incredible, but more honorably incredible than that he should remember
+and not care.  And if it were the case, she must not take advantage of
+his forgetfulness; she must not unfairly keep his esteem.
+
+"Ted," she said, with an effort worthy of a more saintly confessor,
+"Ted, I reckon I ought to remind you about the way I acted with
+Lisbeth."
+
+"What about it?  Did your grandmother scold you much?"
+
+"Why, no.  Don't you understand what I mean?"  It was too painful to
+put her sin into words.
+
+"Has Lisbeth been after you again?"  But the question was obviously not
+one of sympathy, for Ted's voice was sharp now.  At the mention of
+Lisbeth he had recalled his grievance.
+
+"No," repeated Sheila.  "I meant I ought to remind you about--_me_."
+
+And as Ted stared at her with no gleam of comprehension in his eyes,
+she was forced to become explicit: "I mean--the way I let Lisbeth
+believe what wasn't so."
+
+Ted looked at her speculatively for a moment, wondering if he had
+better rebuke her again for her folly, so that she should not commit it
+a second time.  She would be capable of doing the whole thing over,
+under the impression that she was benefiting Lisbeth.  She was so queer!
+
+"You were very silly," he said finally.
+
+"I was wicked!" she exclaimed in a fervor of repentance.
+
+Ted continued to regard her with that speculative gaze.  "Well, you
+_are_ a queer one!" he ejaculated slowly.
+
+Sheila flushed.  She had abased herself in penitence, and he only
+thought her queer.  He _always_ thought her queer!  She turned on him
+with a flare of temper that burned up her humility so far as he was
+concerned:
+
+"How _dare_ you call me queer?  How _dare_ you call me silly?  I hate
+you, Theodore Kent!  I never want to see you again as long as I live!
+You're--_you're an abomination in the eyes of the Lord_!"
+
+And with this scriptural anathema, plagiarized from the Presbyterian
+minister's latest sermon, she flung away from him in a fit of wrath
+that did much to restore her normal self-respect.
+
+However, though she felt no further uneasiness in the presence of
+Ted--whom she forgave the next day with the readiness that is the
+virtue of a quick temper--she continued her vigil over herself until
+time softened her impression of her iniquity.  And even then, when her
+self-criticism had relaxed, her consciousness of her individual
+temperament remained.  She had discovered herself, and this self, like
+her shadow which she had discovered with wild excitement in her
+babyhood, would be her life companion.  After she ceased to fear it, as
+a possible moral monster, she began to take a profound interest in it
+and its behavior.
+
+"What will you be doing next?" she would inquire of it quaintly, "what
+_will_ you be doing next, Other-Sheila?"
+
+She did in fact credit this newly realized self of hers with a very
+distinct and separate personality.  All her caprices, her unexpected
+and unexplainable impulses, her mystic imaginings, she laid at its
+door, and in her fantastic name for it--"Other-Sheila"--she probably
+found the true name for something that the psychologists define far
+more clumsily.
+
+But stung into sensitiveness by Ted's taunt about her queerness, she
+kept her discovery of Other-Sheila to herself.  Not even to Mrs.
+Caldwell, who was a friend as well as a grandmother; not even to Peter,
+who was all the while feeding her eager young mind with food both
+wholesome and stimulating, and becoming, in his task, a comrade who
+rivalled Ted in her affections, did she confide the existence of this
+other self.  With self-consciousness came the instinct of reserve--not
+a lack of frankness, but a kind of modesty of the soul.
+
+She had passed her fifteenth birthday before Other-Sheila roused her to
+unrest.  Until that time, the shadowy self dwelling deep within her,
+and every now and then flashing forth elusively just long enough to
+manifest its reality, had been a secret and delightful companion, one
+with whom she held animated conversations when alone, and from whose
+acquiescence to all her wishes and opinions she extracted considerable
+comfort.
+
+"Other-Sheila," she would say to herself, "is the only person who
+always agrees with me."  And then she would add, with a glint of
+whimsical humor in her gray eyes, "I reckon that's what an Other-Sheila
+is _for_!"
+
+But after a while Other-Sheila became less acquiescent and more
+assertive.  And for the first time in her life, Sheila felt within her
+the troubling spirit of discontent.  She wanted something, wanted it
+desperately as the very young always do, but she did not know what that
+something was.  It was a tantalizing experience, and she saw no end to
+it.
+
+"If I could only find out _what_ I want, I might get it," she mused.
+And then, "Don't you know what it is, Other-Sheila?"  But Other-Sheila
+was provokingly unresponsive, though it was probably her desire that
+fretted the objective Sheila's mind.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell saw the unrest in the young girl's face and recognized it
+for what it was--the unrest of growth.  It was a look of unborn things
+stirring beneath the surface, stirring and quivering as flowers must
+stir and tremble beneath the ground before they break their way through
+to the sun.  But though she watched eagerly from day to day, ready to
+do her part when the hour for it should come, Mrs. Caldwell was too
+wise a gardener to hasten bloom.
+
+"Peter," said she one day, when he had paused in an indolent stroll to
+chat with her over her garden hedge, "Peter, it's a terrible thing to
+be young!"
+
+"Is it?" he laughed.  "Why?"
+
+"So many things have to happen to you!"  And out of the security of her
+placid years Mrs. Caldwell spoke with an earnest pity.
+
+Peter laughed again.  "Well, I'm young--at least, I suppose I would be
+so considered.  And _nothing_ ever happens to me!"
+
+Mrs. Caldwell surveyed him with mischievous eyes.  "No, Peter," she
+contradicted, "you're not young--yet.  You're not even alive yet.
+You're too lazy to really live!  But you'll have to come to it some
+day.  We all have to be born finally."
+
+He chuckled at her comprehension of him.  Then a disturbed look
+fluttered across his face: "Do you actually mean that there's no
+escape?"
+
+"None!  It's better to yield gracefully--and have it over.  And if you
+don't hurry a bit, Sheila will be through her growing pains while yours
+are still before you!"
+
+"Little Sheila?  The master's star pupil?"
+
+"Yes," she insisted, "little Sheila.  You'll be taking her to parties
+in a long frock before you know it.  She graduates from the Seminary
+next year."
+
+But Peter was nearer to meeting Sheila in a long frock than either he
+or Mrs. Caldwell dreamed.  For at that moment Sheila was planning to
+wear one before she was a week older.
+
+She and Charlotte Davis were in the latter's dainty room, and spread on
+the bed before them was Charlotte's new party frock.  Charlotte's
+father was the wealthiest man in Shadyville, and both she and her frock
+did his wealth justice.  She was now at home, for the Easter vacation,
+from a fashionable boarding-school in Baltimore, the Shadyville
+Seminary not satisfying Mr. Davis's requirements for his youngest and
+favorite daughter.  Her absence from the little town during the greater
+part of the past two years had enabled her to erase its traces.  She
+had become a typical city-bred girl and she appeared pert, smartly
+dressed and, for her sixteen years, amazingly mature.  She had always
+been prettier than Sheila, though no one had ever realized it and
+probably no one ever would.  For her prettiness was so informed with
+sharp intelligence that her face had a challenging and almost
+aggressive quality.  Boys had never admired her, and men were not
+likely to do so either, so lacking was she in the softer and more
+appealing charms of her sex.  Even at sixteen her bright blue eyes were
+a trifle hard, not because of what they had seen--for she was, in
+experience, still the nice little ingenue--but of what they had seen
+_through_.  The veil of credulity never dimmed her clear, bold glance.
+But for Sheila she was always gentle, so strong in this shrewd,
+fastidious young creature was her one deep and uncritical affection.
+
+As the two girls examined the frock on the bed--a rose chiffon over
+silk that fairly shrieked of expense--Sheila sighed.  "Will you wear it
+Friday night?" she inquired wistfully.
+
+For on Friday night Charlotte was to give a party--a real evening party
+to which the debutantes and even the older set were coming, as well as
+the school-girls and boys.  It would be Sheila's first grown-up
+party--and she had only a white muslin and a blue sash to make herself
+fine with.  Thus Mrs. Caldwell had dressed for parties until her
+marriage, and it had never occurred to her to provide any other costume
+for Sheila, who was not yet quite sixteen.  Besides, in Mrs. Caldwell's
+opinion--and even in the exquisite Peter's--there was no sweeter sight
+than a young girl in white muslin and blue ribbons.  But to Sheila, in
+comparison with Charlotte's splendor, the white muslin seemed
+unspeakably dowdy.  And so, when she asked Charlotte about her toilette
+for the great occasion, it was with a heart of unfestive heaviness.
+
+"Of course I'll wear this.  That's what I got it for.  Oh, Sheila,
+aren't the little sleeves cunning?  Just half way to the elbow--it's
+lucky my arms aren't thin!"
+
+But Sheila only sighed again in response to Charlotte's enthusiasm, and
+now Charlotte heard the sigh and glanced at her with sudden
+attentiveness.  "What will you wear?" she demanded.
+
+"I'll have to wear my white muslin.  I haven't anything else."
+
+"Oh, Sheila, that's too bad!"
+
+"I wouldn't mind so _very_ much except for--"  And Sheila's eyes,
+wandering sadly toward Charlotte's chiffon, finished the sentence.
+
+But Charlotte's dismay had already vanished.  "You won't have to wear
+your white muslin either," she announced in her positive, capable way.
+"You can wear one of my frocks, Sheila.  You must!  Why"--this in a
+burst of generosity--"why, you can wear this one!"
+
+"Oh, no, I couldn't do that.  Not your new frock, Charlotte!  But
+you're a dear to offer it!"  And Sheila gave her friend a grateful hug,
+though Charlotte never encouraged caresses.
+
+"Well, then, perhaps not this one," agreed Charlotte, to whom, used
+though she was to her pretty clothes, it would have been something of a
+hardship to surrender the first wearing of them to anyone else,
+"perhaps not this one--rose is more my color than yours.  But
+another--a blue silk mull that will be lovely with your blue-gray eyes
+and black hair.  I've worn it only two or three times, and never in
+Shadyville."
+
+"No, I couldn't," said Sheila again.  "Grandmother wouldn't let me.
+I'm sure she wouldn't."
+
+"I don't see why."
+
+"She wouldn't," persisted Sheila regretfully.
+
+"Now look here, Sheila.  She wouldn't _know_.  You're going to spend
+the night with me and dress after you get here.  And _she's_ not coming
+to the party."
+
+It was the same form of temptation which Ted had offered Sheila in the
+woods three years before, but now it was tenfold stronger.  Then a mere
+good time was at stake; now the gratification of her young vanity, of
+her first girlish desire to make herself charming, was to be gained.
+And as she had hesitated that day in the woods, for the sake of the
+fun, she hesitated now for the sake of this new, clamoring instinct.
+
+"I'd have to tell her," she temporized.
+
+"Then tell her," assented Charlotte impatiently, "but don't tell her
+until afterwards."
+
+It was Sheila's own method of that earlier time--a middle path between
+conscience and desire, and lightly skirting both.
+
+"I might do that," she remarked thoughtfully.  "If I told her--even
+afterwards--it wouldn't be quite so wicked.  And I _want_ to wear the
+frock dreadfully!"
+
+"Just tell her as if it's nothing at all," advised Charlotte cleverly,
+"as if we never even thought of it until after you got here that
+evening.  Then she won't mind it a bit.  You'll see she won't!"
+
+"Yes, she will.  She won't like my wearing your clothes.  She won't
+think it's _nice_.  And when I tell, I'll tell the whole thing--the way
+it really happened.  But"--and Sheila's full-lipped, generous mouth
+straightened into a thin line of resolution--"I'm going to do it
+anyway, Charlotte!"
+
+Three days intervened before the party, and they were not happy days
+for Sheila.  Her sense of guilt depressed every moment of the time,
+especially when she was in Mrs. Caldwell's trusting presence.  For
+Sheila was not equipped by nature to sin comfortably.
+
+But when the eventful night arrived, and she beheld herself at last in
+Charlotte's blue silk mull, with its short sleeves and little round
+neck frothy with lace, and its soft skirt falling to her very feet, she
+forgot every scruple that had been sacrificed to that enchanting end.
+
+Charlotte, gay as a bright-hued bird with her blue eyes and yellow hair
+and rose-colored gown, and her mother and young Mrs. Bailey, her
+married sister, all stood around Sheila in an admiring circle, every
+now and then breaking out anew into delighted exclamations over their
+transformed Cinderella.
+
+"Isn't she too sweet?"
+
+"And look at her eyes--as blue as Charlotte's, aren't they?"
+
+"And what a young lady she seems!  Isn't that long skirt becoming to
+her?" cried Charlotte.
+
+Charlotte had worn her party frocks long for the last year, and she
+approved emphatically of the dignity thus attained for a few hours.  It
+gave her a delicious foretaste of the real young ladyhood to come, when
+she meant to be very dignified and very brilliant indeed.
+
+But to all their pleased outcry, Sheila said nothing at all.  She
+merely stood, radiant and silent, before them until they had to leave
+her for a last survey of the rooms downstairs, the flowers and the
+supper.  Then, sure that she was quite alone, Cinderella stole to the
+mirror.
+
+For a long time she gazed at the girl in the glass; a straight, slim
+girl in a delicate little gown that somehow brought out fully, for the
+first time, the charming delicacy of her face--not the delicacy of
+small features, of frail health, nor of a timid temper, but of an
+exceeding and subtle fineness, partly of the flesh, partly of the
+spirit, like the fineness of rare and gossamer fabrics.  Sheila, of
+course, did not perceive this, which was always to be her one real
+claim to beauty, but she saw the frock itself, and white young
+shoulders rising from it, and above it a pair of shining eyes.  And
+suddenly an ache came sharply into her throat and the shining eyes
+filled with tears.
+
+"Oh," she whispered, leaning to the figure in the mirror, "Oh, _this_
+is what I wanted!  _I wanted to be beautiful_!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The evening was half over when Sheila, still up-borne on the tide of
+her feminine exultation, glanced across the room to find that Peter
+stood there quietly regarding her.  Straightway she forsook the youth
+who was administering awkward flattery to her new-born vanity, and
+hastened to the side of her old friend.
+
+"Oh, Peter, don't I look nice?" she demanded eagerly.
+
+But Peter ignored the frank appeal for a compliment.  "I think you'd
+better call me Mr. Burnett," said he.  And his tone was so serious that
+she failed to catch the banter of his eyes.
+
+"Why, I've always called you Peter, just like grandmother does--always!"
+
+"Yes," admitted Peter, "and it's been very jolly and friendly.  But,
+Sheila, I must have _something_ to remind me that you're still a little
+girl and my pupil.  There's nothing in your appearance to suggest it,
+but perhaps--if you will address me with a great deal of respect----"
+
+At that, Sheila laughed and patted her frock: "Oh, I understand you
+now!  Do I really seem so grown-up?"
+
+"So grown-up that I can't understand how Mrs. Caldwell came to let you
+do it."
+
+"Oh, Peter!  _Oh, Peter_!"
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" he asked, surprised at the poignant
+exclamation.  But she turned abruptly away from him, and presently he
+saw her blue gown flutter through a distant doorway.
+
+"Now I wonder," he pondered, "what in the world I've done.  Offended
+her by appearing to criticize Mrs. Caldwell, I suppose."
+
+But Peter had done a much graver thing than that.  Unconsciously, he
+had summoned Sheila's conscience to its deserted duty; and already,
+like any well-intentioned conscience that has taken a vacation, it was
+making up for lost time.
+
+With that comment of Peter's--"I can't understand how Mrs. Caldwell
+came to let you do it"--Sheila's little house of pleasure suddenly
+tumbled to the ground.  She had not meant to be sorry about the
+deception of the frock until _after_ the party, and until her encounter
+with Peter she had been successful enough in holding penitence at bay.
+That vision of herself in the mirror, seeming to answer some longing of
+her very soul, had indeed kept her forgetful of everything but a sense
+of fulfillment and triumph.  But now, reminded of her grandmother, she
+began to be sorry at once--impatiently, violently sorry.
+
+"I must go home," she murmured to herself distressfully, as she slipped
+unobserved through the crowded rooms.  "I must go home.  I can't wait
+until morning!  I must tell grandmother _now_!"
+
+And so it happened that Mrs. Caldwell, looking out from her
+sitting-room window into the early spring night, saw a slim figure
+speed up her garden path as if urged by some importunate need; and the
+next moment Sheila was kneeling before her, with her face hidden upon
+her shoulder.
+
+"Why, Sheila!--dear child!"
+
+"Oh, grandmother, will you forgive me?"
+
+"What should I forgive you?  I'm sure you've done nothing wrong this
+time!"  And Mrs. Caldwell, who was accustomed to the rigors of Sheila's
+conscience, smiled above the face on her breast with tender amusement.
+
+But Sheila sprang to her feet and stepped back a pace or two.  "Don't
+you _see_?" she cried tragically.
+
+And then Mrs. Caldwell discovered the transformation of her Cinderella.
+No demure little maiden this, in the white muslin and blue ribbons of
+an ingenuous spirit, but a fashionably clad "young lady," who appeared
+to have grown suddenly tall and rather stately with the clothing of her
+slim body in the long, soft gown.
+
+"Sheila!" exclaimed Mrs. Caldwell involuntarily.  And then, with her
+hands outstretched to the impressive young culprit, "Tell me all about
+it, dear."
+
+And sitting on the floor at her grandmother's feet, regardless of
+Charlotte's crushed flounces, Sheila poured out her impetuous
+confession, from the first moment of temptation and yielding to the
+final one of Peter's awakening words.
+
+"And when he spoke of you, grandmother, I just couldn't _bear_ it!  I
+wondered how I could have been happy at all--I wondered how I could
+have forgotten you for a minute!  I hated the frock!  I hated the
+party!  And I hated myself most of all!  I had to come home and ask you
+to forgive me right away!"
+
+And down went her head into Mrs. Caldwell's lap.  "Do you---think--you
+can forgive me?" came the muffled plea.
+
+For answer Mrs. Caldwell bent and kissed the prostrate head, and it
+burrowed more comfortably against her knee.  But Mrs. Caldwell did not
+speak.  She was waiting for something, and when Sheila continued to
+burrow, in the contented silence of a penitence achieved, she inquired
+quietly: "Well, dear?"
+
+Sheila lifted her head at that, and looked straight into the wise,
+sweet eyes above her: "I wanted something!  I wanted something
+dreadfully!  And I didn't know what it was.  And then, when I saw
+myself in Charlotte's frock--and so changed--I thought I'd found what I
+wanted.  I thought--I thought I'd wanted to be beautiful!"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Caldwell gently, "I used to think that, too."
+
+"Oh, grandmother, did you?  Then you understand how I felt!  But--but,
+you see, it didn't last.  I wanted to be good _more_.  That's what made
+me come home.  Grandmother, do you suppose _that's_ what I've wanted
+all the time, without knowing it--to be good?"
+
+At the question, Mrs. Caldwell, wise gardener that she was, realized
+that one of the flowers which she had divined, stirring in the depths
+of Sheila's being, was pushing its way upward to the light, and that
+the moment had come for her to help it.  She slipped her arms around
+the girl kneeling before her, as if seeking in love's touch inspiration
+for love's words.
+
+"I think you will always want to be good," she said, "and I think you
+will always want to be beautiful.  Women do, Sheila dear--even the
+women who are least beautiful and least--good.  It's part of being a
+woman--just like loving things that are little and helpless.
+
+"But, Sheila, being beautiful isn't enough!  Even being good isn't
+enough, though of course it ought to be.  It's essential, but it isn't
+enough.  Every woman must have something else besides to make her
+happy--something that is hers, _her own_!  She must have that to be
+beautiful _for_, and to be good for--she must have that to live for!
+
+"And that is what you want, dear--the thing that is your own.  You have
+been born for that--you cannot be complete or content without it."
+
+Mrs. Caldwell's voice rose, grave and rich with the harmonies of life,
+through the peaceful room, and Sheila quivered responsively in the
+circle of her arms.  To the young girl, womanhood, that only yesterday
+had been so far away, now seemed to be drawing thrillingly near with
+all its attendant mysteries.  And in her next question she took a step
+to meet it:
+
+"Grandmother, what is it?--the thing that will be mine?"
+
+"Dear, how can I tell?  It isn't the same for us all.  For one woman it
+is love; for another it is work; for some it is, blessedly, both work
+and love.  For me--now--it is _you_!  How can I tell what it will be
+for my little girl?"
+
+"I want it!" whispered Sheila.  "I want it!"
+
+"You must wait for it, dear.  You must wait for it to come to you.  You
+can't hurry life."
+
+"But can't I do _anything_?"
+
+"You can be good, and you can be beautiful, so that you'll be ready for
+it when it comes.  But"--and now Mrs. Caldwell smiled, and with her
+smile the stress of the moment passed--"but not in Charlotte's frock!
+It wouldn't be fair to make yourself beautiful with borrowed plumage,
+would it, little bird of paradise?  You'd only get a borrowed happiness
+out of that--one that you hadn't a right to, and couldn't keep."
+
+Sheila rose from her knees, smiling, too.  "I'll go right upstairs and
+take it off," she declared.  "I want to play fair from the start--I
+only _want_ what's really mine!"
+
+And so, coming back, under Mrs. Caldwell's tactful guidance, from the
+deep waters to the pleasant, shallow wavelets that lap the shores of
+commonplace life, she began to busy herself with the small duties of
+the night, closing the windows and putting out the lamps.  Then, with
+bed-time candles after the fashion of Mrs. Caldwell's own girlhood, the
+two started up the stairs, Sheila leading and lighting the way--as
+youth always will, despite the riper wisdom of age.  Once she smiled
+over her shoulder; and before they had gained the top of the flight,
+she paused and reached back her hand to help her grandmother up the
+last few steps.  There was something gracious and strong in the
+gesture--something that had not been in the nature of the Sheila who
+had bent her head to Mrs. Caldwell's knee an hour before.  It was as if
+the womanhood of which Mrs. Caldwell had spoken had already awakened in
+her and with it, not only the longing for something of her own, but
+that kindred tenderness for things little and helpless--or helpless and
+old.
+
+"Take my hand," she said sweetly, and there was in her voice the lovely
+gentleness that young mothers use toward their children.
+
+
+The next day, when Charlotte came to inquire why her guest had flown,
+without warning and apparently without cause, she found a Sheila who,
+though garbed once more in her own short frock, seemed in some
+mysterious way more grown-up than she had in the trailing splendor of
+the night before.
+
+"What's happened to you?" demanded Charlotte shrewdly, when the two
+girls were shut into the privacy of Sheila's little white bedroom, a
+room that resembled the despised white muslin and blue sash which had
+been discarded for Charlotte's furbelows.  "I know _something's_
+happened to you.  You're--different.  Did somebody make love to you?"
+
+"Goodness, no!" denied Sheila in a horrified tone, and the alarmed
+young blood rose in a slow, rich tide over her neck and face and
+temples.
+
+"Oh, you needn't be so shocked.  Somebody will some day!"  And
+Charlotte laughed lightly out of her own precocious experience.
+
+Of the two girls, Sheila was the one to be loved, but Charlotte was the
+one to be made love to--if the love-making were only the pastime of the
+hour.  Charlotte was clever and daring and cold, and could take care of
+herself.  She knew, even at sixteen, all the rules of the game: when to
+advance, when to retreat, and, most important of all, when to laugh.
+But Sheila would never be able to laugh at love or love's counterpart.
+
+"Somebody _will_ make love to you some day!" repeated Charlotte
+teasingly.
+
+"Well, nobody has yet!" Sheila assured her crossly.  "And what's more,
+I hope nobody will!  _That_ isn't what I want!"
+
+"What do you want?" asked Charlotte curiously, detecting the underlying
+earnestness of the words.  But she received no response, and so, bent
+upon an interesting topic, she harked back to Sheila's flight from the
+party: "If nobody made love to you, why did you run away?  Did your
+conscience hurt you, Sheila?"
+
+"Yes," admitted Sheila, "that was what made me come home.  But I stayed
+home because of something else."
+
+"What?"
+
+Sheila groped for the language of Mrs. Caldwell's lesson: "Because I--I
+didn't want to be pretty in somebody else's clothes.  I was happy for a
+little while, but it didn't last.  You see, I'd borrowed that--the
+happiness--along with the frock.  And of course I couldn't keep it.  I
+just want what belongs to me after this, Charlotte.  It isn't fair to
+take anything else--and it isn't any use either."
+
+Charlotte stared at her with puzzled eyes.  "You _are_ queer," she
+remarked reflectively.  "You _are_ queer, Sheila.  Theodore Kent always
+said so, and he was right.  I wonder what he'll think of you when he
+gets back from college."
+
+But Sheila, who had blushed painfully at the suggestion of a lover who
+did not exist, heard Ted's name without a flush or a tremor; and in
+despair of any conversation about dress or beaux, the guest presently
+took her departure.
+
+A few days later Charlotte went back to her city school for further
+"finishing," though she had already been sharpened and polished to a
+bewildering edge and brilliancy.  And left to herself, Sheila resumed
+her unsophisticated, girlish life.
+
+"We aren't going to have any young ladies at our house after all,
+Peter," Mrs. Caldwell announced triumphantly over her teacup one
+afternoon.
+
+And Peter, lounging on the leafy veranda and appreciatively sipping
+Mrs. Caldwell's fragrant amber brew, lifted a languidly interested
+face: "How are you going to stop time for Sheila?  Of course you've
+done it for yourself, but not even you, fairy godmother, can do that
+for other people."
+
+"I don't intend to try.  I don't want to try.  Because--when my little
+girl goes--it's time that will bring me some one better."
+
+"The young lady, dear Mrs. Caldwell.  The young lady--inevitably."
+
+"No, Peter--the woman!"  And Mrs. Caldwell's voice rang with pride and
+confidence.  "There's the making of one in Sheila, Peter--of a real
+woman!"
+
+"What's become of the poet you used to see in her?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, you've shut that safely into a cage of books.  I'm not afraid of
+it any more."
+
+"It can still sing behind the bars, you know," he warned her.
+
+"No," she said, growing serious again, "it wouldn't--in Sheila's case.
+At least it wouldn't unless it got into just the right cage, hung in
+the sunshine and the south wind.  That's what I'm afraid of,
+Peter--that Sheila herself will be snared into the wrong cage!"
+
+But even while Mrs. Caldwell spoke, Sheila was standing at the open
+door of the right cage, gazing in with illumined eyes.
+
+The spring was at its height, as warm and ripely blooming as early
+summer, and Sheila had slipped away to her favorite haunt of the back
+garden.  She had taken a book with her, one of Peter's recommendation,
+and as she lay on the soft, fresh grass, she idly turned the pages, not
+from any desire to read, but for the pleasure of touching the leaves
+and knowing that, if she liked, she had only to look within for words
+that would create a fairyland as easily as the fingers of the spring
+had done.
+
+But presently, sated with mere earth-sweetness, she lifted herself on
+her elbow and opened the book widely where her hand had finally rested.
+It was the choice of chance, that page; but, as happens every now and
+then, chance and the Shaping Power were at that moment one.  For
+shining on the white leaf, as if written in silver, were the lines that
+have stirred every potential poet to rapture and self-knowledge:
+
+  --magic casements opening on the foam
+  Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
+
+
+Sheila read them with no fore-warning of their moving music.  They
+flashed, winged, into her tranquil world--and shook it to its
+foundations.  For the first time the full sense of beauty rushed upon
+her, and she caught her breath with the keen, aching ecstasy of it:
+
+  --magic casements opening on the foam
+  Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
+
+
+She read the lines again, and now aloud, softly, with a beauty-broken
+breath.  She had wanted something, and all the while this--_this_--had
+been waiting for her.  Compared to the joy of it, what was the joy of
+looking into a mirror and finding oneself fair?  What was any other
+beauty beside this beauty of words, of subtle harmony and exquisite
+imagery?
+
+And then there came to her the thought that some one--some one just
+human like herself--yes, human and young--had written these lines, had
+drawn them from the treasure house of himself.
+
+"Oh," she whispered, "how happy he must have been!  How happy!  To have
+written this!  If I had done it----"
+
+She paused and sat up straight and still, the book falling unheeded
+from her hand.  Slowly her eyes widened, filled first with light and
+then with tears.
+
+"If I had written this!  If I could write _anything_!"
+
+And suddenly, for that moment and for life, she knew!
+
+"_That_ is what I want--to _write_!--to _make_ something beautiful!"
+
+And then her guardian angel should have pushed her into the cage and
+fastened its door.  For the sun was shining and the south wind was
+blowing--and it was the right cage!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+One September afternoon, Peter lingered in his class-room after his
+duties were done and his pupils had departed.  He usually lost no time
+in shaking the dust of academic toil from his feet--and from his
+mind--but to-day an unwonted longing for some steadying purpose, some
+_raison d'etre_, made him remain to dally with the tools of his
+occupation, perhaps in a wistful hope that he might discover a hitherto
+unsuspected charm in the teaching of rhetoric to reluctant young girls.
+
+"If they only cared," he thought, "if they only cared a little for the
+English language, it wouldn't be such a deadly grind to teach I them.
+But _they'll_ never 'contend for the shade of a world.'  It's just a
+dull necessity to them--this business of learning how to use their
+mother tongue--except, of course, to Sheila.  And next year she won't
+be here to help me endure it.  Oh, how I wish I could get away--to
+something better, something bigger!"
+
+But with the wish, there came to him also the certainty of its
+futility.  He wouldn't get away; the next year, and the year following,
+and the year after that would find him still at his uninspiring post in
+the Shadyville Seminary, teaching bored pupils the properties of
+speech, and inwardly cursing himself for doing it.
+
+For Peter knew that he would always be the victim of his own laziness;
+that every impulse toward a broader life and its achievements would be
+checked and overcome by what he termed his "vast inertia."  In spite of
+his mental capacity, his social gifts, his assets of birth and
+excellent appearance, he would go through all his years without
+attaining either honors or profits--merely because, in his
+unconquerable languor, he would not exert himself to the extent of
+reaching out his hand for them.
+
+He taught in the seminary because he must; because, otherwise, his
+bread would go unbuttered, or rather, there would be no bread to
+butter.  For he was the last of a family whose fortune had been their
+"blood" and their brains, and not their material possessions.  Nothing
+had been left to him but the prestige of his birth and his inherited
+intellect, and the connections which they opened to him.  And these
+connections were rosebuds for him to wear in his buttonhole rather than
+beefsteak to swell his waistcoat.  They entitled him to lead a
+cotillion, but not to direct a bank.
+
+His natural parts, as he fully realized, would at any time have secured
+a career to him, if he had had the industry to use them assiduously.  A
+little enterprise, a little initiative would long since have despatched
+him to the opportunities and successes of a city.  But, always defeated
+by the "inertia" which he regarded as a fatal malady of his
+temperament--and also, perhaps, by a native distaste for the vulgar
+scramble and unsavory methods of the modern business world--his fine
+intelligence wasted itself in small tasks and his ambitions dissolved
+like dream-stuff in the somnolent atmosphere of Shadyville.
+
+The only success available to him under such conditions was an
+advantageous marriage.  This he could more than once have accomplished,
+for it cost him no effort to practice the abilities of the lover, and
+he had, indeed, a reputation for gallantry that invested him with a
+dangerous glamour as a suitor.  But here he was thwarted each time by a
+quality that dominated him as ruthlessly to his undoing as did his
+laziness--and this quality was fastidiousness.  For him only the
+exquisite was good enough.  He wanted a woman with a face like an angel
+or a flower, and a soul to match it.  And this the eligible girl had
+never had.  So, although he had several times reached the verge of a
+leap into matrimonial prosperity, he had always drawn back before the
+crucial moment.  A laugh--just a note too broad and loud--had once
+restrained him from the easy capture of half a million.  He could not
+live with a woman who laughed like that, he told himself!
+
+And on the other hand, though marriage appealed to him, he could not
+accept the exquisite in poverty.  A few years before, he had spent a
+summer in courting a girl whose profile had enchanted him.  In
+imagination he saw it always against a background of dull gold--the
+pure, slender throat; the sweet, round chin; the delicate, proud lip
+and nostril; the dreaming eye.  But in fact, there was no background of
+gold, dull or otherwise; and when Peter reflected on the size of his
+salary and the shifts to which poverty must needs resort--the shabby
+clothes, the domestic sordidness, the devastating finger-marks of
+weariness and anxiety upon even the fairest face--his courage failed
+him, and he surrendered the profile to one who could give her a
+Kentucky stock farm, a town house in New York and a box at the opera
+there.
+
+After that episode, he resigned his hope of romance.  Fate was perverse
+and offered him impossible combinations, and he had not the energy to
+seek and seize for himself.  So love, like the other big prizes of
+life, eluded him, and at thirty-three he was a confirmed bachelor as
+well as a professional idler.  He still pursued the graceful, aimless
+flirtations that are the small change of intercourse at dances and
+dinners--just as he still read Theocritus--but neither his heart nor
+his mind engaged in any more serious endeavor.
+
+And yet, every now and then, he felt a faint desire for something more,
+for something that should not be a pastime, nor a mere bread-and-butter
+chore--something that would demand and exhaust the best of him and give
+him in return the pride of work worth the doing and doing well.
+
+This afternoon the desire was more than usually persistent, and it had
+held him at his desk long after school hours were over, fingering his
+pen and ink bottle, glancing through the weekly essays which had that
+day been handed in for criticism, and turning the leaves of a history
+of English literature with which he had vainly striven to awake
+enthusiasm in the minds of his class.
+
+The school-room was a pleasant place, as school-rooms go.  There were
+potted plants on the window sills and a few good engravings on the
+walls, and the afternoon sunshine was streaming gaily in.  But to Peter
+the room was the disillusioning scene of unwilling labors--both on the
+part of his pupils and himself--and its chalky atmosphere was heavy and
+depressing.
+
+"What's the use of pretending that _this_ is a 'life-work'--a 'noble
+profession'?" he muttered, after his casual examination of a
+particularly discouraging essay.  "They don't _want_ to learn.  They
+only want to get through and away.  After Sheila graduates, I'll he
+without a single responsive pupil.  For I won't get another like
+her--not in years, and probably never.  Why don't I chuck it all?  Why
+_don't_ I go away?  There's nothing to _stay_ for!  But my confounded
+antipathy to a tussle in the hurly-burly of my fellow-men----"
+
+At that moment a tap sounded upon the door panel.
+
+"Come in," called Peter carelessly, supposing that a pupil had returned
+for some forgotten possession.  And he did not even look around until
+an amused voice inquired: "So absorbed, Professor Peter?"  Then he
+turned to see Mrs. Caldwell, an old-fashioned picture in silvery gray,
+smiling at him from the doorway.
+
+"I've come for a serious talk," said she, when he had seated her beside
+the sunniest window and established himself close by.
+
+"Well," he answered ruefully, "you've come to the right place and the
+right person.  I was just considering--in these scholarly
+surroundings--how I am wasting my life!"
+
+"Really?"  And she beamed on him hopefully.  "Because that's the
+beginning of better things.  You _could_ amount to so much, Peter!"
+
+But he shook his head: "Not here.  And I'm too lazy to leave
+Shadyville."
+
+"Why not here?  I don't want you to leave Shadyville.  I can't do
+without you!  But I want you to do something splendid here.  Peter, why
+don't you write a book?"
+
+He laughed: "Dear Mrs. Caldwell, to write a book requires more than the
+determination or the wish to write one."
+
+"Genius?"
+
+"Not necessarily.  But at least a special kind of ability.  The divine
+fire has never burned on my hearth--not even a tiny spark of it!"
+
+"Then you think it's rather a great thing to be able to write?"
+
+"I do indeed!"  And the reverence of the book-lover thrilled through
+his tone.
+
+"I'm glad you feel that way about writers, Peter," she remarked archly,
+"because--we have one up at our house."  And she extended a note-book
+to him, a thin, paper-backed book such as his class used for
+compositions.
+
+"You mean--Sheila?"  For he had expected this.
+
+"Yes.  It's happened!--as I told you it would."  And her voice was very
+grave now.
+
+He opened the book--and discovered that Sheila's efforts were poems.
+"I'll read them to-night," he said cautiously.
+
+But Mrs. Caldwell would not let him escape so easily: "No, Peter,
+please.  If you have the time, read them now.  There are only a few,
+and I can't go home without a message from you about them.  Sheila's
+waiting up there--and she's simply tense!"
+
+"Then she knows you've brought them to me?"
+
+"Of course.  Do you think I'd have done it without her permission?
+Peter, don't neglect your manners with your grandchildren."
+
+"I deserve the rebuke, Mrs. Caldwell.  But if Sheila wants me to see
+her poems, why hasn't she brought them to me herself?"
+
+"Too shy!  Peter, poets are _very_ sensitive.  It's an awful thing to
+have one in your family!"
+
+"Oh, you won't find it so bad."
+
+"Yes, I shall.  I always told you it would happen.  And I always told
+you, too, that I couldn't cope with such a--calamity."
+
+"Well, there's still hope that this may be a case of 'sweet sixteen'
+instead of genius.  I'll take a peep and give you a verdict."
+
+"She's a _poet_," insisted Mrs. Caldwell, obstinately convinced of the
+worst.  And she fixed her eyes on Peter's face, as he read, with an
+eagerness that, save for her lamentations, might have seemed anxiety to
+have her opinion confirmed.
+
+Presently Peter chuckled.
+
+"What are you laughing at, Peter?"
+
+"Have you read the 'Ode to the Evening Star'?"
+
+"Yes, I've read them all."
+
+"Well, then----"
+
+"Well, then--_what_?"
+
+"You know why I'm laughing."
+
+"You think it's _funny_?"  And there was an unmistakable note of
+indignation in the question.
+
+"Of course I think it's funny!  Don't you?"
+
+There was no reply, and Peter looked up from the note-book.  "_Don't_
+you think it's funny?" he repeated.  And then he stared at her.  Her
+cheeks were pink with excitement, her eyes were glittering with angry
+tears.  "Why, I thought--" he began.
+
+But she interrupted him: "I certainly don't think it's funny.  I think
+it's a _lovely_ poem!  I think they're _all_ lovely poems!  I expected
+you to appreciate them, but as you don't--"  And she put out a
+peremptory hand for the book.  But as Peter continued to stare at her,
+she perceived his amusement, and her resentment gave way to mirth.
+
+"Oh, Peter, do forgive me for being cross to you, but you see----"
+
+"I see that you're proud of these poems!" he exclaimed, his own eyes
+twinkling merrily.
+
+"Yes," she admitted, "I am proud of them.  I really do think they're
+the loveliest poems ever written!"  And she met his laughing gaze quite
+shamelessly.
+
+"And you're glad--yes, _glad_--that she's turned out a poet!" he
+accused.
+
+"Yes," confessed Mrs. Caldwell again, "I'm glad!"  And she leaned
+earnestly toward him: "_Oh, Peter, isn't she wonderful_?"
+
+But Peter regarded her severely.  "Ah, the deceit of woman!  And I
+believed you when you claimed to be distressed!  I sympathized with
+you!"
+
+But Mrs. Caldwell was not to be abashed: "I've been a shocking
+hypocrite, haven't I?  But you're so clever, Peter, that I expected you
+to see through me."
+
+"I trusted you!" he mourned.
+
+"Oh, Peter!  Peter!  That's the way a man always seeks to excuse his
+stupidity when a woman gets the best of him!  But you can trust my
+sincerity now.  And you can sympathize with me if Sheila's _not_ a
+poet.  You seem to doubt her being one!"
+
+"She isn't a poet--yet.  She may become one.  I can't tell about that.
+What I am sure of is that she has a remarkable mind--as I told you long
+ago.  She has things to express, and evidently the time has come when
+she wants to express them.  That's the hopeful point."
+
+"Then she is promising--for all your laughter?"
+
+"Indeed she is!  These poems are funny--but every now and then there's
+a flash of light through them.  Mrs. Caldwell, I believe in the
+_light_.  I don't know what Sheila will do with it, but it's there--and
+it's wonderful!"
+
+The tears were in Mrs. Caldwell's eyes again, not the bright tears of
+anger, but the soft mist that rises from a heart profoundly moved.  As
+Peter spoke, the drops overflowed and rolled slowly down her cheeks,
+but she was unconscious of them.  "You don't know what this means to
+me!" she said.
+
+"I didn't know you would feel like this about it.  You deceived me so
+thoroughly!  But now I wonder why I didn't realize, in spite of all
+your protestations, that you'd care just this deeply.  I should have
+understood what things of the mind are to you--you were my
+grandfather's friend!"
+
+"Yes, I was your grandfather's friend.  And he was a marvellous man,
+Peter.  It's the proudest thing I can say of myself--that I was his
+friend."  Then, quickly, as if she had closed a treasure box, she
+turned from the subject of her old friendship--which Peter knew might
+have been more--to that of Sheila.
+
+"What shall I do with my poet, Peter?  I'm as much afraid of her as I
+said I should be--and as unfit to help her."
+
+"Let me help her!  Will you let me train her?"
+
+"Oh, my dear, I hoped you'd ask to do it!"
+
+"Then it's a bargain--not only for the present, but for the
+future--after she graduates--as long as she needs me?"
+
+Mrs. Caldwell flashed a keen glance at him: "As long as you will,
+Peter!  I'll trust her to you gratefully."
+
+But if there was any deeper significance in her words than her
+acceptance of the present compact, Peter failed to catch it.  As he
+stood in the seminary doorway a few moments later, watching Mrs.
+Caldwell's retreating figure up the shady street, there came to him,
+however, a sense of having something to work for at last.
+
+"What was it Mrs. Caldwell once said?" he murmured to himself.  "That
+she wasn't wise enough to 'trim the wick of a star'?  Yes, that was it.
+Well," he added whimsically, "I don't suppose I'm fit for the job
+either, but I'm going to undertake it.  It'll be worth while staying
+here--it'll be worth while living--if I can trim the wick of a star and
+help it to shine!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+There was nothing spectacular or startlingly precocious about Sheila's
+development during the next few years.
+
+On her seventeenth birthday, her frocks were lowered to her slender
+ankles; on her eighteenth, she permanently assumed the dignity of full
+length skirts; on her nineteenth, she lifted her hair from its soft,
+girlish knot on her neck to a womanly coronet upon the top of her head.
+But despite her regal coiffure, she remained very much of a child.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell had achieved the apparently impossible; she had
+eliminated the role of the "young lady" from Sheila's _repertoire_.  At
+nineteen the girl was ready, at the touch of fate, to merge the child
+in the woman; but there was nothing of the conventional young lady
+about her, though she led the same life as other girls in Shadyville, a
+life that abounded in parties---in town through the winter and at the
+country houses in the summer--and little sex vanities and love affairs.
+
+Sheila herself had never had a love affair.  She was a charming young
+person--not quite pretty, but more alluring in her shy, wistful
+fashion, than handsomer girls--so it followed that susceptible youths
+sued for her favor.  But they sued in vain.  She smiled upon them until
+they said some word of love, and then she was on the wing like a wild
+bird.
+
+Whatever ardor there was in her she had expended thus far upon her
+ambition to write.  Under Peter's restraining tutelage, she had long
+since foresworn odes to the evening star for prose fantasies, and these
+were in turn being superseded by what promised to become a clean-cut,
+brilliant gift for narrative.  She had a rich imagination, an unusual
+facility for characterization, a certain quaint, whimsical humor--that
+she never displayed in her speech; all of which raised her work, crude
+though it still was, distinctly above the level of the commonplace.
+
+She had recently sold a little sketch, in her later and better manner,
+to an eastern magazine with a keen eye for young talent, and the event
+had been to her as truly the pinnacle of romance as a betrothal would
+have been to another girl.  It had shed a veritable glory over life for
+her, and all her dreams were now of further triumphs, of approving
+editors and an applauding public.  She would be a famous woman, she
+told herself, with the naive assurance of youth.  That was her destiny!
+
+So it was small wonder, after all, that Shadyville lads had not induced
+her to regard them seriously.  She would marry some time, of course.
+Everyone married--at least in Shadyville, where the elemental
+simplicities of existence prevailed for very lack of its complexities.
+There was really nothing to do in Shadyville except to participate, in
+one capacity or another, in birth, marriage and death.  Sheila
+therefore considered marriage an inescapable end, but she thought very
+little about it along the way thither.
+
+And yet, when the hour of sex romance finally struck for Sheila, when,
+for the first time, she realized love's moving power and beauty, her
+surrender to it was tenfold quicker and more unquestioning than would
+have been that of a girl who had dallied with sentiment from the days
+of her short frocks.  Her very years of indifference were her undoing.
+Owing to them, love came to her with the shock of an instant and
+supreme revelation; she who had been blind suddenly beheld a whole
+undreamed of world, as it were, and the vastness of the vision
+inevitably dazed her to a degree that made clear perception of it
+impossible.
+
+Perhaps Sheila would have been less ingenuously innocent, and more
+effectually prepared for this crisis, had Charlotte Davis been at hand
+during the formative period of her girlhood.  But Charlotte had been
+traveling in Europe for a couple of years, and her letters--clever,
+witty, worldly-wise--were too infrequent to equip Sheila for the
+defense of her heart.  So she went forward--profoundly unconscious,
+pitifully unready--to capture.
+
+She was nineteen years old, and the season was summer, and the moon was
+shining--when it began.  And summer is an opulent thing in Kentucky; a
+blue and golden thing by day; a thing of white witchery by night; and
+whether in the burnished glamour of the sun, or the pallid glamour of
+the moon, too sweet, too full-blooded, too poignant with the forces and
+the purposes of nature to leave the pulse unstirred.
+
+Sheila, restless with this earth-magic, was standing at the garden gate
+one evening, when a young man came up and paused, smiling, before her.
+At first glance, and in the uncertain moonlight, she thought him a
+stranger, but a second look revealed his sturdy identity.
+
+"Why, _Ted_!"
+
+And Ted he was; a Ted grown to a fine, vigorous manliness--the
+manliness of a thoroughly healthy body and a cheerful, literal mind.
+It was obvious at once that there was not a subtlety in him; that, in
+his early maturity, he was of the same substantial quality that he had
+been as a child.
+
+Sheila had not seen him for a long time--as time is measured at
+nineteen--for during his first year at college, his family had removed
+to Lexington, and neither they nor he had ever returned.  But it seemed
+as natural to her to have him there as if they had parted only
+yesterday, as natural to have him, and as natural to admire him.  She
+had admired him devoutly when she was a little girl, though she had
+sometimes had disconcerting glimpses of his limitations.  And she
+admired him now.  Instantly she felt that splendid, radiant materialism
+of his as a charm.
+
+She walked up the path to the house at his side, in a flutter of
+girlish delight--all sex, all softness, the weaker, the submissive
+creature.  So he had dominated her in the past--except in her rare,
+"queer" moments when the wings of her quick fancy had lifted her on
+some flight beyond his reach.  Her wings did not lift her now, however;
+they were folded so meekly against her shoulders that they might as
+well not have been there at all.
+
+They sat down on the veranda together, and a climbing rose shook down a
+shower of night fragrance upon them, and the moonlight streamed over
+their faces as if with the intent to glorify each to the other.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell was playing whist at the house next door, so Sheila and
+Ted were there alone, save for the cook's tuneful presence in the
+kitchen.  Her song floated out to them in her warm, caressing negro
+voice--"Weep no mo', my lady!  Oh, weep no mo' to-day!"  And suddenly
+Sheila felt that she would never weep again--life was such a joyous
+thing!
+
+Ted sat on a step at her feet, and he leaned his head back against a
+pillar of the veranda as he talked.  She noticed how crisp and strong
+his fair hair was, and the sense of his vitality weighed upon her like
+a compelling hand.
+
+He was telling her what had brought him back.  The editorship of the
+_Shadyville Star_, the town's semi-weekly paper--the editorship and
+part ownership in fact--was open to him, and, alert as ever, he was
+seizing the opportunity.
+
+"It's a chance--a good chance--to go into the newspaper game as my own
+boss, or as part proprietor anyhow," he explained.  "Mr. Orcutt is
+making the _Star_ into a daily, and he wants a live man--a young
+man--to take charge of it.  Father's let me have a couple of thousand
+dollars, and I've borrowed three thousand more, and I'm going in with
+Mr. Orcutt as a partner.  It's a big thing for me if I can pull it
+through.  And I _will_ pull it through.  I was editor of our college
+magazine, and I've worked on one or another of the Louisville papers
+every summer, so I know a little about the game--and I like it
+tremendously.  Oh, I'll succeed all right!"
+
+"Of course you will!" she agreed heartily.  At the mere sound of his
+bright, confident voice she believed in his ability to succeed in
+anything whatever.
+
+"Yes, of course I will.  And it's nice to have _you_ say so.  The only
+question about it," he pursued, "is whether it's a big _enough_
+opportunity for me.  But I'll _make_ it big enough.  I'll make the
+paper grow--and the paper will make the town grow.  See?  All
+Shadyville needs is enterprise--enterprise and advertising."
+
+"Yes," she agreed again.  An hour earlier she would have been ready to
+protect Shadyville's sacred precincts from the vandals of "enterprise"
+and "advertising" with her own slim fist, but here she was handing over
+the keys of the town to modern commercialism without a qualm of
+hesitation.  "_You're_ just what Shadyville needs, Ted," she added
+earnestly.
+
+"I thought you'd feel that way about it!"  And his voice was exultant.
+"You always were a good pal, Sheila!"
+
+And at the tribute Sheila had a swift conception of woman's mission as
+the perfect comrade.  Oh, that was a mission to thrill and inspire one,
+to move one to high and selfless endeavor!  And she dedicated herself,
+in the secrecy of her own mind, to the cause of Ted and the _Shadyville
+Star_.
+
+Throughout the next few weeks she was, indeed, the perfect comrade.
+She who had never before been interested in the spectacle of actual,
+contemporary life, flung herself now, with a fervor which not even her
+personal ambitions had excited, into the business of life's presentment
+through the daily press, and in particular through the medium of the
+_Shadyville Star_.  She read newspapers avidly; she suggested subjects
+for editorials to Ted; she came down to the office of the _Shadyville
+Daily Star_--under Mrs. Caldwell's reluctant chaperonage--to see the
+linotype machine which had been installed in honor of Ted's reign.  She
+even read proof on the tumultuous day which preceded the transformed
+_Star's_ first appearance.
+
+Peter watched her in amazement.  "But I thought newspapers bored you!"
+he exclaimed one afternoon when, coming to read his beloved Theocritus
+with her, he found Sheila immersed in a whirlwind of New York papers,
+from which she was industriously clipping items for reprint in the
+_Star_.
+
+"Oh," she cried, in the rapturous voice of the devotee, "I didn't
+understand how wonderful newspaper work could be!  Why, Peter--I've got
+my finger on the pulse of the world!"
+
+At which Peter put his Theocritus back into the safety of his pocket
+lest even its tranquil spirit be corrupted by the fever of journalism.
+
+To Ted Sheila's magnificent energy in his behalf, her unflagging
+comprehension and sympathy, were steps by which he mounted blithely to
+his goal.  How _could_ he fail with Sheila to stimulate him, to assist
+him, to believe in him?
+
+And indeed, the _Star_ did reward the efforts of both its new editor
+and his silent partner.  It made a triumphant debut, and it continued
+daily to fulfill the expectations which that debut had aroused.
+
+Toward the end of the summer, Ted at last drew a breath of complete
+security.  He was on Mrs. Caldwell's veranda at the time, and he and
+Sheila were alone together.  It was just such a night as the first one
+of his return to Shadyville; the moonlight poured prodigally downward
+upon them, showing to each the other's face, silver-clear; the scent of
+the climbing roses stole to them on the light wind; from kitchenward
+came the soft notes of black Mandy's song as she finished her evening
+tasks--"Weep no mo', my lady!"
+
+Everything was as it had been on that first night two months
+before--and yet everything was different.  Within those two months Ted
+had proved himself as a man--a man who could do his chosen work.  And
+Sheila--Ah, what had she not taught him--what had she not taught
+herself--of the woman's part in a man's work--a man's life?  The same?
+No, everything was different!
+
+Ted was sitting at Sheila's feet, in what had become his accustomed
+place.  He glanced up at her, sweet and serene in the moonlight, and
+something rose within him as resistlessly as a mighty tide.
+
+"I'm winning!" he said triumphantly, "I'm winning!  But I couldn't have
+done it without you.  Oh, Sheila, you've been the making of me!  What a
+girl you are!--what a woman!  _You'd_ always back a man up in his
+undertakings--if you loved him--wouldn't you?"
+
+"Oh--if I loved him!--"  And she looked past him with dreamy eyes.  She
+had never looked like that before, though love had been named to her by
+others and in more persuasive language.  To back up a man in his
+undertakings--because she loved him--  Why, that would be _life_!
+
+Ted had never had the superfine discernment of natures more delicately
+wrought than his, but he had the discernment of sex--as all young and
+healthy creatures have.  He saw her dreaming look, and he knew
+something of the kindred thought.
+
+"Sheila"--and his voice was less sure and bold--"Sheila, have you ever
+been in love?  Is there--anybody else?"
+
+"No," she answered simply.  And she drew her gaze down from the stars
+to his upturned face.  That which was in her eyes made him catch his
+breath and close his own for an instant; but she was unaware of the
+shining thing he had seen--the soul, not only of one woman, just
+awakening, but of all womanhood, at once innocent and passionate, brave
+and piteous.  He had not needed any subtlety to perceive that--so frank
+and beautiful was its betrayal.
+
+"Sheila"--and he fixed his eyes upon her now--"Sheila, maybe the town
+does need me--as you said when I first came back.  I'll do my best to
+make it need me.  Because--because I want to earn the right to a home.
+I want to be able to--marry!"
+
+"To--_marry_?" she whispered.
+
+He leaned forward and laid his hands upon her wrists--importunate hands
+that sent the blood swirling through her veins.
+
+"Oh, Sheila--don't you understand?  _I_ need _you_!"
+
+For a moment the world swayed around her.  Her heart was beating, not
+in her bosom, but in her throat--up, up to her dry and quivering lips.
+To back up a man in his undertakings--because she loved him!--that was
+what Ted was asking her to do for him--to do for him always.  Yes--and
+that was life!
+
+Then, slowly, the world grew still once more; the night wind blew down
+the fragrance of climbing roses; again she heard the familiar
+refrain--"Weep no mo', my lady!  Oh, weep no mo' to-day!"--and now it
+seemed tender with the tenderness of insistent and protective love.
+
+And all the while Ted's hands were on her wrists, silently imploring.
+This was life!  Oh, she would never weep again--never again in her joy!
+
+"Sheila?"
+
+She bent toward him--as irresistibly as the rose above her head was
+drawn to the wind--and smiled.
+
+"Oh, Sheila!--_when you look at me like that_!"
+
+And then Ted's face was against her breast, his arms around her.  She
+would never weep again--for _this_ was _life_!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Sheila had been married several months before she ceased to expect a
+miracle.
+
+She had believed that moment of high rapture when, with Ted's face
+hidden against her breast, she had seemed to grasp life itself in her
+ardent young hands, to be but the forerunner of greater moments--of
+raptures and fulfillments compared to which the first awakening would
+appear no more than a pale shadow of joy.
+
+Marriage, in some way mysterious and beautiful, would surely alter the
+world for her; nay, more, would transmute her own nature into something
+stronger, richer, happier, a wedded nature, wedded in its lightest
+moods, its deepest fastnesses.  She would wear Ted's ring upon her very
+soul, and her soul would thereby be changed and glorified.
+
+Other wives--all wives, indeed, who marry at the dictates of their
+hearts--expect as much.  It is the way of women to dream and hope above
+the earth's level, and now and then, in a rarely perfect mating or in
+motherhood, their dreams come true.  But oftenest they wait as Sheila
+waited--unrewarded.  And after awhile they return contentedly to the
+lowland of everyday reality--where many paths are pleasant and their
+fellow travelers, though not knights errant, are usually faithful and
+kind.
+
+This, after a few months, Sheila did, too.  By that time she had begun
+to regard the first moment of acknowledged love as unique, one from
+which she had no right to ask more than itself.  It was enough to have
+had it.  It _had_ been life--of that she was still convinced--but life
+at its high tide.  And the very existence of every day--of tranquil
+affection and homely duty--was none the less life, too, and good after
+its own fashion.
+
+So, missing the miracle, she set to work to discover a miracle in what
+she had; to find exquisite meanings in the fire upon her wedded hearth
+while her wedded soul remained cold and virginal.  And she had the
+better chance to warm herself beside that fire because it never
+occurred to her that Ted might be in the least responsible for its
+limitations.
+
+About her choice of a husband--or rather, her acceptance of the husband
+whom fate had chosen for her--she had no misgivings.
+
+"Oh, Sheila, are you sure?"  Mrs. Caldwell had inquired again and again
+in that heart-searching hour which had preceded her sanction of the
+engagement.  "Are you _sure_?"
+
+And Sheila had been sure, triumphantly sure.  Even then, with the
+girl's rhapsodies ringing in her ears, Mrs. Caldwell had insisted upon
+an engagement of six months--"To give the child an opportunity to break
+it," she had confided to Peter.  But the delay had proved unnecessary.
+At the end of the period imposed Sheila had been as sure as ever, and
+she was sure still.  Ted loved her.  Ted needed her.  Of course he was
+the right man for her!
+
+If she had thought to receive more than marriage had given her, the
+fault was hers, she loyally decided.  She had always anticipated
+miracles.  She had always seen life as an enchanting fairy tale, with a
+marvellous climax hidden somewhere in the chapters yet unread.  But
+life wasn't a fairy tale; it was merely a bit of cheerful realism, with
+a happy, commonplace climax in accord with realistic standards.  It
+hadn't been fair to demand princes and palaces and winged delights of a
+bit of realism!  She knew now that her expectations had been childish
+and absurd; that she had asked for more than life had to give; that the
+joys of this world were simple, home-abiding things, without the wings
+for heavenly flights.  Not even love itself was winged, and it was
+better so--for thus she need not fear lest it fly away as winged things
+are wont to do.  She had prayed for ecstasy--which, at best, is
+fleeting.  Instead she had been granted a safe and quiet happiness.
+Was not destiny wiser than she?
+
+But though she reconciled herself to the realities of life and of
+marriage, she could not reconcile herself to her own unchanged spirit.
+She had looked to find Sheila Kent a new being, serene, complete--and
+Sheila Kent was neither.
+
+"I'm just myself!" she admitted at last, when neither faith nor desire
+had availed to transform the fiber of her soul.  "I'm just myself
+still.  Ted used to think me a queer little girl--and I'm the same
+queer self now.  Other married girls are satisfied with their husbands
+and their houses and--their babies--and I believed I would be, too.
+But I'm not.  Marriage hasn't made me over--and it isn't enough for me.
+I want something wonderful--I want to _do_ something wonderful.  I
+want--why, I want to _write_!"
+
+It seemed a solution of her perplexity--the conclusion that she still
+wanted to write--and she seized upon it with reviving fervor.  Her
+gift, singling her out from other girls, was the explanation of those
+unconquered spaces in her soul, spaces never destined for the foot of
+any man, however dear.  Genius, she had heard, was always celibate, and
+her genius, or talent, lived on in her inviolate, a thing yet to be
+reckoned with, yet to be appeased.
+
+She had not written during her engagement, nor since her marriage.  Not
+that she had deliberately renounced her ambitions, but that her days
+had been crowded with other things, with things that, for the time, she
+thought more vital.  Peter had remonstrated with her once or twice, but
+to no avail, and when she went from the flurry of trousseau and wedding
+to the more serious business of keeping house in the traditional
+vine-clad cottage--Mrs. Caldwell having persisted in the wisdom of
+separate establishments--he no longer protested at all.  An industrious
+young housekeeper and a blooming wife was obviously not to be condoled
+with over thwarted aspirations.  So certain unfinished manuscripts lay
+forgotten in the bottom of Sheila's bridal trunk--forgotten, or at
+least ignored--until the day when she fixed on them as the reason of
+her vague discontent.  Then she brought them forth with an eagerness
+that was, perhaps, the best answer to her self-analysis.  Of course she
+had wanted to write; without knowing it, she must have wanted, for
+months, to write!  Oh, life _wasn't_ a bit of dull realism!  It was a
+fairy tale after all--a fairy tale of poems and novels, of gracious
+publishers and an appreciative public!
+
+She had never talked to Ted about her writing.  Somehow she had always
+been absorbed in his work, his ambitions.  He had all the initiative
+and enterprise that Shadyville, prior to his arrival, had lacked, and
+his labors and successes had consumed not only his own time and
+thoughts, but Sheila's as well.  She admired his energy; she was
+dazzled by the juggleries of his mediocre cleverness; she was proud to
+help him.  Like a strong, fresh wind he filled her world--and,
+incidentally, he was a wind that blew away all the delicate cobwebs,
+the gossamer filaments of her finer gift.
+
+But now, for the first time since Ted's return to Shadyville, Sheila's
+individuality rose up within her and claimed something for itself.  She
+had wanted to write--and she _would_ write.  There was no reason why
+she should not.  Women, nowadays, were wives and artists also.  Married
+women had "careers" as often as the unmarried.  In short, fame was
+still hers to conquer!
+
+She set about conquering it at once--that was Sheila's way--and when,
+in the middle of a busy morning, some one tapped imperiously on her
+closed door, she went to answer the summons with an inky finger and
+dream-laden eyes.  But she opened the door to a vision that dispelled
+dreams by its more charming substance--a young woman whose smart,
+slender figure was clothed in a mode that had not yet reached
+Shadyville, and whose alert and smiling face seemed as unrelated as her
+garments to the sleepy little provincial town.
+
+"Charlotte!"
+
+"Yes," said the vision gaily, "yes--_Mrs. Theodore Kent_!"
+
+And then the two girls were in each other's arms, laughing and
+chattering, and weeping a little, too, after the manner of
+girls--especially when there has been marriage and giving in marriage
+since their last meeting.
+
+They had not seen each other for more than three years, for although
+Charlotte had been in America several times during that period, she had
+merely joined her family in New York for brief reunions, and had then
+hastened back to Paris where she was studying singing.  They looked at
+each other curiously after that first embrace, and, when they were
+seated in Sheila's sunny sitting-room, they fell at once into
+confidences covering those three separated years.  It was Charlotte, of
+course, who had food for conversation, but Sheila, as the bride, was
+the heroine of the occasion, even to Charlotte's broader mind.
+Marriage may not fulfill the ideals of high romance, but it can always
+cast a halo.
+
+"Well," said Charlotte at last, when she had heard the tale of Ted's
+perfections and achievements, "well, I'll wait and see what you two
+make of it before I give up my liberty."
+
+"You wouldn't be giving up your liberty if you married the man you
+loved," protested Sheila staunchly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that!  Suppose I married a man who resented my
+music?"
+
+"But he wouldn't--if he loved you!"
+
+"Oh!  Then Ted doesn't mind your writing?"
+
+"Of course not!" Sheila assured her.  "Why, I was writing when you
+came!"  And she held up the inky finger.
+
+Charlotte surveyed the finger with evident respect: "That's right!  I'm
+glad you aren't going to be submerged by marriage.  I was afraid you
+might be.  And really, Sheila, you have talent.  The 'F---- Monthly'
+would never have taken that story of yours if it hadn't been
+exceptionally good.  I know Mr. Bennett, the associate editor, and his
+standards----"
+
+"You _know_ Mr. Bennett?" interrupted Sheila.  And her tone was
+reverent.
+
+"Yes," said Charlotte carelessly.  "I know a lot of writing folks in
+New York.  In fact I've brought one of them home with me--Alice North,
+the novelist.  Maybe you've read something of hers?"
+
+"_Something_?  Why, I've read everything of hers I could lay my hands
+on!  Oh, Charlotte, I _adore_ her!"
+
+"So do I," laughed Charlotte, "not her books, but her.  She writes very
+well, but she's more interesting than her stories.  Now, Sheila, I'll
+tell you what you must do--you must let me have some of your things to
+show her!  She could be such a help to you if she found you worth the
+trouble.  Let me have a story or two now, and come up to-morrow
+afternoon to tea--and to hear what she thinks of them."
+
+Sheila caught her breath.  "Oh, it's too presumptuous," she demurred,
+shyly.  "For _me_ to bother _Alice North_!"
+
+Her eyes were shining, nevertheless, as if at sight of a long-promised
+land, and Charlotte presently departed with a couple of manuscripts for
+the touchstone of Mrs. North's criticism.
+
+When Ted came home that evening, he found a Sheila tremulous with
+excitement, her eyes shining still, her cheeks, which were usually
+pale, flushed to a vivid rose.
+
+"Oh, Ted," she exclaimed at once, "Charlotte is back!"
+
+"Yes," he assented good-naturedly, "I heard about it this morning and
+gave her a write-up with a picture."  For Ted invariably looked upon
+events in the terms of their newspaper value.
+
+"Did you know that she brought Alice North home with her?"
+
+"Alice North?"
+
+Apparently he had not the slightest idea who Alice North might be.
+
+"Yes--Alice North--the novelist, Ted!"
+
+"Is she anybody special--anything of a celebrity?"
+
+"Is she?  Oh, Ted, you must read something besides newspapers!  Mrs.
+North hasn't been made a celebrity by the papers--somehow she's managed
+to keep clear of cheap notoriety--but there's scarcely a woman writing
+to-day whose work is better than hers.  She is
+really--_really_--distinguished!"
+
+Instantly he was "on the job," as he would have expressed it, at that
+revelation: "Well, she won't keep out of the 'Star'!  I'll have a story
+about her to-morrow.  Confound it!  I wish I'd known to-day!  But the
+Davises never let me know anything.  I found out by accident that
+Charlotte was home.  And such a time as I had getting her photograph.
+I don't believe that family care about their own town's paper!"
+
+Sheila smiled.  She had a pretty accurate conception of the place that
+Shadyville must occupy on Charlotte's horizon--and on Alice North's.
+But she only remarked soothingly, "I can tell you all about Alice
+North.  I've read nearly everything she's written, and a number of
+magazine articles about her, too.  I'll get you up a good story about
+her--the sort of story she won't object to either."  Then her
+enthusiasm swept her from the subject of newspaper values to the true
+value of Mrs. North:
+
+"Oh, Ted, isn't it splendid for a woman to have a talent like that--a
+talent that's made her famous at thirty!"
+
+But there was no responsive enthusiasm in Ted's face, no leap of light
+in the eyes that met the fire of hers.  "I suppose so," he conceded
+grudgingly, "yes, I suppose it is.  But I don't care for that sort of
+woman myself--at least for that sort of married woman."
+
+"But why, Ted?  Why?  Her work doesn't interfere with her loving her
+husband!"
+
+"It interferes with her making a home for him.  And _that's_ a woman's
+work--making a home."
+
+"But, Ted, maybe he doesn't want a home--or maybe they have a
+housekeeper."
+
+Ted shrugged: "Oh, if it suits him to live in a hotel, or at the mercy
+of a hired housekeeper, it's all right.  But in that case, he's missing
+the best thing a man ever gets--I mean the kind of home a woman's
+_love_ makes!"
+
+At those words Sheila would have surrendered the argument--so easily
+was she swayed by a touch upon her heart.  But Ted was not through with
+the subject.  His masculine self-respect was aroused against this woman
+who was succeeding outside the sphere of strictly feminine occupation,
+and he was determined to show her, in her worst light, to Sheila.
+
+"Has she any children?" he demanded belligerently.
+
+"No--at least, I think not."
+
+"Now you see that I'm right!" he exulted.
+
+But the moment for yielding had passed with Sheila.  "I see nothing of
+the sort," she replied with a flare of temper.  "Her having
+children--or not having them--has no bearing whatever on the matter."
+
+"Oh, yes, it has!  You mark my words--she hasn't had any children
+because she's wanted to spend all her time advancing herself--building
+up a tawdry little fame for herself!  I tell you, Sheila, talent's a
+bad thing for a woman--a bad thing!"
+
+"But, Ted--_I_ write."
+
+He stared at her in naive surprise.  Then his face softened into
+indulgent laughter.  "Why, kitty, so you do!  I'd forgotten that you
+scribble.  But you don't take it seriously.  I don't mind your playing
+at it, so long as you don't get the notion that it's the biggest thing
+in life."  And he laughed again and pinched her cheek--reassuringly.
+
+She didn't laugh in answer, however.  She only gazed at him with an odd
+intentness, as if she were seeing him for the first time.  Then,
+gravely, she inquired: "What would you think the biggest thing in life,
+Ted--if you were a woman--a woman like Alice North?"
+
+He drew her down to his knee and whispered into her ear.  She was very
+still for an instant, her whole body subdued, spellbound, by that
+whispered word.  Then, with a movement singularly untender, she
+withdrew from his arms and stood erect--free--before him.  The rich
+scarlet still flooded her cheek--now like a flag of reluctant
+womanhood--but he searched her eyes in vain for the glow that should
+have matched it.
+
+"Well--you'll think so some day!" he insisted gently.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Sheila was not naturally secretive, and it was a measure of the
+antagonism which Ted had aroused in her that she said nothing to him of
+her projected visit to Alice North.
+
+She had intended to tell him at once of Charlotte's kindly plan to
+interest Mrs. North in her work; she had been impatient to tell him,
+and her announcement of Charlotte's return, and Mrs. North's arrival
+with her, had been meant only as the preface to the confidence.  She
+had been so sure of his sympathy, of his ambition for her and his
+pleasure in this opportunity to test her power.
+
+His real attitude toward the achievements of women she had never
+suspected.  He had so gladly and gratefully accepted her help in his
+own work, he had so generously acknowledged her ability, that she had
+never conceived of any sex distinction in his views.  She had been his
+comrade--now he would be hers.  And oh, she would make him proud of
+her!  She would see his eyes light for her as, sometimes, she had seen
+them light over the story of men's successes.  For Ted loved success.
+
+If she looked forward to triumphs, he was always at the heart of them.
+Whatever she could do would be done more for his honor than for her
+own.  Whatever was rare and fine in her she had come to value first
+because she was his wife--and afterward for her own profit.  She
+imagined herself, crowned by Mrs. North's praise, returning to Ted to
+cry:
+
+"It is the real, the true thing--my gift!  I will do beautiful work.
+Oh, dearest, I have more to bring you than I dared to believe!"
+
+So her impetuous mind had run onward to meet happy possibilities when
+Ted arrested it with the comment, "I don't care for that sort of woman
+myself--at least for that sort of married woman!"  And at the words,
+Sheila's dreams had fallen, like broken-winged birds, to the ground.
+
+For a moment--nay, through all the conversation that followed, a
+conversation that revealed to her with cruel clarity a phase of her
+husband's mind that she had not hitherto encountered--she was wondering
+if those dreams would ever rise again.  Rude and stupid blows from the
+hand she loved best had struck them down.  How could they recover
+themselves?  How could they sing and soar--those fragile, shattered
+things?
+
+But even as she glimpsed them thus, broken, defeated, there surged up
+within her the strength of resistance.  Sweetly compliant in all the
+common affairs of her and Ted's joint life, she had, for this issue so
+vital to her, an amazing obstinacy.  Defeated?  She and her dreams?
+_No_!  Her dreams were her own, born of her as surely as the children
+of her body would be.  They were hers to save--hers to realize.  And
+she was strong enough to do it!
+
+That had been her thought when she withdrew herself from Ted's knee.
+His whisper--"The greatest thing that can happen to a woman is
+motherhood!"--had inspired no tenderness in her.  For at that moment
+there was astir within her, violent and dominant, the impulse that is
+mightier than motherhood itself--the impulse of _creation_.  And it was
+none the less imperative because it demanded to mould with written
+words rather than living flesh.
+
+Ted's last gentle speech, his hurt expression when she turned coldly
+from him, moved her not at all.  For the time, he was not Ted, her
+beloved, but Man, her enemy.  True, she had not regarded man as an
+enemy before.  Peter, for instance, had been an ally without whom she
+could not even have fared thus far.  But Peter was not a husband; his
+masculinity had not been appealed to--nor threatened.  She saw now that
+men would always fight for the mastery of their own women, would always
+seek to impose sex upon them as a yoke.
+
+Ah, that black, bitter gulf of sex!
+
+Sheila, looking into it for the first time, shuddered with revolt and
+rage.  So _this_ was life; this the end of such moments as her
+exquisite awakening to love.  To _this_ the high and heavenly raptures
+lured one at last!  A bird in the wrong cage, impotently beating its
+breast against the bars--Sheila was like enough to such an one in that
+furious, unconsciously helpless hour.
+
+By the next day, however, the fierce whirlwind of her astounded
+resentment had passed.  She began to see that Ted might be the victim
+of his sex as she was the victim of hers; that the real tyranny was not
+that of Ted over her, but of Nature over them both; of Nature who would
+use them each with equal ruthlessness for her own purposes.  But this
+perception did not daunt her.  Unhesitatingly, she arrayed herself
+against Nature now; she would save her dreams even from that!  And as
+Ted was a part of Nature's plan, she said nothing to him of her
+determination to fulfill herself in spite of it.
+
+In the afternoon she set out resolutely for Charlotte's.  It was
+summer, and Shadyville was at its fairest.  As Sheila trod the wide,
+tree-canopied streets, with their old-fashioned houses in fragrant
+garden closes on either side, a hundred tiny voices whispered to her
+messages of peace; of life that goes on from summer to summer; of
+growth, in the dark and choking earth, that springs at last upward to
+the sun.  But she did not hear.  For her there was neither comfort nor
+peace nor any joy in the processes and victories of mere life.
+
+When she reached the Davis house, Charlotte and Mrs. North were on the
+veranda, clad brightly in a summer frivolity, and their air of leisure
+and gayety was oddly unlike the tense and passionate mood of Sheila
+herself.  In fact the whole scene--the porch with its fluttering
+awnings and festive flowers, the dainty tea-table that already awaited
+the guest, the two charming women presiding there--seemed far removed
+from the grave resolve and stormy emotions that Sheila had brought
+thither.  For an instant, as she paused at the gate, she felt herself
+absurd.  She had come to have afternoon tea with two women who were
+obviously of the big, conventional world--and she had brought her naked
+soul to them!  Acutely self-conscious, painfully humiliated, she would
+have retreated if she could, but Charlotte was already hailing her.
+And then--her hand was clasped in Alice North's, her eyes were meeting
+eyes at once so probing and so luminous that they opened every door of
+her nature and flooded it with light.
+
+Sheila had never had a case of hero-worship, but as she put her hand in
+Mrs. North's, she fell, figuratively, upon her knees.  The very
+buoyancy and assurance of the latter's manner, which had, for an
+instant, chilled and rebuffed her, now appeared to her the outward
+manifestation of a brilliant and conquering spirit.  Like a devotee,
+she watched Mrs. North's quick, graceful movements, her vivid,
+changeful face; like a devotee she listened to her sparkling,
+inconsequent chatter.  This woman, handicapped by her womanhood, had
+done big things.  Any word from her lips, any gesture of her hand was
+something to admire and remember.
+
+It never even entered Sheila's head that, although she had done great
+things, Alice North might not be a great woman.  It never occurred to
+her to ask _how_ she had triumphed--at whose or at what cost.  She
+never even dreamed that one's life--just a noble submission to Nature,
+a willing and patient compliance with laws and purposes above one's
+own--might be the final and fullest expression of genius.  Alice North
+had written books--and Sheila was at her feet.
+
+After awhile Charlotte tactfully left her alone with her idol--in whose
+footsteps she meant to walk henceforth--to _climb_!
+
+"I've read your stories," said Mrs. North softly then.  It was the
+first mention of Sheila's work, and the girl quivered from head to
+foot.  She gazed mutely at the oracle--waiting for life, for death.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. North leaned forward and caught Sheila's hands in hers.
+Alice North had never failed to be sensitive to drama; to play her part
+in it with sympathy and effect.
+
+"My dear," she exclaimed, and her voice was clear and thrilling, "my
+dear, you have it--the divine gift!"
+
+And as they looked at each other, the eyes of each filled with tears.
+Alice North was indeed sensitive to drama--so sensitive that her
+counterfeit emotions sometimes deceived even her--and Sheila was shaken
+to the heart, to the soul.
+
+"You mean--you mean--that I--" began the girl brokenly.
+
+"I mean," answered Mrs. North, "that you are already doing remarkable
+work--that you will go far--unless----"
+
+"Unless what?" breathed Sheila.
+
+"Will you let me advise you?"
+
+"Oh, if you only will!  What shall I do?"  And Sheila bent trusting,
+obedient eyes upon her.
+
+"Do?  Dear child, I can tell you in a word.  You must renounce!"
+
+"Renounce?" repeated Sheila vaguely.
+
+"Yes, renounce!"  And Alice North turned a face of pale sacrifice upon
+her--with that inevitable instinct for the dramatic.  Few women had
+renounced less than she--less, at least, of what pleased them--but at
+that moment, in the intensity of her artistic fervor, she believed
+herself an ascetic for her work's sake.
+
+"The common lot of womanhood is not for you," she declared.  "You must
+live for your art!"  And her voice trembled with the touching
+earnestness that she had so easily assumed--and would as easily cast
+off.
+
+To Sheila, however, there never came a doubt of Mrs. North's deep
+sincerity.  She had listened, as if to a priestess, while the novelist
+proclaimed her sublime creed of renunciation, and she now offered the
+obstacle to it in her own situation with a sense of having fallen from
+grace in being thus human:
+
+"But I'm married, you know."
+
+"And so am I.  But I am consecrated, nevertheless, to my art.  And so,
+my dear, must you be.  You must give yourself utterly,--_utterly_--to
+your art!  Art won't take less.  _Your_ husband must live for
+_you_--instead of your living for him after the fashion of most wives.
+And you'll be worth his living for--I'm sure of that."
+
+"I--I don't understand," faltered Sheila.  "I don't understand what it
+is I mustn't do for Ted."
+
+Alice North held her hands more closely and fixed her luminous eyes
+upon her--eyes which, to many before Sheila, had seemed to shine with
+the light of a beautiful soul: "You mustn't do for him the one thing
+that you and he will want most--you mustn't have children for him!  My
+dear, _you_ must be a mother with your _brain_--not with your body.
+You can't do both--at least, worthily--and you must give yourself to
+creation with your mind.  There are women enough already to become
+mothers of the other sort!"
+
+Sheila did not reply.  Slowly the glow faded from her face, from her
+eyes.  Slowly and listlessly she withdrew her hands from Mrs. North's
+fervid clasp and leaned back in her chair.  Clearly the supreme moment
+had passed; the flame of her ardor had flickered out.  Mrs. North
+glanced curiously at her.  An instant before, the girl had been
+radiant, tremulous with aspiration and with hope.  Now she was
+apathetic and cold, her spirit no more than a handful of ashes.
+
+The silence lengthened--grew heavy with meaning.  Alice North put out
+her hand again: "I trust I haven't intruded--offended?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Sheila stiffly, "you have been very kind, and--I am
+sure--very wise."  But her frank gaze had grown guarded; her whole
+manner had become that of defensive reserve.
+
+Yes, clearly, the great moment was over; the drama was ended.
+
+
+"What a queer girl," remarked Mrs. North!  to Charlotte, when Sheila
+had gone.  "I predicted a phenomenal future for her--I had her tingling
+to her finger tips.  Then--quite suddenly--the light, the fire was
+quenched.  And do what I would, I couldn't kindle it again.  It was
+very strange--unless----"
+
+"Unless----?"
+
+"Unless she's going to have a child.  I told her that she mustn't have
+children."
+
+"You mean," cried Charlotte incredulously, "that you advised her to
+shirk the greatest experience possible to a woman?  You advised her to
+forego _that_?"
+
+But Alice North lifted her pretty brows and shrugged her histrionic
+shoulders with an air of fine distaste.  "Really, Charlotte," she
+drawled, "I hadn't suspected you of being so primitive."
+
+
+Walking homeward through the sweet summer dusk, Sheila was far from the
+listless, extinguished creature whom Alice North had described,
+however.  Never in her life had such a tempest of emotion swept through
+her being.  For she was face to face, at last, with life.
+
+The first night of Ted's courtship returned to her now; she smelt the
+fragrance of climbing roses; she felt his head again upon her
+breast--the indescribable first touch of love that is unlike all
+others!--she heard a voice deep within her exulting: "_This_ is
+_life_!"  Ah, how ignorant she had been--how pitifully innocent!  To
+have thought _that_ life!
+
+For life was a thing that laid brutal, compelling hands upon you; that
+destroyed you and created you again; that rent you with unspeakable
+pangs, with unimaginable terrors, with frantic and powerless
+rebellions.  It was not joy; it was not peace; it was not fulfillment.
+It was a _force_.  Merciless, implacable, irresistible, it seized upon
+you and _used_ you.  For that you were put into the world; for that you
+dreamed and hoped and struggled--for that moment out of an eternity,
+that moment of _use_!
+
+As she hurried onward, stumbling now and then with a clumsiness alien
+to her, the sense of lying helpless in the grasp of this force almost
+drove her to cry out.  More than once she lifted her hands to her
+mouth, and even then little shuddering murmurs broke from her.
+
+Helpless?  Oh, yes! yes!  For that had come to her from which there was
+no escape.  She was trapped.  She, too, was to be put to use.  Her own
+work must make way for Nature's.  She saw that now.
+
+Her own work must make way.  For Alice North herself had said that one
+could not serve art and Nature, too--and Nature had exacted service of
+her.  She had been strong enough to defy Ted's tyranny; but, after all,
+she could not defeat Nature's.  Her work must make way.
+
+She let herself noiselessly into the house.  From the kitchen floated
+the sounds of the cook's evening activities, but otherwise the place
+was silent, and Ted's hat was not on its accustomed hook in the little
+hall.  She could be alone a while.
+
+She stole up the stairs to her bedroom, meaning to lie down in the
+quiet darkness, but once there, a panic assailed her, a senseless fear
+of the dim corners, the distorted shadows.  Besides, she wanted to see
+herself; she wanted to see if Ted, promising her beautiful things from
+motherhood the night before, if Mrs. North, warning her against it
+to-day, had known that she--that she was going to have a child.
+
+She turned on the lights and stood in their full glare before her
+mirror.  Searchingly she inspected herself--the slender figure that was
+as yet only delicately rounded, the cheek that showed just a softer
+curve and bloom, the eyes----
+
+And then she caught her breath in a sharp sob and leaned nearer to her
+reflection.  What was it--who was it--that she saw in her eyes?
+
+For something--some one--looked back at her that had not looked back at
+her before; something--some one--ineffably yearning, poignantly
+tender--looked back at her with the gaze of a mystery--of a miracle.
+It was as if, within herself, she beheld another self; and this other
+self was reconciled to life, was in harmony with its divine purpose.
+Strangely enough, at that moment, her childhood's fancy of another self
+recurred to her.
+
+"Other-Sheila," she whispered, "Other-Sheila, is it _you_?"
+
+While she leaned thus, waiting, perhaps, for the answer of that
+reflected self, she saw that Ted had opened the door behind her.  For
+an instant their eyes met in the mirror, and with that gaze Sheila's
+heart suddenly fled home to him.  He was the father of her child!
+
+"Oh," she cried, turning to him with outstretched, shaking hands and
+quivering face, "Oh, tell it to me again!  I _want_ to believe it!
+_Tell me again that motherhood is the greatest thing!_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+In that hour when Sheila, flinging herself into his arms, cried out to
+Ted, "Tell me again that motherhood is the greatest thing.  I want to
+believe it!" she struck a high note that, during the succeeding days
+and weeks and months, she could not always sustain.  And yet, from the
+moment when she attempted to reconcile her will to Nature's, she did
+begin to perceive that her sacrifice would have its recompense.
+
+Perhaps she perceived it the more clearly because it was given to her
+to see what motherhood meant to other women.  For she was enough like
+the rest of humanity to value what others held precious.
+
+On the day after her interview with Mrs. North, Sheila went to confide
+her expectation of maternity to her grandmother.  She found Mrs.
+Caldwell in her sitting-room, a peaceful, lonely figure, lifted, at
+last, above the stress and surge of life--and above all its sweet
+hazards, its young delight.  She turned a pleased face to Sheila:
+"Dear!  Ah, what would I do without my child?"
+
+At the words, Sheila's news rushed to her lips:
+"Grandmother--grandmother--_I_ am going to have a child!"  And then she
+was on her knees, and her face was hidden against Mrs. Caldwell's
+breast.
+
+There was an instant of silence.  Then: "How happy you and Ted must
+be!" murmured Mrs. Caldwell, "how happy!"  And something in her tone
+touched Sheila more nearly than even her close-clinging arms, something
+that was at once joy for Sheila's joy and a measureless regret for
+herself.  Suddenly the girl, trembling in the fold of those gentle old
+arms, realized how far behind her grandmother lay all youth's dear
+hopes and adventures.  And she realized, too, that she herself held
+treasures in her hands--the treasures of youth and youth's warm love.
+After all, even if she must lay her work aside, she was happy.  Youth
+and love were hers--youth and love!
+
+Nor was it only from her grandmother that she received confirmation of
+her fortunate estate.  A few days later came Charlotte, to congratulate
+her upon Mrs. North's belief in her gift.
+
+"Alice North says that you have a wonderful future before you," she
+told Sheila glowingly.  "I'm so glad for you!--so proud of you!"
+
+"Mrs. North said I had a future before me _if I did not have
+children_," corrected Sheila.  "She thinks I can't be a writer and a
+mother, too."
+
+"Ah," remarked Charlotte reflectively, "then that _was_ why--"  She
+paused a moment, leaving the significant sentence unfinished, and then
+went on more earnestly, "Sheila, she was wrong!  Don't be persuaded to
+her views.  She judged you by herself.  Probably she couldn't be both
+writer and mother--she isn't really strong, you know.  But that is not
+true for all women.  Why, there have always been women who have done
+great things intellectually and had children, too!  Don't be
+discouraged; don't let yourself believe that you need lose your art if
+you should have a child.  You'd be all the finer artist for it.
+And--you are going to have a child, aren't you, Sheila?"
+
+Sheila had been passionately shy about her expectancy of motherhood,
+but the grave directness of Charlotte's inquiry disarmed her, and she
+answered as frankly and simply: "Yes, I am going to have a child."
+
+Charlotte looked at her with an expression new to the shrewd blue eyes
+that were habitually so cool and smiling.  Then, with an impetuous and
+lovely gesture, she drew Sheila to her: "I'm so glad for you, dear!--so
+glad!"
+
+A little while before she had been glad for the promise in Sheila's
+work.  Now she used the same word, but how differently!  For her mind
+had spoken before, and now speech leaped from her very heart.
+
+"I have never loved a man," she said presently, in her outspoken way,
+"I have never loved a man, but I hope that I may some day--and that I
+may have a little child for him."
+
+So Mrs. Caldwell was not alone in her attitude toward love's
+consummation!  The desire for motherhood possessed not only the women
+of yesterday, of old-fashioned standards and ideals, but Charlotte,
+too; Charlotte, the "modern" woman incarnate, who had always appeared
+so self-sufficient, so bright and serene and cold, even so hard.  It
+seemed incredible that she should have confessed to the dreams of
+softer women, of women less mentally preoccupied and competent.
+
+Sheila stared at her: "_You_ feel that way?  You--with your music, your
+chances to study, to make a career for yourself?"
+
+"Of course I feel that way!  Every real woman does.  I want my music
+and motherhood, too, but--if I ever have to choose between them--do you
+doubt that I'll take motherhood?"
+
+There was indignation in her tone; evidently she was wounded that
+Sheila had misjudged her--so strong was the mother-instinct, the sense
+of maternity's supreme worth, within her.  Realizing this, it appeared
+to Sheila that no one but herself--no woman in all the world--was
+reluctant for maternity.  After all, Ted had only asked of her that she
+should share the universal hope and joy of wifehood.  It was she who
+had demanded the exceptional lot; not he who had imposed a unique
+obligation upon her.
+
+With this conviction, the last flicker of her resentment toward him was
+extinguished, leaving her gratefully at peace with him, not only in the
+high moments, but even in those occasionally recurrent ones of
+rebellion and fear.  In the latter, indeed, she turned to Ted now for
+courage and strength, and in the fullness and tenderness of his
+response she felt herself more his than she had ever been.  But her
+resolve not to tell him about her talk with Alice North persisted.  It
+had been, at first, the resolution of a determined opposition to his
+views, but it endured through motives more generous.  Ted should have
+his happiness in approaching parenthood unspoiled.  He should not be
+hurt by knowing that she had ever looked forward to it with a divided
+heart.  She could at least conceal that she was unlike other women, and
+perhaps, in time, a miracle might be wrought upon her and she be made
+wholly like her sisters.
+
+Perhaps, too, in the fullness of time, her work and her motherhood
+might be adjusted to each other in her life.  As Charlotte had said,
+there were women--many of them--who were both artists and mothers.  She
+herself might be such a woman--some day.  She might convert Ted to
+this, and go forward to a destiny of complete fulfillment.
+
+But just now, with a sudden and intense accession of conscience, she
+yielded herself entirely to the new life that had sprung up within her.
+The sum of her strength belonged to it, she told herself, and she could
+give herself as completely as other women, whatever the difference
+between her mental attitude and theirs.  All the while, too, she prayed
+for her miracle; prayed that she might become altogether like other
+women, altogether like those glad mothers of the race.
+
+She did not pray in vain.  There came a day when, with her little son
+upon her arms, she whispered, "Oh, I _am_ glad!  I am _glad_--glad!"
+
+Glad?  Ah, that was a poor, colorless word for the rapture that
+descended upon her.  Never was the ecstasy of motherhood granted a
+woman more utterly.  It was like an angel's finger on her lips,
+answering her questionings, satisfying her longings, silencing her
+discontents.  _This_ was life, and it was not cruel and tyrannous, as
+she had thought, but infinitely gracious and benevolent.  It had used
+her, but it had used her for her own happiness.  For upon her arm lay
+her son!
+
+That she ever could have wanted to escape motherhood, that she ever
+could have resented it, now seemed to her unbelievable.  She admitted
+it to be worth any renunciation, and she gave not one regret to the
+renunciation that she had made for it--the temporary renunciation of
+her work.  It absorbed her fully and gloriously; it flowed through her
+with her blood; it was a part of her body and the very fiber of her
+soul.  And it shone through her like a light: it was in the softer
+touch of her hand, the deeper note of her voice, the more brooding
+sweetness of her eyes.  She _was_ motherhood, indeed; a young madonna
+whose halo was visible even to unimaginative Ted.
+
+Had the question occurred to him then, Ted would have said that no
+artist could surrender herself thus to maternity.  Peter Burnett,
+reverently watching, did say, "No one but a poet could be a mother like
+that!"
+
+Sheila had been very ill at the time of the child's birth, and a year
+passed before she regained her natural vigor.  It was, perhaps, the
+happiest year of her life.  Every now and then in the course of a
+lifetime, there come seasons of pure, untroubled joy, when all the
+practical concerns of ordinary existence pause for a little while, and
+the petty cares and worries make way, and even the commonplace
+pleasures stand aside, abashed.  Such a season of joy was Sheila's
+then.  She could never recollect it afterward without a quickening and
+lifting of her heart, and she knew at the time--Oh, very surely--that
+she had drawn down heaven to herself.
+
+Of course it did not last.  As her strength increased and the every day
+business of living became more and more her affair, she dropped to the
+level of a normal contentment, and thus to the interests that had
+occupied her before the miracle was accomplished.
+
+Eric, her little son, was well into his second year, however, before
+she felt the urging restlessness of her gift, and even then she denied
+the creative impulses stirring within her; she put them from her--while
+she longed to yield herself to them instead.  "Go away!" she said to
+them fiercely.  "Oh, go away before you spoil my beautiful peace!"  But
+for every time that she drove them forth, they returned the stronger,
+as if they would proclaim: "You can't be rid of us!  You may narcotize
+us with the sedative of your content.  You may banish us altogether.
+But we'll always waken!  We'll always come back!  For we're a part of
+_you_--just as much a part of you as your son is!"
+
+It was true.  They were, indeed, a part of her.  She would always be
+different from other women after all--because of them.  She would
+always have to reckon with them; to appease them, or to deny them at
+her own bitter cost.
+
+And now there came the question: "Why deny them any longer?"  Eric had
+been a very healthy baby from the first; he had, also, an excellent
+nurse, a young mulatto girl who shared her race's enthusiasm for
+children.  In the kitchen ruled an old cook who brooked no interference
+from "Li'l Miss."  Obviously, neither her child nor her house demanded
+all of Sheila's time.  So in the quiet afternoons, when Eric had been
+taken outdoors, she began to write for an hour or two.  Surely, she
+argued, she now had a right to those two hours out of each twenty-four,
+especially since she did not take them from her husband, her son, or
+her home.  It was her own leisure, her own opportunity for rest, that
+she sacrificed, if sacrifice there was.
+
+But though she justified herself, she somehow said nothing about the
+matter to Ted.  She agreed with him now--Oh, warmly enough!--that
+motherhood was the greatest thing in life for a woman; but she did not,
+she never would, believe with him that it must be the only thing.  Nor
+should he believe it always, she told herself.  She would prove to him
+that a woman could be both mother and artist.  She would prove it to
+him, as she had dreamed of doing--but not just yet.  They loved each
+other so dearly, they were so happy together, that she shrank from
+disturbing their harmony by any discussion or dissension.  And
+discussion and dissension there would be before Ted could be converted.
+Amiable as he was in his healthy, hearty fashion, he would be
+intolerant and irritable about this.  So she worked on in secret; and
+for a couple of months nothing and no one was the worse for it.
+
+Then, when Eric was two years old, he was taken ill; suddenly, swiftly,
+terribly, as a little child can be smitten from rosy vigor to death's
+very brink.  The disease was scarlet fever.
+
+"How can he have gotten it?" Sheila and Ted asked each other,
+bewildered and agonized.  But soon--only too soon--they knew.  Lila,
+the nurse, disappeared directly after the verdict was pronounced.
+"Afraid!" cried Sheila scornfully, "afraid--though she said she loved
+him!"
+
+"Yes'm," agreed old Lucindy, who had come from her kitchen to help
+nurse the boy with a loyalty that was in itself a scathing comment on
+Lila's defection, "yes'm, she's feared all right--but not ob gittin'
+fever."
+
+There was something savage in her tone at sound of which Sheila and Ted
+straightened from their little son's crib and looked to her for
+explanation.
+
+"She's feared," continued Lucindy, "'cause she knows _she_ done gib dat
+chile fever takin' him to dem low-down nigger shanties she's allus
+visitin' at.  Dat's what Lila's feared ob."
+
+"She took the _baby_ to--?"  It was Ted who tried to question Lucindy.
+Sheila could not, though she had opened her dry lips for indignant
+speech.
+
+"Yassah, she sho did--jes befo' he was took sick.  She taken him to 'er
+no 'count yaller sister's--an' 'er sister's chillun's got scarlet
+fever.  I heared it dis mornin'."
+
+"Are you sure, Lucindy?  Are you _sure_?"  It was still Ted who pursued
+the inquiry.
+
+"Deed I'se sho, Marse Ted.  She tole me herse'f whar she'd been when
+she come back wid de baby, an' 'bout how cute an' sweet dey all say he
+is.  Course she didn't know 'bout de fever--it hadn' showed up on dem
+chillun yit--but she knowed mighty well Miss Sheila wouldn' want our
+baby in nigger houses _no-how_.  She knowed she was doin' wrong takin'
+him.  I sho did go fo' dat yaller gal, too!  She wouldn' never do it no
+mo'--not while Lucindy's a-livin'!"
+
+Ted turned to Sheila, and the expression of her white face startled
+him.  Much as he loved her, his heart hardened to her as he
+looked--hardened with a sudden, instinctive suspicion--and when he
+spoke, his voice was stern:
+
+"Did you know where Lila was taking the baby when she had him out?" he
+asked.  "Sheila, did you know?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"Sheila, did you know?" repeated Ted.
+
+Sheila shook her head.  Lila had had orders never to take Eric out of
+the yard without permission.  She had risked the disobedience, only too
+sure of her mistress's absorption.  For Lila knew the secret of those
+afternoons; she had not been a confidante, but she had been a witness.
+Sheila realized all this now, as she faced Ted across the crib of their
+little stricken son.  She realized that she had not known where Eric
+was because she had been engrossed in her work--and that not to have
+known, as things had come to pass, was criminal.
+
+"Oh, how could it have happened?" cried Ted.  And looking into Sheila's
+tortured face, sternness vanished from his eyes for an instant, and
+love and grief yearned toward her from them instead.  In that instant
+speech came to Sheila and the truth rushed out of her.
+
+"It happened because--because I was up in my room and didn't overlook
+Lila.  It happened because I was up in my room, _writing a story_!"
+
+It was as if she had bared her breast to a sword--and he could not
+plunge it in.  In his turn he was silent; but his silence was scarcely
+easier to bear than the harshest upbraiding.  He stood there, gazing at
+her, and she knew all that was in his mind, in his heart.  And then,
+after a moment, he went out of the room, still without a word.  When he
+came back, several hours later, he was very gentle to her, but Sheila
+knew, nevertheless, that his father's heart condemned her, condemned
+her as she condemned herself.
+
+Together they nursed their son, with Mrs. Caldwell and old Lucindy to
+help them.  And as Sheila watched her baby fight for the tiny flame of
+his life, her own heart, so much more burdened than Ted's, broke not
+once, but a thousand times!  He was so small, so weak, so helpless,
+that little son of hers, and he suffered.  That was what she felt she
+could not bear--that he should suffer.  Even his death she could endure
+if she must, she who deserved to lose him.  But his _pain_----!
+
+As she went back and forth upon the ceaseless tasks of nursing,
+apparently so concentrated upon them, she was in reality living over
+days long past, the days before Eric's birth.  Clear and practical as
+was her grasp of the present and all its necessities, she was yet
+obsessed by her memories of that time before her child's coming; by her
+memories of it and her penitence for it.  In the beginning, she had not
+been glad.  It was upon that, quite as much as upon her later
+carelessness in trusting Lila, that her agonized conscience fixed.  How
+could she ever have hoped to keep her child--she who had not been glad
+of his coming?  It all sprang from that.  For if she had been glad
+enough in the beginning, the idea of writing would not have persisted
+with her; would not finally have led her to that negligence for which
+Eric might pay with his life.
+
+She had not been glad in the beginning!  Over and over that sentence
+shrieked through her brain: She had not been glad in the beginning!
+She had not been glad!
+
+She never spared herself by reflecting that she had not been reluctant
+for motherhood until Ted had shown his antagonism to the work that was
+already the child of her brain, and Mrs. North had, from her different
+viewpoint, justified his attitude.  She never conceded in her behalf
+that it had not even occurred to her, until then, to regard motherhood
+and art as conflicting elements, and that it was the shock of seeing
+them thus in her own life that had made her temporarily resentful of
+maternity.  She never excused or exonerated herself by that ultimate
+joy of motherhood which had possessed her so utterly.  She had not been
+glad in the beginning; later, she had not been glad enough to give
+him--her little, helpless son--all her life.  How, indeed, could she
+hope to keep him now?
+
+Over and over this she went; and all the while she kept on about her
+tasks, deft, skillful, terribly calm.
+
+Mrs. Caldwell observed her with an alarm hardly less than she felt for
+the child.  "It will kill Sheila if Eric dies," she said to Ted.
+
+"Yes," he groaned, "I think it will."
+
+"What is it, Ted?--the thing that's eating into her heart?  There's
+more here than even a mother's grief."
+
+"She was writing a story when--when Lila exposed the boy to the fever.
+Of course, if she hadn't been--!  Oh, poor Sheila!--poor Sheila!" he
+ended brokenly.
+
+For all blame had gone out of Ted; his gentleness to Sheila was no
+longer that of forbearance, but of an immense and inarticulate pity.
+It racked him that he could not stand between her and her contrition,
+her pitiful sorrow; it hurt him intolerably that he could not hold them
+from her with his very hands.  Almost he lost the sense of his own sick
+pain in watching hers.  Once he tried to take her in his arms and
+comfort her.  "Don't suffer so!" he pleaded.  "Don't suffer so!"
+
+But she pulled away from him, denying herself the solace of his
+sympathy.  "I can't suffer _enough_!" she cried.  "I can _never_ suffer
+enough to atone for what I've done!"
+
+There came a night when they put Sheila out of the room--Mrs. Caldwell
+and Ted; literally put her out, with hands so tender and so firm.
+
+"I have a right to be with him when he dies!" she cried.
+
+"Sheila--he will need you to-morrow.  You _must_ rest--for his sake."
+So they sought to deceive and compel her.
+
+"No," she insisted, "he will not need me to-morrow.  But he needs me
+now--to die with."
+
+"He may not die."
+
+"He 'may' not die.  You don't say he _will_ not die!  Oh, he will
+die!--and he's too little to die without his mother!"
+
+And then they put her out.
+
+Ted led her away to the room where she was to "rest" and shut her
+within it, and she lay down on the couch as he had bidden her to do.
+It was easy enough to be obedient in this, since she was barred out
+from the one place where she yearned to be.  Since she could not be
+there, it did not matter where she was or what she did.  It was easiest
+just to do what she was told.
+
+She knew only too well that she had spoken truly when she had said that
+her little son might die that night.  She knew only too surely why she
+had been shut out.  And almost she submitted--the blow seemed so
+certain, so close.  The despair that resembles resignation in its
+apathy almost conquered her, as she waited for the hand of death to
+strike.
+
+But while she waited, lying in the quiet darkness, there suddenly came
+to her the idea that she might still save Eric.  Morbid from grief and
+fatigue, she had not a doubt that his death was a "judgment" on
+herself; a punishment.  Because she had neglected him for her own
+selfish ends; nay, more, because she had not been glad of his coming in
+the beginning, God was about to take him from her.  She was mercilessly
+sure of this--sure with the awakened blood, the inherited traditions of
+many Calvinistic ancestors, the stern forefathers of her father.  Her
+own more liberal faith, her personal conception of a God benignant and
+very tender, went down before that grim heritage of more rigorous
+consciences.  But with the self-conviction springing from that
+heritage, there came, too, the suggestion that she might make her peace
+with God; that with sufficient proof of her penitence, she might
+prevail upon Him to spare Eric.
+
+Again and again the suggestion reached her, in the "still, small voice"
+which may have been the voice of her own inner self, or of the
+surviving, guiding souls of her ancestors, or of God Himself.  Again
+and again it spoke to her--whatever it was, from whatever source it
+rose; again and again, until it was still and small no longer, but
+strong and purposeful, and its message unmistakable.
+
+She could but heed it--thankfully.  And so she began to cast about in
+her mind for the proof of her contrition.  It could be no light thing,
+no trivial surrender of self.  It must be a sacrifice--a sacrifice such
+as the ancient tribes of Israel would have offered an incensed God.  It
+must be--she saw it in a flash!--it must be her work.
+
+"If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for
+it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and
+not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
+
+"And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee:
+for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish,
+and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."
+
+This, then, must she do.  She must pluck out that thing which had
+offended her, which had betrayed her into a sin against her own
+motherhood, and cast it from her.  She must pluck out her gift and
+offer it up in expiation.
+
+And so she knelt there in the darkness and tendered her sacrifice; so
+she thrust from her the thing which had been so dear to her; so she
+entered into her compact with God.
+
+"Oh, God, grant me my child's life, and I will never write again.  I
+have sinned in selfishness and vanity, but I am repentant and will sin
+no more.  I have plucked out my right eye.  I have cut off my right
+hand.  I have cast my gifts from me forever.  Grant me my son's life,
+and I will never write again!"
+
+Hour after hour she entreated God to make terms with her.  The night
+crept by, slow-footed and silent, but she was not aware of the passing
+of time, or of the deepening of the stillness within the house, or of
+the quivering of the sword above her head.  She no longer listened for
+sounds from that distant room.  She no longer strove to pierce the
+intervening walls with her mother's sixth sense.  She heard nothing but
+the voice which had counselled her; she strove for nothing but to obey
+that voice.  Her whole being concentrated itself into a prayer.  She
+was conscious only of herself and God, and of her passionate effort to
+reach Him.
+
+"Oh, God, _hear_ me!  I have sinned, but I will sin no more.  My heart
+is broken with remorse.  I will never write again!"
+
+So she pleaded with God throughout the long night.  And pitiful and
+insolent as was her bargaining, God must have found in it something to
+weigh.
+
+For with the first light of the morning, Ted opened the door--and there
+was light in his worn face, too.
+
+"Sheila--_Sheila_!----"
+
+And then they fell into each other's arms, sobbing--sobbing as they
+could not have done if their little son had died.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+With tragic sincerity Sheila had entered into the compact for her son's
+life, and she kept it to the letter.  She saw no reason why she should
+have a poorer sense of honor toward God than she had toward men and
+women; her child had been spared to her, and henceforth it was for her
+to fulfill her part, to keep her given word.
+
+She had never understood, indeed, why people made--and broke--promises
+to God so lightly.  She had found them ready enough to complain if they
+considered God unjust to them, but they never seemed to think that it
+mattered whether they were "square" with God or not.  To them He was a
+sort of divine creditor who need not be paid.  They even made it a
+proof of reverence--a comfortable proof!--to place Him far above the
+consideration they had to show their fellow men.  This viewpoint was
+impossible to Sheila.  Morbid, hysterical, as her offered price for
+Eric's life had been, she felt herself bound, and she paid
+punctiliously.
+
+It was easy enough thus to pay as she watched her child growing strong
+and rosy again.  His little life--Ah, what was it not worth?  A dozen
+times a day the memory of that night when she had believed that he
+would die sent her shuddering to her knees with fresh prayers and
+promises.  And always the recollection of that loss escaped roused in
+her a very passion of thanksgiving.  She had her son!--that was her
+answer to all the dreams which, unrealized, sometimes stole back to
+tempt her with their wistful faces.
+
+When Eric was well enough for her now and then to leave him--at first
+she could not leave him lest, with her sheltering hands removed, his
+life should flicker out--she gave burial to the little brain children
+that, for the child of her body, she had sacrificed.  Every bit of
+verse, every little sketch, and the unfinished story which was, in her
+sight, most guilty, and most dear of all, she laid away; not with
+ribbon and lavender and rites of sentiment and tears, but sternly,
+barely, ruthlessly, as one puts away things discarded by the heart
+itself.  She might have burned them less harshly, and that she did not
+was only because she conceived it a finer deed to keep them and resist
+them.  So she put her honor to the uttermost test.
+
+It was thus, and with her own hands, she poured her life into the mould
+Ted had desired for it; it was thus she thrust from her all that did
+not pertain to her husband and her child and her home.  Yet between Ted
+and herself not a word about it passed.  He never reproached her for
+what her writing had so nearly cost them; he never asked her to give it
+up; he never even inquired as to whether she were still pursuing it.
+He simply stood aloof from that element in her, with what queer mixture
+of disapproval and pride and magnanimity she could but guess.
+
+They continued to be happy together, the happier as the months passed
+and Ted saw her more and more his and Eric's.  In the beginning he had
+probably thought that, after the shock of Eric's peril receded, Sheila
+would try to write again; that fear must have lurked behind his
+non-committal silence; but time gave him his security about it.  Sheila
+never told him of the compact of that anguished night, but gradually he
+became as sure that she had given up her talent forever as if he had
+heard her pledge.  "Little wife!" he often called her, "Little mother!"
+And always it was as if he said to her, "What other name could be half
+so sweet?"
+
+And she told herself that he was right.  Never had there been a better
+husband.  And to be loved by a man like that, a man clean and fine and
+kind; to be the mother of such a man's child, she was very certain was
+worth more to a woman than any other honors or fulfillments which life
+could bring her.  She had known that always, even when she first
+discovered--so bitterly!--that Ted was not in sympathy with her gift
+and her ambitions; and she knew it more surely as time went on.  There
+were moments when she wished ardently that the sympathy between them
+had been more absolute; when she thought that, happy as she was, she
+would have been happier if their tastes had gone hand-in-hand like
+their hearts.  But there was never a time when she would have exchanged
+Ted for any other man, or when she felt it possible to have done
+without him.  There are women who, married, feed their discontents with
+visions of what life could have been in freedom or with some other man
+than they have chosen.  Sheila was not of this sort.  Having crossed
+the threshold of marriage, she did not look behind her at the
+alluring--and elusive--road of might-have-been.
+
+She hoped, now, for other children.  With this utter surrender of
+herself to the woman's life, there came to her the longing for many
+children, for all her arms could hold.  The sum of that creative force
+which, under different circumstances, would have flowed into her work,
+all its denied passion and vitality, was transmuted into the instinct
+of motherhood.  Because of her creative gift, there was literally more
+life within her, more life to bestow, and so, the channel of artistic
+expression being closed to her, she yearned to spend it all upon
+maternity; to have, indeed, as many children as her arms could hold.
+
+Had these desired children come to her, peace might have been hers
+finally and entirely.  But the desire was not granted.  Eric grew out
+of his babyhood to a fine, sturdy boyhood, and was still the only
+child.  And now Sheila, a woman of thirty and ten years married, began
+to feel again, and more strongly than ever in her life, the urge of her
+gift, the unrest of dreams stifled, thwarted, but never destroyed.
+
+She had made a compact with God, and she continued to keep it; but more
+and more hunger stared out of her eyes and a nervous restlessness
+betrayed itself in her manner.  She was happy, but she was not
+satisfied.  Something clamored in her unappeased.
+
+If she had lived in a large city, there would at least have been food,
+if not activity, for that clamoring, aching thing within her.  There
+would have been pictures and music and plays to lift her, at times,
+into the world of poetic beauty for which she longed.  But Shadyville
+could offer nothing to one of her mental quality; as a girl she had
+found diversion in its social gaiety, but as a matron, the mother of a
+nine-year-old son, even the social life of the town was restricted for
+her to card-parties and the doubtful amusement of chaperonage.
+
+For in Shadyville, the young married people early abdicated in favor of
+those still younger, those still seeking mates.  Society was, in fact,
+merely a means of finding one's mate, so primitive had the little town
+remained; companionship between men and women, save as an opportunity
+for the eternal quest, was unknown.  Wives and mothers sat placidly, or
+wearily, against the walls at dances, watching the game of man and
+maid, and slaked their thirst for entertainment, for stimulating
+comradeship, at the afternoon teas and bridge parties of their own sex.
+Now and then a reading club or a study class was organized, a naive
+effort toward an understanding of things which Shadyville vaguely
+perceived to be of importance beyond its boundaries; and always the
+class or club died of insufficient nourishment.  Within thirty miles of
+a large town, the life of Shadyville remained uncorrupted--and
+unimproved; a healthy, simple, joyous affair of the love-quest in
+youth; a healthy, simple, and usually contented, matter of home-making
+and child-rearing later.  Sheila, having stepped over into the second
+stage with her marriage, was not supposed to feel any longings which
+her domestic existence could not satisfy; and feeling them, in defiance
+of Shadyville's standards and traditions, she could but suppress and
+starve them.
+
+"Let me go down to the office every day and help you," she suggested to
+Ted finally, "I used to help you--before we were married."
+
+But Ted, whose limited ambitions had realized themselves and whose work
+had now settled into a comfortable routine for which he was more than
+capable, evinced no enthusiasm for the project.  She had helped him; he
+had never forgotten nor disparaged that.  But he did not need or want
+her at the Star office now, and he did need and want her in his home.
+
+"You have enough to do as it is--with Eric and the house," he said.
+
+"But, Ted, I _haven't_ enough to do," she insisted.  "There's nothing
+for me really to do in the house.  I overlook everything, but that
+doesn't occupy all my time.  And with Eric at school--don't you see, my
+dear, that it's something to do I need?  Don't you see how--how
+restless I am?"
+
+"We ought to have more children!" he exclaimed wistfully.
+
+"Yes," she agreed, "yes, we ought to have more children.  But if they
+do not come--?"  And she stared before her, her hands lying empty and
+listless in her lap.  "If they do not come--?" she repeated presently.
+And now she turned her brooding eyes to his face and a purpose gathered
+and concentrated in them.  "I wonder if you could understand--" she
+began.
+
+But he cut into the sentence: "I must hurry back to the office.  I take
+too much time for lunch.  Don't get discontented, little girl.  I'll
+take you down to Louisville for the horse show next week.  We'll have a
+bully spree.  That's what you need."  And he went off whistling
+blithely, sure that he had solved the problem of Sheila's "moods"--as
+he always called any symptom of depression in her.
+
+Sheila watched him go, smiling.  "Of course he wouldn't have
+understood," she said to herself.  "And how I would have bothered him
+if I'd tried to analyze myself for him--poor dear!"  But the
+reflection, amused, yet wholly tender, did not end her unrest, her
+perplexity.
+
+After a futile attempt to interest herself in duties about the house,
+she set out for a walk, hoping to capture something of the outdoor
+peace.  It was October, always an exhilarating month in Kentucky, with
+its crisp air and its flaming banners of red and gold, and soon her
+blood was stirred and her heart lightened, and she was swinging along
+at a brisk pace.  She had started in the direction of her grandmother's
+house, but suddenly she wheeled about and took to another street.
+
+Never since Eric's illness had her grandmother spoken to her of her
+writing, and she had been glad of the silence.  It seemed to her that
+if they talked at all, they who had been so close, so much would have
+to be said; she could not conceive of a reserve in anything which she
+undertook to discuss with Mrs. Caldwell at all.  Ted's views on the
+duty of a wife and mother would therefore have to be told with the
+rest, and she did not want to tell them.  Her grandmother would have
+little patience with them, she was sure.  As a devoted husband, most of
+all as the father of Sheila's child, Ted seemed to have won a secure
+place in Mrs. Caldwell's affection at last, and Sheila, who had clearly
+seen Mrs. Caldwell's original reluctance to the marriage, had no
+intention of jeopardizing that place now.  Understanding, sympathy,
+advice would have meant much to her, but she could not take them at
+Ted's expense.
+
+So she walked on, away from her grandmother's house; onward until she
+left the town behind her and found herself upon the road leading to
+Louisville.  Just ahead of her, she saw, then, a familiar figure
+trudging along in leisurely fashion, the figure of Peter Burnett.
+
+"Peter!" she hailed joyously.  And as he hastened back to her, her
+heart lifted buoyantly; her somber mood departed.  She did not say to
+herself, "_Here_ is understanding," but she felt it.  A sudden warmth
+possessed her, and that other self of hers, so long banished--the
+Other-Sheila of dreams and visions--suddenly looked out of her eyes.
+
+"A constitutional?" inquired Peter.  And then, to her nod, "May I go
+with you?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Peter, do!  Let's have a good old-time talk!  Let's play I'm
+young again!"
+
+Peter grimaced: "You?  You're still a child!  But _I_--!  It's a
+sensitive subject with me nowadays--that of youth."
+
+"It needn't be," laughed Sheila.  "You've discovered the fountain of
+eternal youth."
+
+And indeed, Peter at forty-six had changed curiously little from the
+Peter of twenty-eight.  Still slender and of an indolent grace, his
+aspect of youth had wonderfully persisted.  And having passed his life
+far more in contemplation than in struggle, his face matched his figure
+with a freshness rare to middle years.  He was, it must be admitted, a
+convincing argument in favor of laziness--except for the expression of
+his eyes; they had something of the look of Sheila's; their gaze seemed
+turned inward upon a tragedy of unfulfillment.  And unfulfilled, in
+very truth, was all the promise of Peter's attainments; of his
+exceptional parts.  He was still teaching rhetoric to little girls at
+the Shadyville Seminary, and, because he had not married, he was still
+leading cotillions.  He read his Theocritus as of old; he called often
+upon Mrs. Caldwell; sometimes he had an accidental meeting with Sheila,
+such as this.  So his years had passed; too smoothly to age him; too
+barrenly to content or enrich him in any sense.  No one appeared to see
+his pathos, but pathos was there.
+
+He fell into step with Sheila and they tramped onward together in the
+cool, bright air, talking with the happy fluency which they always had
+for each other.  And though Sheila said nothing of her problem, her
+restlessness, she felt all the while the comfort of her companion's
+understanding sympathy--for anything that she might choose to tell him.
+
+The road rose before them, a gradual, steady ascent; they reached its
+crest just as the sun grew low and vivid.  A glow was upon the autumn
+fields on either hand; tranquility and silence seemed to be everywhere;
+tranquility and silence except for a weird crooning that now floated to
+them, a crooning indescribably mournful.  And then they espied,
+crouching down at the roadside and almost at their elbows, a creature
+as weird and mournful as the sound.
+
+"Crazy Lisbeth," whispered Sheila.
+
+Lisbeth it was, Lisbeth grown old and more pitiful than ever; a ragged,
+unkempt being--yet strangely lifted above the sordidness of her rags
+and her beggar's life by her insanity.  Long ago she had ceased to work
+at all, her poor brain having become incapable of any continuous
+effort, however simple.  But she had resisted the obvious havens of
+asylum and almshouse, and contrived to live on in liberty by aid of the
+precarious charity of those who had once employed her.  She made her
+home in any deserted hovel that she could seize upon, going from one to
+another in a sad progress of destitution.  And whenever the days were
+fine, she still roamed the countryside, a desire upon her that would
+not let her rest, though her memory of her dead husband and child was
+now so vague and blurred that she no longer consciously sought them.
+To-day the desire that so tormented her was allayed.  For she held
+something in her arms, something that she rocked gently as she crooned.
+
+Sheila went a step nearer, but Lisbeth did not look up or appear aware
+of her presence.  She was not aware of anything in the world but the
+treasure within her arms.  Watching, Sheila's eyes filled with quick
+tears and her throat ached with a pity almost unbearable.  For the
+thing in Lisbeth's arms was a battered doll, and the crooning was a
+lullaby.
+
+Very softly Sheila turned to Peter.  "Let us go back," she said.  "She
+hasn't seen us--she mustn't see us.  We must not wake her from her
+dream.  It's a doll she's rocking, and she's dreaming--she's dreaming
+it's a child."
+
+They started back without speaking, hushed and saddened by what they
+had seen of another's tragedy; and as they went, Sheila was thinking of
+the occasion in her childhood when she had pretended to be Lisbeth's
+little daughter.  It had happened so long ago, but in all the years
+since then Lisbeth had been intent on the one dream, the one hope--that
+of motherhood.  All definite remembrance of the child she had borne and
+lost was gone from her clouded brain, but the instinct and desire of
+motherhood had remained; it had been life to her.  Her mind, flickering
+like a will-o'-the-wisp from one uncompleted thought to another, had
+been steadfast enough in that; her heart, detached from every human
+tie, had never faltered in its impulse of maternity.  The tears filled
+Sheila's eyes again, filled and overflowed so that Peter gave an
+exclamation of concern and dismay.
+
+"Poor Lisbeth!" she murmured.  "Poor thing!  And I who have my child am
+discontented.  What is the matter with me?"
+
+It was the question she had put to Ted long ago--after that other
+episode of Lisbeth--and he had been as bewildered as she.  But there
+was no bewilderment in the glance that met hers now.  Nevertheless,
+Peter did not answer her directly.  But after awhile he said musingly:
+
+"A bird's wings may be clipped, but its heart can't be changed.
+Always--always--it is mad to fly!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Mrs. Caldwell had grown very fragile that autumn; not as if she were
+ill, but rather as if she were gradually and gently relaxing her hold
+on life.  As yet no one but Peter had realized the change in her, but
+to him it was sadly evident, and he visited her oftener than ever,
+taking all he could of a friendship that would soon be his no longer.
+He had stopped to see her on his way home from the seminary, the day
+after his walk with Sheila, and it was upon Sheila that their talk
+finally turned.
+
+"I had a stroll with her yesterday afternoon," Peter remarked.  "It's
+rare luck for me to get any of her time nowadays.  Marriage swallows
+women terribly, doesn't it?"
+
+"Sheila's marriage has certainly swallowed her," admitted Mrs.
+Caldwell.  "I'm fond of Ted--really very fond of him, in fact--but I've
+always expected marriage to swallow his wife.  He's that sort of man."
+
+"You think he demands so much of her then?  I'd felt that it was the
+boy who stood between Sheila and all her old life--her old self."
+
+"Ah, but isn't that just the way Ted has her so utterly--through the
+boy?"
+
+Peter shook his head: "There's something I don't understand.  I
+understand _her_--to the soul!  But there's something in her life I
+don't understand.  I'm sure Ted's good to her.  I'm sure they love each
+other.  But she's not satisfied, Mrs. Caldwell.  The trouble is that
+she wants to write--and she doesn't.  I can't understand why she
+doesn't.  When Eric was a baby, it was natural enough that she should
+give up everything for him; but now it's unreasonable, it's absurd,
+that she doesn't take up her work again.  And I can't tell her so--well
+as I know the value of the gift she's wasting.  She isn't frank with
+me.  I can only talk to her about the matter in metaphors."
+
+"She isn't frank with me either, Peter.  But I'm a little more informed
+about the situation than you are.  Sheila was writing a story when
+Eric's nurse, taking advantage of not being overlooked, exposed him to
+scarlet fever.  That, I'm confident, is somehow responsible for
+Sheila's giving up her work."
+
+Peter's face flushed darkly: "Do you think Ted reproached her for that?
+Do you think he blamed her?"
+
+"No--I'm sure he didn't.  He was terribly, terribly sorry for her.  Ted
+is capable of generosity at times, Peter--I'm not fond of him for
+nothing!--and he was generous then.  But of course Sheila reproached
+herself.  I can imagine what she suffered, and how bitterly she
+censured herself.  I can imagine, too, that she's been atoning ever
+since.  It would be so like her to atone with her whole life for a
+mistake, an accident.  If she had married another man--it wouldn't have
+happened."
+
+"The mistake, the accident, wouldn't have happened?"
+
+"Ah, that might have happened in any case.  I meant the atonement."
+
+"But," objected Peter, "you said Ted did not blame her.  How, then,
+could he be responsible?"
+
+"He could let the atonement go on!  He isn't a subtle person, but I
+believe he's divined that, and let it continue.  I knew, before Sheila
+married him, that he would not care for her art.  I knew that he would
+resent any vital interest she might have outside of her marriage.  And
+knowing this, I've concluded that when her conscience worked along the
+line of his own wishes, it was too much for him; he simply couldn't
+help taking the advantage circumstances had offered him."
+
+"Yet you say he is capable of generosity!"
+
+"Capable of generosity _at times_, Peter.  And so he is.  Most of us
+have our generosities and our meannesses.  Ted's like the rest of us in
+both respects.  The real trouble is that he's the wrong man for Sheila.
+If she had married you, the same accident might have happened, but the
+atonement wouldn't.  For _you_ would have _wanted_ her to write; you
+would have made her feel it wrong _not_ to write.  It's not that you're
+a better man than Ted, either; it's that you're a better man for
+Sheila.  You ought to have married her, my dear.  I meant you to marry
+her!"
+
+Peter rose hastily from his chair and walked to the window, standing
+there with his back to Mrs. Caldwell.  Very rigidly he stood, his hands
+at his side, tightly closed.  When he finally turned again into the
+room, his face was white.
+
+"Why do you tell me that now--now that it's too late?" he asked.  And
+his voice shook with the question.
+
+At something in that white face of his, at something in his unsteady
+voice, Mrs. Caldwell grew very gentle: "Because I'm a blundering old
+woman, Peter dear.  But, since I have blundered, let us talk frankly.
+I did intend you to marry Sheila.  I plotted and planned for it from
+the time she was a little girl in your rhetoric class.  I believed that
+in a marriage with you lay her chance to be both a happy and a
+wonderful woman.  And then--Ted married her instead!  But there's still
+something you can do for her.  You can watch over her when I'm gone,
+Peter.  You can put out a saving hand now and then, if you see she
+needs it.  When I'm dead--and that will be soon, my dear--you'll be the
+only person in the world who understands her.  If I can feel that
+you'll always be there ready to help her, I can die in peace.  Bottled
+up genius is a dangerous thing.  Sometimes I am afraid for Sheila!  But
+if you'll promise to watch over her for me, I can die with my heart at
+rest."
+
+"There is nothing I would not do for you or for her!" he said.
+
+"I know that, Peter.  What wonder that I had my dreams about you?"
+
+"They were dreams, just dreams," he responded, and now he was speaking
+more easily.  "I wasn't the right man for Sheila after all.  If I had
+been, she would have realized it; she wouldn't have married some one
+else."
+
+"How could she realize it--at twenty?  And she was barely twenty when
+she married.  Peter, there's a moment in a girl's life when,
+consciously or not, her whole being, soul and body, cries out for love.
+And if a man is at hand then--any presentable man--to answer, '_I_ am
+love,' she believes him.  That moment came to Sheila--and Ted was
+there!"
+
+"Oh," cried Peter, "Oh, surely there was more to it than that!  Surely
+there was real love!"  And when she did not answer, he repeated
+earnestly, "Surely there was real love!"
+
+"You plead for Ted?" asked Mrs. Caldwell with a touch of irony.
+
+"I plead for her.  Ted doesn't matter, and I don't matter.  But
+_Sheila_--Oh, I can't bear that she should have only a second-rate
+thing, an imitation.  I can't bear that."
+
+"She thinks it's real love she feels for Ted.  And as long as she
+thinks so, Peter, she'll be happy.  What we have to do for her--what
+you have to do for her when I'm gone--is to keep her thinking that.  It
+isn't her baffled gift I worry about; it's the discontent her gift may
+rouse in her; the awful _vision_ it may bring her.  I see so clearly
+how she was married--and she must _never_ see!  If ever you find her
+beginning to see, you must blindfold her somehow.  I've often thought
+that women should be born blind--or that their eyes should be bandaged
+at birth."
+
+"Horrible!" exclaimed Peter.
+
+"No--_kind_!  All the creatures of our love would be beautiful then;
+all the circumstances of our little destinies noble and splendid.  We'd
+create them so in our own minds, and disillusionment could never touch
+us."
+
+"It's the truth we need, men and women," insisted Peter.
+
+"There's nothing so tragic as the truth--when it comes too late," said
+Mrs. Caldwell sadly.  "Your grandfather and I found out that.  He was
+already married, and I was on the eve of my wedding when--it happened.
+We might have run away together; ours was a real passion, Peter.  But
+people didn't do that sort of thing so readily in our young days.  They
+thought less of their individual rights then, and more of honor.  It
+seemed to us that it was sin enough ever to have realized what we felt;
+ever to have acknowledged it.  So we went on with our obligations, your
+grandfather and I.  He was a good husband, and I was a good wife.  Our
+lives were cast in pleasant lines, with dear, kindly companions, and we
+would have been happy if--if I hadn't, in a fatal hour, seen his heart
+and reflected it for him in my own eyes.  We would have been happy if I
+had been blindfolded!  As it was, we'd seen the truth, and to accept
+less was tragedy for us."
+
+"You were both free at last," said Peter.  "Why didn't you--Oh, why
+_didn't_ you--take what was left to you?"
+
+"My dear, we were already old.  Romance was still in our hearts, but we
+hadn't the courage to take it, publicly, into our lives.  We had felt a
+great love, and been brave enough to deny it.  But when we could have
+satisfied it honorably--we were afraid of the change in our lives; we
+were afraid of our children, of your father and Sheila's; we were even
+afraid of what the town would say!  In the beginning we had striven not
+to dare.  In the end we could not dare.  It is sad that we should be
+like that, isn't it, Peter?  It's sad that as the strength of our youth
+goes from us, the valor of our love should go too.  But it is so, it is
+so for all of us, my dear.  The day before your grandfather died,
+something flamed up in us again.  The courage of new life came to him,
+and he made me promise to marry him the next day.  But the next day he
+was--dead!"
+
+She fell silent, her eyes fixed broodingly upon the fire, eyes that
+looked strangely young.  Peter, silent too, was remembering that day
+before his grandfather's death; remembering Mrs. Caldwell's presence in
+the house, and the indescribable sense of some other presence also.  He
+had felt it so strongly, that other presence, that the whole house had
+seemed to him to be pervaded and thrilled by it.  His father was living
+then, and they two had spent the afternoon in the library, while Mrs.
+Caldwell had sat with his grandfather in the room above.  He had said
+to his father--he recalled it quite clearly--"I feel
+something--_something_--in the very air."  And his father had appeared
+startled and had replied, "Perhaps death is in the air."  But Peter
+knew now that it had not been death he had felt; that it had not been
+death that had filled the air as if with rushing wings and shooting
+stars and invisible, ineffable glories.  It had not been death; it had
+been love.  And glancing at Mrs. Caldwell's musing eyes, something like
+envy came into his own.  He went to her, knelt, and kissed her thin old
+hand.
+
+"After all, you _had_ love," he murmured.  And then, "I wish you had
+been my grandmother.  I _wish_ you had."
+
+"Oh, Peter!" she cried.  "Oh, Peter!  Peter!"  And suddenly her arms
+were around his neck.
+
+As she clung to him, her tears on his face and her heart's secret in
+his hands, he almost told her; he almost said what he had resolved
+never to say.  And yet he did not.
+
+"He's never loved her," concluded Mrs. Caldwell when he had gone.
+"There was a moment when he looked as if--but he's never loved Sheila.
+If he'd loved her--ever--he would have told me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Had Mrs. Caldwell seen Peter pacing the floor of his little hotel room
+that night, she would have been less certain that he did not love
+Sheila.  She had said to him, "There's nothing so tragic as the
+truth--when it comes too late!"  And it was this tragedy with which
+Peter grappled now.
+
+He had not known that he loved Sheila until Mrs. Caldwell told him that
+he should have married her; but those words had been for him a
+revelation; an illumination of the last ten years and more.  Suddenly
+he saw, as if a searchlight had been flung upon them, the innermost,
+secret depths of his own heart--saw them filled with the image of
+another man's wife.  So swiftly, so entirely without warning had
+self-knowledge dawned upon him that the cry had been wrung from him,
+"Why do you tell me this now--when it is too late?"  But after the one
+betraying exclamation, he had put all his strength into the attempt to
+conceal his discovery.  Mrs. Caldwell had spoken of the honor of her
+generation as of a thing that had not survived, in its purity, to a
+later one.  Yet Peter's sense of honor was too scrupulous to permit him
+the confession to anyone that he loved another's wife.  To the single
+end of concealment he had set himself through the rest of that
+interview.  He had gone through it as through some nerve-racking
+nightmare, struggling for self-control as one struggles for safety in
+dreams of horrid peril.
+
+He must not admit that he loved Sheila!  He must not admit that he
+loved her!  That was what he had told himself over and over, fighting
+all the while for the mastery of his face, his voice, lest they
+proclaim what his lips did not utter.
+
+Yet in spite of the struggle, in spite of the sense of awful calamity,
+of absolute wreckage, that had descended upon him, he had been keenly,
+piteously conscious of every word that Mrs. Caldwell had said; and he
+had realized fully the impossibility and the irony of the task she had
+imposed upon him.
+
+Having failed to marry Sheila himself, he must now undertake to keep
+her in love with the man who had married her!  This was all which was
+required of him; this was _all_!  His devotion to Mrs. Caldwell had not
+faltered; but now, facing his tragedy alone and in the freedom to
+suffer, he felt a great bitterness toward his old friend for her
+request.  It seemed to him incredibly stupid that she should think for
+an instant that he, an unmarried man, could assume the post of guardian
+over a wife's love for her husband.  It implied, in the first place, an
+intimacy which Sheila was far too fine-grained to permit; for however
+confidential she might become on the subject of her work, she would
+never be confidential with him in regard to Ted.  Whatever he might
+perceive, she would never give him the opportunity to say to her, "I
+think that your affection for your husband is waning.  Let us put fresh
+fuel on the fire."
+
+It implied, too, that request of Mrs. Caldwell's, a sharing of Sheila's
+life which Shadyville would never tolerate; which his own awakened
+heart could not tolerate.  He could not be much with Sheila henceforth.
+For once, Shadyville's narrow restrictions would be right.
+
+So, he told himself, Mrs. Caldwell had been stupid.
+And--unconsciously, of course--she had been cruel.
+
+And yet--she was leaving Sheila, leaving her to an essentially alien
+companion.  What wonder that, in her passionate solicitude, she had
+reached out to the one person whose understanding sympathy she could
+count upon?  What wonder that, however unpractically, she had made an
+appeal to one whose heart she had divined better than she knew?  What
+wonder, even, that he had made her a sort of promise?  "There is
+nothing I would not do for you or Sheila!" he had said to her; and that
+was true.  There was nothing he would not do for them--if he could.
+Only--Ted himself must keep what was his own!  He had been man enough
+to win Sheila; now he must keep her!
+
+Ted had been man enough to win her; and he, Peter, had not been!  That
+was what he realized now--with measureless self-scorn.  _He_ had not
+even been man enough to know that he loved her; much less man enough to
+make her his.  And now, because he could not make her his, his life was
+charred to ashes--but his soul was an anguished, unquenchable flame.
+He had long thought that he knew the worst of himself; his
+discreditable indolence; his reluctance for effort and conquest; his
+insufficient courage to follow his emotions into poverty; and that
+negligible fineness of his which had held him back from advantages that
+he could not repay with genuine emotion.  He had known all that of
+himself, calling it his worst, and feeling a certain pride in it, too,
+as in a failure that was of more delicate fiber than the successes of
+others.  But he had never really known the worst of himself until now.
+For the worst of him was that he had not recognized the true love of
+his life when it came to him.  Those early fancies of his for girls
+whom he deemed too poor to marry--what had they been but fancies
+indeed?  He had despised himself once or twice for not committing
+himself, but what was the offense of failing a mere fancy compared to
+the offense of not recognizing the one true love when it was in his
+life?  He would have had courage enough to follow it to the world's
+end, in sharpest poverty and hardship, but he had so sheltered himself
+from any mischance in love that he had not known love when it came.
+Blind fool that he was, he had not known it when it came!
+
+Even now he could not tell just when it had come.  Looking back along
+the years, it seemed to him to have been there always, for every memory
+of Sheila, since her little girlhood, took him by the throat.
+
+He saw her as he--and Ted!--had seen her one April day when she was but
+twelve years old; a slender, black-haired, dreaming-eyed child, lying
+upon the pale, spring grass and looking up into the flowering
+cherry-tree branches above her head; a child who was herself an
+embodied poem, so akin she was to all of April's magic, to the spring's
+lovely miracles.  He saw her, too, in his class-room, eager, earnest,
+exquisitely responsive to every perception, every thought of his own; a
+little girl while he was already a man, and yet his comrade, his
+comrade in every phase of life had he but discerned and willed it!  He
+saw her as a young girl, with her pure eyes and her generous mouth and
+her sweet, slender throat; a being still untouched by life, but
+beautifully ready, touchingly desirous for life's shaping hands.  And
+he saw her as she had been yesterday, walking by his side, the woman at
+last--yet strangely immature, incomplete.  He had thought her immature
+and incomplete because she had not developed her gift.  Now there came
+to him another thought--bred of all those flashing pictures of her in
+which she seemed so much his own--the thought that she was incomplete
+because she had not really loved.
+
+It was impossible that she should really love Ted; Ted who could give
+neither comprehension nor response to the greater part of her nature.
+It was impossible!  He had felt that at the time of her marriage; he
+remembered now how resentfully!  He had felt it when Mrs. Caldwell had
+shown him--only too convincingly--how that marriage had occurred.  He
+had cried out to Mrs. Caldwell that Sheila must have loved Ted, but he
+had realized, then, that she had not.  And he realized it now.  It had
+been love's hour with her, but it had not been love.  It had not been
+love because he himself, who could have given her such a love as she
+needed, who could have compelled such a love from her, had failed her.
+Back and forth he paced in his little room; a creature caged, not by
+mere walls, but by an irreparable mistake; a creature agonized and
+helpless.  For it was too late for this vision of utter truth now.  His
+life was spoiled--and hers!
+
+Yes, he had spoiled her life!  For a little while, he forgot his own
+disaster in contemplating hers.  He had said that he was not the right
+man for her; but with all his soul and all his brain and all his blood,
+he knew that he was the right man for her.  Throughout her whole life
+she had turned to him with that simple trust which is bred of love, or
+at least of potential love, alone.  She had said to him once--long
+ago--with an innocent and tender wonder, "There is nothing I cannot
+tell you, Peter--nothing!"  And that had been true--until Ted had lured
+her into bondage.  While she had been free, there had not been a door
+in her heart or her spirit that would not have opened at his touch.
+She had been his--his for the taking!  And he had not taken her.
+
+He had left her to Ted; to Ted for whom so many doors of her nature
+must be closed forever.  He had left her to that most terrible
+loneliness of all--loneliness in a shared life.  The thoughts that she
+could not speak to Ted--how they must beat about in the prison of her
+mind; how they must cry for release, for answer!  He seemed to feel
+them against his own temples, those unuttered thoughts that were
+Sheila's very self; he seemed to feel their ache, their hunger.
+Nothing would be born of those thoughts now; that gift of expression
+which had been a part of Sheila's soul would go barren to the grave.
+This was one of the wrongs he had done her--but it was not the worst.
+
+For the worst that had befallen her through him, he told himself, was
+not that her gift had missed expression, but that she herself had
+missed the blinding glory of true love.
+
+She was immature, she was undeveloped, because he had not made her his.
+And he wanted to make her his.  Oh, my God, he wanted to make her his!
+His life was charred to ashes, but his soul was the quivering,
+torturing flame of his passion.  It would not be quenched; it would
+not, in the least, be stilled; it drove him about the shabby little
+room as if it were literally a flame from which he must try to
+escape--though he knew he could not.
+
+He had broken his heart over the disaster to Sheila's life, but as the
+night advanced and his passion flared the fiercer in hours securely
+dark and secret, self rose up within him and shrieked and cursed over
+his own disaster.
+
+He wanted her!  He was forty-six years old; not too old to love, but
+far, far too old to love calmly.  The desires of half a lifetime were
+in him, desires that had lain low and fed upon his years until, in
+their accumulated strength, they were terrible--wild beasts that tore
+him, fires that burned him to the bone.  And they were strangely
+compounded of instincts evil and lawless--when felt for another man's
+wife--and longings wholly innocent and sweet.
+
+For the first time he longed for a home.  He looked about his tiny,
+dingy room with a feeling of desolation, seeing in his mind so
+different a place--a home with her.  He longed for simple, innocent
+things--her face across the table from him at his meals; her little
+possessions scattered about with his; the sound of her step in the
+rooms around him.  And he longed to reach out in the night and touch
+her; he longed to reach out in the night and take her into his arms.
+He wanted--and now soul and flesh merged in one flame--he wanted her to
+bear him a child.
+
+Back and forth he paced, his nails digging into his palms, his teeth
+cutting his lips, driven by the flame that could never be extinguished,
+never be satisfied.  And all the while, he pictured her in his arms; he
+pictured her with his child at her breast.
+
+Then, suddenly--and quite as plainly as if he were in the room--he saw
+_Ted's_ child, and he staggered toward a chair and fell, sobbing, into
+it.
+
+How long those horrible sobs shook him he did not know.  He felt
+himself baffled, beaten, inconceivably tortured.  He watched the gray
+morning steal into the room as one who has kept a death vigil beside
+his best-loved watches it.  A new day had come, but there was no hope
+in it for him.  There was no hope for him--though his days should be
+ever so many.
+
+He fell asleep at last, sitting there in his uncomfortable chair, with
+the cold light of the dawn creeping over his haggard face, and he
+dreamed that Ted came into the room and said, "Sheila needs you.  She
+needs you to keep alive her love for me."  And in the dream, he
+answered, as he had really answered Mrs. Caldwell the day before,
+"There is nothing I would not do for her."  So vivid was all this that
+when he opened his eyes and found Ted actually in the room, he was not
+in the least surprised.
+
+"You left your door unlocked," Ted explained apologetically, "and I
+came on in.  Mrs. Caldwell died in the night--and Sheila's gone to
+pieces.  She's been asking for you.  Would you mind going to her for a
+bit?"
+
+"There's nothing I would not do for her!" replied Peter, in the words
+of his dream.  And for an instant he thought he still dreamed.
+
+"That's awfully good of you.  You look done up, Burnett.  But if you're
+equal to it, I'll be grateful to you."
+
+As he gazed at Peter, whose face was gray still, though the morning
+light was now golden, Ted added to himself, "Poor chap!  He's growing
+old."  To him it would have been incredible that Peter's scars had been
+won in youth's own great battle--the battle with love.  A certain
+complacency stole warmly through him then, ruddy and robust as he knew
+himself to be, a complacency that led him to lay a kindly, solicitous
+hand on the older man's shoulder; and so intent he was upon his
+self-satisfied kindliness that he did not see Peter wince at the touch.
+
+"You do look done up, Burnett.  Maybe I ought not to ask you----"
+
+But Peter cut him short.  "I'd do anything for Sheila," he repeated.
+
+After all, this was left to him, Peter reflected; it was left to him to
+do things for Sheila.  And perhaps he would find nothing she needed of
+him impossible.  The love that had been so dark with the dark and
+secret hours could have its white vision, too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Peter had felt that he could not be much with Sheila henceforth; that
+neither his own heart nor conventional Shadyville's standards would
+permit it.  But Sheila herself ordained otherwise, and under the
+circumstances of her bereavement, Peter could but obey her.
+
+Never had Sheila been so lonely as in the weeks immediately following
+Mrs. Caldwell's death.  Whatever reserves of speech had existed between
+the two in these latter years, there had been no reserve of feeling, of
+comprehension.  Close friends they had always been; and if Sheila was
+alone in a shared life, so far as her marriage was concerned, she had
+had a satisfying refuge in her grandmother's sympathetic companionship.
+Now, with that companionship lost to her, she began to feel, as she had
+never done before, the limitations of her marriage.  Her nervous
+restlessness increased and sharpened to a positive hunger which Ted's
+affection and compassion were powerless to alleviate.  In her loss and
+sorrow he could do nothing for her, earnestly as he tried.  It was as
+if he could not reach her, and she realized it with amazement.  If he
+had not compelled from her the greatest passion of which she was
+capable, he had certainly won love of a kind from her, love warm and
+sincere, and their life together had bound her to him with such ties of
+loyalty and habit and common experience, with such dear memories of
+young tenderness and joy, that she had never doubted the completeness
+of their union.  That he could not reach her now, that he could bring
+no peace to her in her trouble, seemed to her unexplainable--until she
+recalled the fact that he and Mrs. Caldwell, though fond of each other,
+had not been really near each other in spirit.  Theirs had been a
+pleasant, light affection, an amiable, surface relation, bred of the
+accident of their connection rather than of any genuine attraction
+between them.  Remembering this, Sheila assured herself of its being
+the reason that Ted could not comfort her for Mrs. Caldwell's death.
+There was so much in her grandmother that he had never seen, so much of
+which he could not speak at all.
+
+Peter, on the other hand, had been almost as dear to her grandmother as
+she herself had been--almost as dear and quite as near.  He had a
+thousand sweet and intimate memories of Mrs. Caldwell, and he suffered,
+in the loss of her, a grief akin to Sheila's own.  So to Peter she
+turned.  With the perfect unconsciousness of self that a child might
+have shown, she made her demands upon him, upon his pity, upon his
+time; and if he did not come often to see her, she sent for him.
+
+She was really strangely unworldly, and in this renewed comradeship
+with her old friend, she saw nothing for anyone to criticize.  Neither
+did she recognize in it any danger for Peter or herself.  Peter had
+always been there in her life, an accepted and unexciting fact.  She
+did not allow for change in him or herself in the ten years of her
+marriage, years during which they had met hut seldom and casually.  She
+had simply resumed the way of her girlhood, her childhood, with him,
+never considering that it might now be surcharged with peril for them;
+never for an instant fearing that she might some day find herself
+unable to do without him.  She needed him; he was at hand; and she
+demanded fulfillment of her need.  He brought her the consolation that
+Ted could not bring her; he gave her aching heart peace.  Repeatedly he
+displayed a disposition to efface himself, after the first days of her
+mourning were over, but she would not have it so.  In her innocence she
+still insisted on his frequent presence, and was sometimes puzzled and
+hurt that he evinced so little gladness in being with her.  That he had
+the look of one harassed almost beyond endurance, she did finally
+perceive, but she understood it not at all, and at last dismissed it
+from her mind as something outside her province.  Men had worries,
+worries about money and trivial things like that, she reflected.  Peter
+was probably bothered about something of the sort, something that did
+not greatly matter after all.  A real trouble he would have brought to
+her; of that she was sure.
+
+So the winter passed in a close companionship between them, and it was
+to Peter's honor that she knew neither her own heart nor his at the end
+of it.
+
+Ted it was, and not Peter, who made the situation impossible of
+continuance.  Ted it was who plucked from it, at least for Sheila, its
+concealing innocence.  He had been cordial to Peter; at first he had
+even been grateful to him, seeing Sheila comforted by him.  But after a
+time he grew tired of Peter's face at his dinner table two or three
+times a week; he wearied of finding Peter in his little sitting-room
+whenever he came home particularly early; he sickened, with a sudden
+and profound distaste, of having Peter drawn into all the intimate
+concerns and happenings of his own and Sheila's life.  Not for a moment
+did he suspect Sheila of any sentimental inclinations toward Peter, for
+he fully appreciated and trusted her fidelity.  But he thought her
+behavior foolish and imprudent, and in spite of his trust in her, he
+_was_ jealous of this friendship which so absorbed and satisfied her.
+Why should she require a man's friendship at all?  Why should she
+require anyone but himself and Eric?  And having once questioned thus,
+his patience speedily gave way, and a climax ensued.
+
+"Sheila," he said to her one day, a day when he had come home to
+discover Peter reading Maeterlinck to her, "Sheila, why on earth do you
+have Burnett here so much?"
+
+"Because he's my friend--my dear old friend," answered Sheila, her eyes
+clear with the surprise of a clean conscience.
+
+"Wouldn't a woman friend do as well?"  Ted was trying to hold himself
+in check, but something in his words or his tone made Sheila stare, and
+he repeated, with a touch of asperity, "Wouldn't a woman friend do as
+well?"
+
+"The only woman friend I have whom I really care for is Charlotte--and
+she won't be here until April."
+
+"Then you'd better wait for her.  You'd better wait for her--and see
+less of Burnett."
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked.  And now her puzzled eyes grew
+steel-cold with intuitive resentment.
+
+"I mean that you'll get yourself talked about if you go on as you're
+doing at present.  A married woman can't be so much with a man not her
+husband _without_ being talked about."
+
+"That is absurd!" she retorted, and her voice was as cold as her eyes;
+it put miles between them.  "Peter has always been my friend.  He's
+been like one of my family to me all my life.  He's more than ever like
+a relative to me now that all my own people are dead.  It's absurd to
+suggest that our friendship could be so misinterpreted.  It's _low_ to
+think of such a thing!"
+
+"Low or not, it's _wise_ to think of such things.  You'll get yourself
+talked about if I let you.  But I'm your natural protector, and I
+_won't_ let you.  I forbid you to have Burnett here as you've been
+doing.  _I forbid you_!"
+
+"I am to tell him that?" she inquired scornfully.
+
+"You're to tell him nothing.  He'll soon stop coming if he's not asked.
+The fact is, I don't believe he's wanted to come so often.  You're the
+one to blame, Sheila.  You've invited him--you've sent for him when he
+hasn't come of his own accord."  And then, as they faced each other in
+their unaccustomed hostility, Ted added, with a final flare of wrath,
+"_You've run after him--that's what you've done_!"
+
+As if he had struck her, Sheila's face went livid, then scarlet.  She
+opened her lips to answer, but no sound came.  So, for an instant, they
+looked at each other, silent, motionless, transfixed by this horror
+that had risen between them, this horror of anger--almost of hate.
+Then Ted took a step toward her; already he was contrite: "I didn't
+mean that.  I lost my temper and went too far.  Forgive me, Sheila!"
+
+But she did not say that she forgave him.  She only said: "Never speak
+to me of this again--never in all our lives!"  And then she turned from
+him and walked out of the room, leaving him to feel himself far more at
+fault than he had ever believed her to be.
+
+But though her pride, her insulted innocence, had carried her unbroken
+through the interview, she was in reality cruelly humiliated.  That
+final sentence of Ted's anger--"You've run after him--that's what
+you've done!"--rang in her ears for days afterward, shaming her as only
+the very proud can be shamed.  It was not true of her, she told
+herself; it was not true--but it was hideous that it could have been
+said of her nevertheless.  That Peter had never thought it of her, she
+was confident.  It was impossible that Peter should misunderstand her
+in anything.  But she dreaded seeing him with the accusation in her
+mind.  She could not meet him now without an acute and painful
+self-consciousness.  Her happy friendship with him was changed, was
+forever spoiled.  At last she wrote to him, telling him not to come to
+see her for awhile--not to come until she should bid him.  After she
+had sent the note, however, she suffered more than before, feeling that
+she had brought constraint between them, that she had suggested to
+Peter, by her request that he stay away from her, the same unworthy
+thoughts about them that Ted had flung at her.  Far, far worse than
+meeting him was the growing certainty that she had made him
+self-conscious about their friendship, too; that she had shown it to
+him as possible of degrading misconstruction.  For he would read from
+her note, carefully though she had refrained from reasons or
+explanations, just what had happened.  Peter would never comfortably
+miss a thing like that; sensitive and subtle to a degree, he could
+never be spared by mere omissions, by lack of plain and definite
+statement.
+
+It was unbearable that such a situation should have come about.  Not
+for a moment did she forgive Ted for creating it.  But she lived on
+with him in cool outward harmony, realizing that in marriage one may
+have to endure hurt and disappointment, and being much too high-bred a
+woman to take her revenge in petty breaches of courtesy.
+
+That she was disappointed in Ted, as well as hurt by him, she now
+admitted to herself for the first time.  It is curious how some final
+and serious issue between two people living together will cast a light
+on all the past; will disclose anew, and more flagrantly, lapses and
+shortcomings and injuries that had once seemed trifles and been ignored
+or condoned or forgotten.  Thus Sheila now looked backward along the
+years of her marriage and saw how Ted had failed her in understanding,
+in generosity, in any selfless consideration and love.  Small instances
+of his selfishness recurred to her and promptly became as signposts
+directing her to greater ones.  His care for his creature comfort, his
+innocent vanities, his rather smug pleasure in his success--things
+which she had smiled over with a tender lenience--served now to remind
+her that he had never taken any account of her preferences, of her
+independent possibilities, of her talent; that he had not, at any time,
+made the least effort to comprehend or share her interests.  He had
+used her in his own work, and he had dismissed hers with a wave of his
+hand, as he might have pushed away a child's toy.  Whatever he had
+discerned of her mental quality and power, he had regarded only in its
+relation to himself; if she had been wonderful for him, she had been
+wonderful as his helpmate, not as the individual.  He had wanted her to
+be wife and mother only, and he had accomplished that.  With anything
+else in her nature, in her life, he had had neither tolerance nor
+patience nor sympathy.
+
+Of course she went too far in her arraignment of him.  She forgot, in
+her sudden bitterness, the warmth and kindness of his heart, the
+staunchness and integrity of his character, his desire and attempt to
+shield her from all things harsh and hard--even though he shielded her
+in his own particular way!--and the very real sincerity of his love for
+her.  She forgot that, by his own standards, his own conception of a
+husband's duty, he had honestly and steadfastly done his best for her.
+She saw her whole life fed to his selfishness as to an insatiable
+monster; and most terrible of all, she knew that she saw too late.
+Their marriage was made.  As a husband Ted was formed and could not be
+changed.  If, in the beginning, she had had a clearer conception of his
+nature; if she had had a stronger sense of her own rights as an
+individual and the courage to assert those rights, everything would
+have been different.  She would never have been subdued to mere
+wifehood and motherhood if that had been.  She would never--she saw it
+now!--she would never have made that compact of renunciation with God!
+
+It was to the matter of that compact she came at last--inevitably.  And
+she said to herself, over and over now, that she would never have made
+it if she had known herself and Ted better in the beginning.  She would
+never have made it because she would not have seen her work as a guilty
+thing.
+
+Nor had her work been a guilty thing!  No woman watched her child every
+moment; at least no woman did so who could have the relief of a nurse.
+She might as readily have been paying an afternoon call or playing
+bridge when Eric was exposed to scarlet fever.  It was just an accident
+that she had been writing then instead of doing any one of a dozen
+other things of which Ted would have approved.  Yes, it was an accident
+that she had been writing then, she repeated to herself.  But back of
+that accident had been her morbid conscience and Ted's
+narrow-mindedness; and together they had translated it into a crime.
+Thus she had been driven into the compact with God for Eric's life--the
+compact that had ruined her own life.  Her morbid conscience and Ted's
+selfish narrow-mindedness had wrought together for the frustration of
+her gift, of her happiness.  And it was upon Ted that she put far the
+greater share of the blame.
+
+Oddly enough, though she saw her husband so plainly now; though she
+censured his faults so unsparingly and regretted so passionately her
+own mistakes with him--mistakes of weakness, of cowardly submission,
+she told herself--she did not, even now, take the final step of
+considering what might have been if she had not married him; of what
+might have been if she had married some one altogether more congenial
+and unselfish.
+
+It was Charlotte who thought of that for her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+It was toward the end of April that Charlotte arrived in Shadyville.
+She had never lived in Shadyville since her first flight from it to
+boarding-school.  After school had come New York and Paris, where she
+had studied singing; and for the last five years she had been on the
+concert stage, filling engagements all over the continent--much to the
+distress of her family who, though inordinately proud of her, could not
+understand why any woman with plenty of money at her disposal should
+work.  Charlotte had always decided things for herself, however, and
+once convinced that her happiness lay in the active pursuit of her art,
+no one could dissuade her from it.  Certainly no penniless woman could
+have worked harder or with more zest than she.  Musician to her
+finger-tips, and with a remarkably beautiful, silver-clear soprano
+voice, she had also the modern woman's desire to earn her living; to
+justify her existence by doing something well.  An independent and a
+busy life was necessary to her, and it was impossible to see her
+without realizing that she had chosen wisely for herself.
+
+To Shadyville she had always seemed a brilliant figure; now, as a
+successful professional singer, she was a dazzling one.  Even Sheila
+was a little awed by her, although the two had kept up their
+childhood's friendship during all these years of separation and of such
+diverse interests.  Every now and then Charlotte descended on
+Shadyville for a brief visit to her parents, and then she invariably
+took up with Sheila their dropped threads and wove a new flower into
+the pattern of their affection.  On this occasion she came to Sheila
+with more than her usual warmth, divining what a grief Mrs. Caldwell's
+death must have been to her, and she watched her friend, as the days
+passed, with an increasing solicitude.
+
+To all appearances everything was well with the Kent household.  Sheila
+and Ted seemed to be on the best of terms; Eric had grown into a fine,
+healthy, handsome little lad, particularly fond of his proud mother;
+prosperity, as Shadyville measured it, fairly shone from the charming
+and well-ordered little house.  Certainly all appeared to be well with
+Sheila, yet Charlotte was not satisfied about her.  Six months had
+passed since Mrs. Caldwell's death, and though Charlotte allowed for
+the sincerity and depth of Sheila's mourning, she rejected a sorrow
+already somewhat softened by time as sufficient cause for the change
+she found in Sheila.  There was something else, something of an
+altogether different nature, that was responsible for the hunger of
+Sheila's eyes, the restlessness of her manner.  Charlotte remembered,
+with a rush of indignation, Sheila's unfulfilled ambitions, her wasted
+gift.  That was the trouble; of course that baffled gift of Sheila's
+was the trouble.  And something must be done about it.  She was with
+Sheila when she came to this conclusion, and immediately she acted on
+it, impulsive, decisive creature that she was.
+
+"What of your writing, Sheila dear?  I can't recall your speaking of it
+to me for a long, long while."
+
+"Oh--_that's_ over!" replied Sheila, with unhappy emphasis.
+
+"But why?"
+
+It was a warm May afternoon and they were sitting on Sheila's veranda.
+Out on the lawn Eric and another boy of his own age frolicked about
+like a couple of animated puppies.  Sheila pointed to them:
+
+"You remember what Mrs. North said--that a woman couldn't be both
+mother and artist?"
+
+"I told you that wasn't true!"
+
+"It has been true for me, Charlotte."
+
+"It needn't be now.  While Eric was a baby, it may have been true for
+you, but there's no reason in the world why it should be now."
+
+"Well, it _is_ true for me now--it will be true for me always.  And
+yet----"
+
+And then, because disillusion and bitterness were strong upon Sheila,
+Charlotte got the whole story out of her, from the first revelation of
+Ted's attitude toward a married woman's art to the final climax of
+Eric's illness, her self-blame and her renunciation of her work.  Even
+while she told it, she knew that she would reproach herself afterward
+for disloyalty to Ted, but the sheer relief of confiding it to a
+sympathetic listener was too much for her scruples.
+
+"I never heard of anything so outrageous in my life!" exclaimed
+Charlotte, when the story was ended.  "It's barbarous--_barbarous_!"
+
+Not a word of her final clear vision of her husband, her belated
+disappointment in him, had Sheila uttered.  For that at least she had
+been too loyal.  But already she repented having betrayed his views in
+regard to the married woman-artist.  So well she knew what Charlotte
+must think of them, indeed, that she now felt impelled to a defense:
+
+"Of course it hasn't been Ted's fault--you mustn't feel that he's to
+blame."
+
+"Mustn't I?" asked Charlotte drily.  And then, "My dear girl, he _has_
+been to blame--absolutely, unforgivably to blame.  It makes me wild to
+think of his narrow-minded, pig-headed selfishness.  And that you
+should have given in to it--!  Oh, Sheila, Sheila, where is your
+independence, your sense of your rights as an individual, a human
+being?  Are you a cave woman--that you should be just your husband's
+docile chattel?"  And Charlotte sprang from her chair and began to pace
+the veranda, urged by the fierce energy of her anger.
+
+"I said it had been Ted's fault--this spoiling of your life," she went
+on presently, "but it's been your fault, too, Sheila.  It's been your
+fault for giving in to him."
+
+"But," pleaded Sheila, "I didn't give in to _Ted_.  I gave in to
+circumstances.  Seeing that Eric was ill--that he might die--because
+I'd neglected him in order to write was what conquered me.  That was
+what drove me to the vow to renounce my work--if Eric was spared."
+
+Charlotte came and stood before her then: "Sheila, you know as well as
+I do that you'd never have made that vow if the sense of Ted's
+disapproval, his condemnation, hadn't been working on you.  You know
+that it was merely an accident that you were writing when Eric was
+exposed to scarlet fever.  You know that if you _hadn't_ been writing,
+you would have been reading or sleeping or paying calls, and that if
+you'd been doing any of those things, you wouldn't have thought
+yourself guilty because you'd taken an hour off from the hardest job a
+woman has--the mother-job--even though Eric did suffer by it.  You know
+you'd have recognized that there are just so many cruel mischances in
+life, and that Eric's illness was one of them.  You know that it was
+_Ted_, back of circumstances, that influenced you to make your vow of
+renunciation!"
+
+It was what Sheila had so recently told herself, and she could not
+refute it now.  Looking into her downcast, acquiescent face, Charlotte
+continued: "As for the vow--that's nonsense!  It's mere morbid,
+hysterical nonsense.  God never exacted it of you.  He's never held you
+to it, you may be sure.  If He's wanted anything of you, He's wanted
+you to use the talent He's given you.  If you've been at all at fault,
+it's for wasting your talent.  You _have_ wasted it--you've wasted it
+to please Ted.  You've wasted it because you've allowed yourself to be
+intimidated and bullied by Ted.  That's the whole trouble!"
+
+"Oh, Charlotte--," began Sheila.
+
+"I've spoken the truth," insisted Charlotte firmly.  "You can't deny a
+word I've said."  And then, flinging out her hands with a gesture of
+despair, "The worst of it is that it's too late to help matters now.
+You'll go on in the same way--letting Ted bully you--to the end of your
+days.  There's never been any chance for you with him.  Your chance was
+with Peter Burnett.  It's Peter you should have married!"
+
+"You must not say that," objected Sheila quickly--and a little
+unsteadily.  "You must not say that, Charlotte.  It's ridiculous.  And
+it's dreadful, too.  Ted and I love each other--we _do_ love each
+other!"
+
+But Charlotte was no longer inclined for argument.  She answered
+Sheila's protest with a smile--no more.  Suddenly she seemed to be
+through with the subject of Sheila's life, and perching upon the
+railing of the veranda, she looked off into green distances with a gaze
+singularly vague and pensive for her.  Sheila watched her admiringly,
+noting her erect slenderness, her spirited, keenly intelligent face,
+the clear blue of her eyes, the warm gold of her hair in the sunshine.
+
+"It's you Peter should marry," said Sheila lightly, when the silence
+between them had lengthened uncomfortably.  "You'd be just the wife for
+him, Charlotte!"
+
+Charlotte turned toward her, and there was no mistaking her earnestness
+and her sincerity.  "I'd marry him to-morrow!" she cried.
+
+"Oh, Charlotte, I never _dreamed--my dear_!----"
+
+"Don't be sorry for me," Charlotte interrupted warningly.  "Don't be
+sorry for me.  I may marry him yet!"
+
+And a moment later, she was swinging down the street, as serene and
+independent as if she had never known--much less, confessed--the pain
+of unrequited love.
+
+As Sheila looked after her, she noticed again the gold of her hair, the
+beautiful, free carriage of her shoulders--and now she felt no pleasure
+in them.  Rather was she conscious of a sharp little pang of envy, and
+with it, sounded the echo of Charlotte's last words--"I may marry him
+yet!"  Charlotte was a splendid, gallant creature; she _might_ marry
+Peter.  And then Sheila, feeling that envious pang again and still more
+sharply, demanded of herself in swift terror: "Am I jealous?--_am I
+jealous of Charlotte because Peter may come to love her_?"
+
+Oh, it couldn't be that!--it couldn't!  It was impossible that she
+should be jealous about any man but her husband.  For she and Ted loved
+each other--they _did_ love each other, whatever had been their
+mistakes with each other.
+
+She called Eric to her, and he left his playmate on the lawn and came,
+smiling.  She caught him to her, with a sort of frightened passion:
+
+"Kiss mother, darling!"
+
+He looked back over his shoulder at the boy who was waiting for him.
+"With him there?" he inquired reluctantly, already shy of caresses
+before his own sex.
+
+But Sheila, usually the most considerate and tactful of mothers, amazed
+him now by ignoring his hint.  Still with that terrified passion, she
+kissed him not once, but many times--her son and Ted's!  Her son and
+Ted's!  Then, leaving him standing there in his astonished
+embarrassment, she went into the house and up to her own room, there to
+sit and stare before her at things unseen, but all too visible to her.
+
+So Ted had been right after all; right in objecting to her being so
+much with Peter.  It _had_ been unwise; moreover, it had been wrong,
+all that companionship of the past winter.  For it had brought her to
+this; it had brought her so to depend upon Peter that she could not be
+happy unless he was often with her; it had brought her so to care for
+him that she could not think of him in relation to another woman
+without jealousy.  It had brought her to this--and she was a wife and
+mother!
+
+She had been ashamed when Ted had told her that she would get herself
+talked about in connection with Peter, and still more ashamed when he
+had accused her of "running after" Peter.  But that had been an
+endurable shame, for at the heart of it had been self-respect, the
+indestructible pride of perfect innocence.  But the shame that surged
+over her now was the agonizing shame of guilt, the shame of utter
+self-scorn, self-loathing.  She--a wife, a mother!--cared for a man not
+her husband; cared for him in a way that made it torment to her to
+think of his marrying another woman.  Hideous and unbelievable though
+it was, she cared for him so much.  She had cared for him even while
+she was declaring to Charlotte--and later, to herself--that she loved
+her husband.  She cared for Peter--even now, facing the truth and
+admitting it, she would not use the word, love--she cared for Peter,
+and she was Ted's wife, the mother of Ted's son.  Not even the touch of
+that little son had been powerful to blind her.  She cared!--she
+_cared_!
+
+For a moment her face went down into her hands, and the hopeless grief
+of unfortunate love mastered her, tore her throat with its sobs, burned
+her eyes with its bitter tears.  But presently her head was up again,
+and with shaking fingers she was bathing her eyes, concealing as best
+she could the ravages of that instant's surrender.  She had no rights
+in this thing; she had not even the right to suffer.  Ted or Eric might
+come in at any moment, and they must not see that she had wept; she was
+theirs.
+
+She had no right to suffer.  There could be only one right course in
+this; to fight, to crush out of herself what she was not free to feel,
+to put between herself and Peter some barrier that could not be
+destroyed.  There was Ted, there was Eric--they should have been
+barriers enough.  But they had not been barriers enough, and there must
+be another.  There must be something--some one--more, to keep her safe,
+to hold her heart, her thoughts, from this forbidden haven.  There must
+be something--some one--else--.  And then her mind leaped to Charlotte.
+Charlotte loved Peter; she had practically admitted that.  Well, she
+should marry him--as she'd said that she might do.  Though it broke her
+own heart, Charlotte should marry Peter.  She herself would arrange it.
+
+She did not pause to consider that Peter might not want to marry
+Charlotte, that he might not be happy in doing so.  She did not pause,
+yet, to question--she did not dare to question, indeed--whether Peter
+turned her own love.  She was intent upon but one end: to protect
+herself from what she felt for him, from what she would continue to
+feel for him as long as he was free.
+
+With this haste and need and fear upon her, she wrote to him, asking
+him to come to her the next afternoon.  It would be their first meeting
+since Ted's ban upon their friendship, and she realized, with fresh
+humiliation, that in spite of everything, she was glad of this chance
+to be with Peter.  She realized that she could scarcely wait until the
+morrow should bring him to her.  Because she was thus glad, she almost
+decided not to send her note after all, and then--lest she would
+not!--she hurried out and mailed it herself.
+
+Somehow she got through dinner and the evening.  She heard Eric's
+lessons and tucked him away for the night with a bedtime story and the
+kisses that, when no one was looking on, he was eager enough to
+receive.  She listened to Ted's anecdotes of the day and responded with
+a mechanical vivacity.  Then, at last, she was hidden by the night,
+freed by the night--though she lay by Ted's side.
+
+She had no right to suffer, but she did suffer now.  As Peter had done
+months before, she suffered through the darkness.  But with her there
+was no yielding to dear visions of a forbidden love, as there had been
+with him; there was no picturing of life as it might have been with
+him; no thrilling to the imaginary caresses and delights of a passion
+which, in her married self, was wholly unworthy.  Rather was the night
+a long battle with the love that it so shamed her to find within
+herself.  Thus, in this distress of her soul, she was at least spared
+the physical torture which Peter had endured.  Not for an instant was
+her love for Peter translated, in her mind, into physical terms; she
+neither imagined nor desired its touch; in her guilt there was a
+strange innocence--an innocence characteristic of her.  She would go
+through life unaware of the grosser aspects of things; under any
+circumstances, however equivocal, she would be curiously pure.  In one
+thing only did she fall now to the level of less idealistic beings; in
+spite of her struggle to the contrary, she wondered, at last, if Peter
+loved her.  She dared and stooped, in the privacy of the night, to
+wonder that.
+
+When Peter came to her the next afternoon, he found her haggard, but
+very quiet, very calm.  Beneath her calmness, however, he divined the
+stir of troubled depths, and he carefully kept to the surface; ignored
+his long banishment; took up one impersonal topic after another for her
+entertainment; and was altogether so much the safe, unromantic,
+delightful old friend of the family that, but for the hammering of her
+pulses, he would have persuaded Sheila that the distress of the past
+night was a mere, ugly dream.  But because she could not look at him
+without a catch of her breath; because she could not speak to him
+without first pausing to steady her voice; because all her tranquility
+was but desperate and painful effort, she knew the night was no dream,
+but even more of a reality than she had thought.
+
+"Peter," she said at last, with attempted lightness, "Peter, I'm going
+to meddle with your destiny."
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling at her.
+
+That smile of his almost cost her her self-control, so dear it was to
+her.  But she went on bravely enough: "I'm going to secure you a wife."
+
+He threw up his hands in dismay.  "Don't try," he pleaded.  "You could
+never find a wife to suit me!"
+
+"But I _have_ found one who's sure to suit you."
+
+"You've actually selected her?--you have her waiting for me?"
+
+She nodded, trying to smile back at him now with a deceiving gayety.
+
+"May I know who the fair lady is?"
+
+"Of course.  She's--Charlotte!  She is just the woman for you, Peter."
+
+"Never," he said promptly.  "She is charming and clever and handsome
+and kind, _but_--she's not the woman for me."
+
+"Peter"--and Sheila dropped her pretense of playfulness--"Peter, she's
+all that you need.  She'd make a great man of you."
+
+"At this late date?" he inquired a little ruefully.  "She'd make a
+great man of me at forty-six?"
+
+"Yes, she would.  Charlotte's very--strong.  She could accomplish
+anything she wished.  She'd do much for a man--with a man--if she loved
+him."
+
+"I have no reason to believe that she loves me," said Peter.
+
+"Perhaps I shouldn't tell you, but _I_ have reason to believe that--she
+loves you."
+
+He leaned forward and searchingly studied her face: "I'm sure you are
+mistaken.  But--granting that Charlotte may love me--is it for her sake
+that you want me to marry her?"
+
+"For hers--and for yours.  I want to see you in a home of your own,
+Peter--with a wife to love you, with children.  I want--I want you to
+be happy!"
+
+"I would not be happy if I married Charlotte."
+
+"Why, Peter?"
+
+"Because I do not love her."
+
+"You would come to love her."
+
+"No, Sheila--I am not free to do that."
+
+"Do you--do you love some one else?"  And her voice shook now in spite
+of her attempt to keep it firm.
+
+"Yes," he answered quietly, "I love some one else."
+
+"Some one you can--marry?"  She could not look at him, but question him
+she must.
+
+"No--not some one I can marry."
+
+The room was very still for a moment; but she seemed to hear the sorrow
+of his voice echoing and re-echoing through it.
+
+"You will get over that in time," she whispered.
+
+"I will never get over it," he answered.
+
+And now she looked at him.  She had wondered if he loved her; looking
+into his sad eyes, she knew.  A sob swelled her throat and broke from
+her lips.  And then they sprang up and faced each other.
+
+So they stood, gazing at each other.  And though they neither spoke nor
+touched each other, the heart of each was clear to the other--more
+clear, indeed, than speech or touch could have made them.  So they
+stood, looking into each other's eyes, and unbearable pain and
+unbelievable ecstasy were mingled in those few, silent moments.  Then
+the ecstasy died; the pain became cruelly intense.  And more than pain
+shone dark in Sheila's eyes; fear crouched there, and Peter saw it.
+She loved him--and she was afraid of him.  More intolerably than
+anything else, that hurt him--that she should have to be afraid of him.
+
+"Peter," she said--and her voice trembled so that he could scarcely
+understand her words, "Peter, I want you to marry Charlotte for--_for
+my sake_."  And her fear stared at him out of her eyes, stared at him
+and implored him.
+
+She was asking him to put Charlotte between them.  He realized that
+now.  She was telling him that Ted and Eric were not enough to keep
+them apart.
+
+"I will do it--or something which will answer as well," he assured her
+gently.  "You may trust me for that, Sheila."
+
+And then, still without touching her, without even looking at her
+again, he was gone.  He was gone and everything was ended for them--for
+them who had not known even the beginnings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Peter had engaged to dine with Charlotte that night, but after his talk
+with Sheila, his first impulse was to excuse himself.  It seemed to him
+impossible to get back, at once, to the safe level of everyday life, of
+commonplace affairs.  It seemed impossible, too, to meet Charlotte
+without betraying embarrassment.  But after an hour's solitude, he had
+sufficient command of himself to fill the appointment, and he appeared
+at the Davis house with all his usual placidity of manner.  After all,
+he had to go on as if nothing had happened, and it was as well, he told
+himself, to begin immediately.  That was, perhaps, the worst of secret
+disasters like his and Sheila's--that one had to go on as if nothing
+had happened; that one had to wear, from the first, a bright mask of
+concealment.  But it was, in a way, the best, too--this necessity for
+taking up tangible, practical matters, for continuing duties,
+obligations, enterprises that, perforce, diverted at least a part of
+one's mind from the contemplation of an inner tragedy.  There was
+effort in having to talk, to listen intelligently, to laugh, but there
+was relief, too, and the sense of safety that, when adrift on chaotic
+seas, one feels at the touch of something solid.  So he talked and
+listened and laughed with conscientious care.  And watching Charlotte
+across the dinner table, he considered Sheila's plea.
+
+As he had said to Sheila, he thought Charlotte clever and handsome and
+kind.  Whole-heartedly he liked and admired her; he enjoyed her; he was
+stimulated by her.  He was even prepared to admit that, if she would
+marry him, she might actually make something of him, middle-aged though
+he was.  His attainments, his really brilliant qualities of mind, were
+there to build with--and she was, by nature, a builder.  He could see
+her taking hold of his life and creating out of its hitherto negative
+stuff a thing worth while.  He could see her thus active for him and
+with him, and feel a certain pleasure in the picture.  To think of
+himself as dear to a woman like Charlotte could not but touch a man
+pleasantly and warmly.  And yet, thus touched, thus drawn, he knew
+still that his whole-hearted admiration and liking would never be
+followed by whole-hearted love.  His passion for Sheila had gone too
+deep to be effaced.  Unhappily for himself, he was not one of those
+whose heart can be enlisted sincerely more than once.  He looked across
+the table at Charlotte and noted the strong, rich gold of her hair, the
+dark, definite blue of her eyes, the gracious lines of her shoulders;
+he heard her clear, positive, courageous voice, her blithe laughter; he
+looked and listened and thought of her as his--and his heart clung to
+its dream of a woman far less compellingly vital and lovely.  Against
+Charlotte's vivid reality, he set a little ghost with a pale face and
+wistful gray eyes and a plaintive voice, a little ghost too sensitive
+to be quite strong, too shy to be self-confident and self-sufficient,
+too tender to be altogether brave; and with this very sensitiveness,
+this shyness, this uncourageous tenderness, the little ghost held him.
+She held him because her eyes were wistfully gray instead of
+triumphantly blue, because her voice was hauntingly plaintive instead
+of firmly buoyant; she held him because in her soul there was a strain
+of weakness, of timidity, of childlike helplessness and innocence that
+to him was at once piteous and exquisite.  She held him by all those
+qualities--and shortcomings--most unlike Charlotte.  He saw that
+Charlotte was, as Sheila had asserted, just the woman for a man of his
+indolent, dallying temperament; he saw that he needed such a woman.
+But he saw, too, that Sheila needed him, that she had always needed
+him, that she would always need him; and from that consciousness of her
+need he could not wrench himself free.
+
+He would never be free of his little, pale ghost.  If he married
+Charlotte, it would be for Sheila's sake.  _If_ he married
+Charlotte----!
+
+Well, he might marry Charlotte.  Sheila had said that he could, and
+perhaps she had been right.  In these later years, since Charlotte had
+been a woman, a cordial friendship had sprung up between them.
+Whenever she had been in Shadyville, he had been much with her, and in
+her absences there had been letters.  For several years, whether in
+Shadyville or away, she had been a presence in his life; they had many
+tastes and interests in common; she was kind to him--encouragingly
+kind.  It seemed probable that he could marry her; at least there was
+ground for trying to do so.  Yet how could he offer less than his best
+to a creature so fine, so honest, so loyal as he knew Charlotte to be?
+
+That something weighed on his mind, that he was observing her with
+unwonted gravity, Charlotte perceived before the dinner was over.
+
+Afterward she took him with her into the garden and they sat down there
+in the mild spring night, surrounded by flowers, regarded by
+innumerable stars.  The night, the flowers, the stars, all appeared to
+be conspiring for Charlotte.  They created an atmosphere of poetry for
+her; they threw over her a glamour that, with her obvious type of
+beauty, her downright and positive nature, she had missed.  It was as
+if the night, with its stars and flowers, were striving to invest her
+with that subtler allurement which, in Sheila, was so poignant and
+enchanting to Peter.  And instinctively Charlotte took up the night's
+cue; sat a little in shadow; spoke with unusual softness.
+
+"What have you been thinking of so seriously all evening?" she asked.
+
+"I've been wondering," said Peter, "whether a man whose heart is
+committed, in spite of himself, to a hopeless love, has any right to
+marry."
+
+Charlotte did not answer at once; she stirred, moved deeper into
+protecting shadow.  "That depends, I believe, on whether he's sure that
+the love his heart is committed to is really hopeless--will be hopeless
+always," she replied finally.
+
+"In the case I was considering--the man is sure of that."
+
+"Then he would get over his unfortunate love in time--wouldn't he?
+Ill-fated love does not often last forever.  Life--life is more
+merciful than that, isn't it?"
+
+It was his chance with her; he realized that she was giving it to
+him--giving it to him understandingly and deliberately.  He had only to
+agree that an "ill-fated" love--that his ill-fated love--would die at
+last.  But he could not take his chance like that.  He could not be
+less than honest with her.
+
+"He would never get over it altogether," he said.  "The woman he could
+not marry would always be--dearest to him.  And, granting that, would
+it be fair for him to ask another woman to take what was left of--of
+his affection?  Would it be fair to ask her to take--a spoiled life?"
+
+"She might feel that what was left of his life was well worth
+having--the woman he _could_ marry.  She might feel that--even if he
+had suffered much, missed what he supremely wanted--his life need not
+be spoiled after all.  She might feel that she could prevent its being
+spoiled.  If he were frank with her, and she felt like that about it, I
+think it would be fair for him to marry her--perfectly honorable and
+fair."
+
+"It could not be happiness for her," argued Peter.
+
+"Perhaps not.  Perhaps she could do without happiness."
+
+"That would require a great love of her," said Peter gravely, "a great
+love for a man who could not give a great love in return."
+
+"Yes," she agreed, her voice very low now, but as clear and steady as
+ever, "yes, it would require a great love from her.  But it is not
+impossible to find a woman who can feel a great love without hope of a
+full return."
+
+She was still in her sheltering shadow, but upon Peter's end of the
+garden seat the moonlight, unchecked by the trees, streamed white and
+strong.  She looked into his face, fully revealed to her now, and she
+realized, before he spoke, that he was going to refuse her sacrifice;
+she realized it because she saw in his face a deeper emotion for her
+than he had ever shown before.  He loved her not enough--and yet too
+much!--to marry her.  She saw that and was prepared for his next words.
+
+"To such a woman the man I have in mind could not give less than his
+best," he said.  And there was no longer any question, any hesitancy in
+his tone.  "To one so generous no man could be ungenerous--I should
+have known that!  Perhaps," he went on, with a note of distress and
+apology, "perhaps such things should not be talked about.  Perhaps it
+is--humiliating----"
+
+"To me the truth could never be humiliating," she answered, with quick
+reassurance.
+
+"Then it is best to speak it?" he pleaded, as if for
+self-justification.  "Then it is best to speak it, after all?  For it
+does make things--plain; it does show one the right, the decent course."
+
+"It's best to speak it," she assented kindly; and she held out her hand
+to him.
+
+He lifted her hand and kissed it.  And when he spoke again, his voice
+faltered: "When a man knows a woman like you, Charlotte, he sees that
+happiness--or unhappiness--doesn't matter so much as he's thought.
+There are other things--better things--to live for.  You've found
+them--and now I'm going to find them, too, my dear."
+
+So, for the second time that day, Peter went from a woman who loved
+him.  The night and the stars and the flowers had done their best to
+quicken his pulses; to blur his vision of the truth; to blunt his sense
+of absolute, unswerving honor.  But in the end Charlotte herself had
+defeated what the night was fain to do for her with its witchery; she
+had defeated the night's intents with her measureless honesty and
+generosity--to which Peter's own generosity and honesty could but
+respond.  To use a woman like Charlotte as a barrier between himself
+and another woman was impossible to him.  Neither for Sheila's safety,
+nor for any benefit to himself, could he do a thing so base.  He
+recognized now that marriage with Charlotte--even without that utter
+love he had given to Sheila--might be a gracious, even a happy destiny
+for him.  But having found her so ready to sacrifice herself, he could
+not sacrifice her.  He could not rob her of the chance of being loved
+as she could love.  Such a love might come to her some day; he could
+but leave her free for it.
+
+As he walked homeward along the silent, wide street, other gardens than
+Charlotte's flung their fragrance to him; the night still whispered to
+him of the sweetness of being loved, of all those compensations from
+which he had turned away.  But he was not allured; he was not
+vanquished.  His course stretched before him--through the befogging,
+unmanning sweetness--to daylight and self-respect and an uncompromising
+sincerity of life.  It stretched before him farther than he could
+descry--as far as the great fighting, suffering, achieving world.  Mrs.
+Caldwell had once told him that he had never grown up, and that some
+day he would have to grow up; that there could be no escape for him.
+She had been right about it.  Until now he had not grown up.  Not even
+in his love for Sheila and the pain of it, had he grown up.  He had
+been like a child playing in a garden, and though the sweetest rose
+there had torn him with its thorns, he had stayed on in the garden.
+But now he was a child no longer; there had been no escape from growing
+up.  He had put it off a long time--more than half his lifetime
+perhaps--but he had not been able to put it off forever.  And now,
+yielding at last, he was willing to leave his garden; he was willing to
+go out into the world of men.
+
+As he neared the hotel where he lived, he met Ted Kent, quitting his
+office--going home to Sheila.
+
+At once Ted stopped and put out his hand.  For in his mind no hostility
+against Peter had lingered.  Indeed, on the occasion when he had
+upbraided Sheila about Peter, he had felt very little animosity toward
+Peter himself, and several months having passed in a strict compliance
+to his wishes on Sheila's part, the whole matter had almost vanished
+from his memory.  His was not a nature to cherish resentment, to brood
+over fancied wrongs; he liked to be at peace with all his fellow-men
+and upon genial terms with them.  He was animated by a distinct
+cordiality toward Peter now, as he extended his hand to him.
+
+"Been calling on the girls, Burnett?" he inquired jovially.
+
+"On one of them," admitted Peter.
+
+"Well, it's been a long while since I did anything like that--a long
+while.  And I'm not sorry either.  There's nothing like your slippers
+and your pipe and your paper at home!  When I have to work late, as I
+did to-night, it's a real hardship.  Have a drink with me before I go
+on?"
+
+"Thanks," said Peter pleasantly, "but I'm in a bit of a hurry.  I've
+got to pack up.  I'm leaving town in the morning."
+
+"Leaving town?  For a vacation?"
+
+"No, for work.  I've had a job offered me in New York.  Brentwood, of
+the Brentwood Publishing Company, has been asking me to come to them
+for years, and I've finally decided to go."
+
+"High-brows, aren't they--the Brentwood Company?" Ted questioned,
+somewhat impressed.
+
+"Perhaps you'd call them so.  They publish real literature--a good many
+translations; that's what they want me for."
+
+"Well, well," pursued Ted, still detaining him, "and so you're going to
+leave little old Shadyville for good!  And after spending all your days
+here, too--after making so many friends.  I believe you'll miss us,
+Burnett!"
+
+"I'm sure I shall," agreed Peter, with patient courtesy.
+
+"Then why go?  It may be a good change for you in ways, but I'm
+convinced there's more to be said against it than for it.  For the life
+of me, I can't see why you're doing it."
+
+"No," said Peter, a little drily, "you wouldn't see, Kent.  But I'm
+sure it's the only thing to do.  Tell Sheila I think so, please, and
+that I send her my good-byes."
+
+"You aren't going to tell her good-bye yourself?"
+
+"I'm afraid I can't."  And as Peter spoke, he was acutely conscious of
+all that Ted did not see, of all that he would never understand.  "I'm
+afraid I can't--I start early in the morning."
+
+"All right!  You know what's best for yourself, no doubt.  Sorry you
+can't say good-bye to Sheila, though--she cares a lot for you, as much
+as if you were one of the family.  I'll give her your message, but
+she'll be disappointed that you didn't deliver it yourself.  Good luck
+to you, old man, and don't forget us!"  And shaking hands again, Ted
+went cheerfully on his homeward way, serenely unaware of the
+sorrow--and of the irony!--that had confronted him from Peter's quiet
+eyes.
+
+Up in his little room, Peter began to carry out his sudden plan for
+leaving Shadyville.  It was true that he had had an offer, more than
+once, from Brentwood.  Brentwood had been a chum of his at college, a
+friend who had never ceased to remember and appreciate him.  The offer
+was still open, and it solved Peter's problem.  He had told Sheila that
+he would marry Charlotte or do something else that would answer as
+well.  He found that something else in going away.
+
+He had not many possessions; shabby clothes--with an air to them;
+shabby books--that shone with their inner grace.  The books took
+longest, and when he had finished packing them, it was dawn.  He went
+to his window and watched the slow coming of the light, and in that
+silent, gray hour, he felt himself more alone than he had ever been.
+Everything seemed to have been stripped from him; this town where he
+had been born, and where generations of his family had been born before
+him; his friends; the little room, so dismantled now, that for years
+had been his home-place; all these--and his hope of happy love.  He
+remembered how, in his early, romantic boyhood, he had hoped for
+that--for happy love; and now that hope was gone and everything was
+gone with it.  Everything was gone because of Sheila; he had given up
+everything that she might be safe, that she might have peace--the
+peace, at least, of being unafraid.  He thought of her now with a calm
+tenderness--as if, having given so much for her peace, he had somehow
+gained peace for himself, too.  And then he thought of Charlotte, and
+it was for Charlotte, not for Sheila, that tears--a man's slow,
+difficult tears--forced themselves into his eyes.
+
+But Charlotte was strong.  It was her strength that had roused strength
+in him; strength to leave the garden, to escape the insinuating,
+ensnaring sweetness of the night and go forth into the daylight world
+of men.
+
+And just then the first ray of sunlight touched his window sill,
+touched it and stole within the room.  The day had come; and though he
+was forty-six years old and not born for fighting, a sudden elation
+seized upon Peter's sad heart--as if the finger of the sunlight had
+touched it, too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Sheila had thought herself acquainted with loneliness in the days
+immediately following her grandmother's death--days when she had had
+the consolation and companionship of Peter's frequent visits; but after
+Peter left Shadyville, she knew loneliness indeed.  Charlotte had taken
+flight to Paris soon after Peter's departure, and there remained in
+Sheila's small world not one to comprehend the depths of her, the real
+needs and desires and aspirations of her mind and spirit.
+
+To all outward seeming, her life flowed on in its usual channels; she
+occupied herself with her housewifely duties, with her care for her
+husband's and child's well-being; she exchanged visits with her
+neighbors and went to afternoon tea-parties.  Certainly her life
+appeared to flow on smoothly enough, but in fact it did not flow at
+all--that which was really the life current; it was checked, stemmed,
+thrown back upon itself in a tempestuous flood.  Heart, mind, spirit,
+all had come up against an obstacle which there was no surmounting, no
+eluding--the indestructible obstacle of a mistaken marriage.  Those
+were the bitterest days of Sheila's existence--the days when all the
+vital, matured forces of her throbbed and surged and clamored, prisoned
+things that beat in vain against the walls of circumstances.
+
+Worn out at last by this inner rebellion and conflict, she began to
+question whether she might not write once more.  What she felt for
+Peter must forever be suppressed; must, if possible, be crushed out
+altogether; for her heart, importunate though it was with her woman's
+maturity, there could be no satisfying outlet.  And in her
+conscientious recognition of this, in her resolution to abide by it,
+her very genuine affection for Ted--despite all the differences of
+temperament that divided them, despite even her realization and
+resentment of the wrong his selfishness had done her--was her greatest
+source of strength.  But though she thus armed herself with her
+affection for her husband, though she so strove for utter loyalty to
+him, the suppression of her gift was no part of her conception of
+wifely duty now.  And, thanks to Charlotte, she no longer regarded her
+compact with God for Eric's life as a thing sacred and binding.  Even
+before Charlotte had expressed herself so vigorously on the subject,
+Sheila had, indeed, grown to see that her vow to renounce her gift had
+been unfairly wrung from her by a too effective combination of accident
+and Ted's opinions.  And after Charlotte had cried out upon that vow as
+"morbid, hysterical nonsense," after she had exclaimed that Sheila's
+only fault had been in wasting her gift, it was but a step for Sheila
+to the conclusion that her vow could not--_should_ not!--bind her.  At
+last she saw herself free for work, if not for love; she saw herself
+the more free for work because love must be denied.  Her work should be
+her recompense; she had earned it now, as all things worth the having
+must be earned--by what one suffers for them.  And she believed that
+her work would be the better for all that she had suffered, all that
+she had endured.  It would be the better for that secret, unceasing
+ache of her heart for a love forbidden to her; and it would be the
+better for all the hours of pure suffering for itself alone.
+
+She had suffered for the loss of her work--Oh, very really!  Even
+through years that had been altogether happy otherwise, the
+restlessness and hunger and depression of a talent unappeased had come
+upon her at times, come upon her almost unbearably.  Though she had set
+her little son between it and her, it had reached her; it had harassed
+her unspeakably with demands that she had, perforce, refused to
+gratify.  The sudden note of a violin, the sight of a flowering tree
+pearly against an April sky, a glimpse of tranquil stars through her
+window at night--such things as these had been enough to bring her
+gift's importuning and torment upon her.  Earnestly and sincerely as
+she had tried to steel herself from such importunity and torment, they
+had come upon her again and again; they still came; they would come
+always--unless she flung off the shackles of that foolish, unnecessary
+vow.
+
+Fling off its shackles she did, with a sudden, blessed sense of liberty
+and strength.  With neither confession to Ted, nor any attempt at
+concealment, she set herself to write.  For the first time since her
+marriage--at least since her motherhood--she felt her life, in some
+measure, her own.  That she made no announcement of her independence to
+Ted was significant of the complete independence she had begun to feel.
+Perhaps it was significant of it, also--of the extent to which she
+conveyed, without words, her emancipation--that Ted, discovering, in
+the ensuing days, what she was about, said nothing of it either.
+
+When she sat down, at last, to her writing-table, to her clean sheaf of
+paper, it was with the conviction of her individual rights spurringly
+upon her.  But though she was finally so sure of her right to set free
+her gift, she felt within her no stir and flutter of a thing mad to fly
+and now released to do it.  No winged words sprang upon her paper to
+leave bright traces of a heavenly flight.  At the end of a long,
+uninterrupted morning, there was upon her paper no word at all.
+
+Not for lack of ideas did the paper remain thus bare.  There were ideas
+enough and to spare in the treasure chamber of her brain, ideas long
+hoarded, but still fresh with the glamour of their first conception.
+There was one idea which had especially tantalized and allured her
+through years of resistance on her part, an idea for a story really
+insolently quiet and unpretentious--because its stuff was such pure
+gold.  How that gold would shine through the cunningly chosen medium of
+her simple, unassuming phrases!  She had seen it shining so through all
+the time that she had resisted it.  But now--though she gave herself
+unreservedly to the cherished idea, though she turned over and over,
+with a passionate preoccupation, the little golden nugget of it--the
+simple, delicate phrases that were to reveal, to exploit it, did not
+appear.
+
+She had always written with a singular ease, and it seemed strange to
+sit before her tempting pages and write not a word.  But on the first
+morning, she felt no alarm.  After all, it was but natural that she
+should have to spend some time in coaxing it out to the light--that
+talent of hers so long confined.  It was but natural that it should not
+have courage to soar and sing at once.  But on the second day her paper
+was as empty as before; it lay upon her table like a useless snare for
+some wild and lovely bird that no longer had vitality enough to flutter
+within reach of it.
+
+And now, sitting at her writing-table in vain for several days, fear
+seized upon Sheila, fear that she would not name or analyze.
+
+Well, as one grew older, one often wrote differently, with more
+difficulty.  She had heard that, she reflected eagerly.  She had heard
+that deliberate, intellectual effort had often to succeed the flushed,
+panting rush of youthful inspiration.  This was probably the case with
+her now; of course it was, indeed.  She must undertake the effort; she
+must accept and master a new method.  Then all would be right with her.
+
+And so she went about deliberately translating the gold of her idea
+into those dreamed-of words which were so fitly to interpret it.  She
+went about it with an energy, a will to accomplish the feat, that
+should have been sufficient to achieve miracles.  If there had been,
+hitherto, a strain of weakness in her, she was now all strength.  And
+by that sheer strength--of purpose, of determination--she sought to
+realize her dream of perfection.
+
+Now the white sheets on her table were no longer barren.  Slow, painful
+writing covered them.  She wrote and discarded, and wrote again.  Day
+after day, she sat there at her table, engaged, as she came at last to
+perceive, in her final, her ultimate tragedy.
+
+For when the thing that she had visioned as a little golden masterpiece
+was finished, she knew it for what it was.  There was no felicity of
+phrase, no cunning art of construction, no conviction of truth, no
+throb of vitality within it.  As surely as a still-born child had it
+been brought into the world dead.  And it was incredibly ugly and
+deformed.  There was not a gleam of gold upon it!
+
+She recognized all this with unsparing clearness.  Not one illusion was
+left to her, not one merciful deception; with a single glance at her
+completed story, illusions and self-deceptions were swept from her--and
+hope was swept from her with them.
+
+Her gift was dead--or, at the least, it was forever ineffectual.  There
+would be no more mad, glad flights; no more songs high in the sunlit
+heavens.  The flights and songs and ecstasies were over for all time.
+Not for an instant did she cheat herself with sophistries of an
+eventual recovery.  She knew that if it lived at all--this gift of hers
+which had once been more alive than she herself--it would but live
+within her as the pain of a thing balked and futile, restless still
+perhaps, but not restless with any power.  Always--always now--the too
+exquisite note of a violin, the sight of blossoming trees at dawn, of
+silver, inscrutable stars at night would waken in her the hunger, the
+grief, of the unsatisfied.  There would never be a time when she could
+look on poignant beauty with the peace of one who is herself a part of
+all beauty--having created something beautiful.  For the ultimate
+calamity had befallen her; her gift had been killed, or hopelessly
+maimed.
+
+Under the tremendous impact of this blow she was curiously unresentful.
+She wondered a little how it had happened.  She wondered if she had
+suffered too much, suffered to the point of numbness--a thing fatal to
+one whose work had been fine largely through her capacity for emotion;
+or if the habit, the superstition, of her vow, persisting within her
+after the vow itself had been cast aside, had thus finally broken the
+wings of her talent.  She wondered if her marriage alone, or her
+motherhood, or her shamed and hopeless love for Peter had been most
+disastrous to her.  She had been conscious of them all as she had sat
+there trying to write.  Eric's face and Peter's had drifted between her
+and her pages.  Ted's cold declaration that talent was a bad thing for
+a married woman, and her own impassioned promise to God to renounce her
+work for Eric's life had both drowned for her the voice of her gift.
+It was as if all these factors in her destiny had had too much of her;
+it was as if they had claimed her too entirely and tenaciously ever to
+release her.  Even in silence and solitude and a belated sense of
+liberty and rights, she could not be free of them.  She could not
+decide whether one or all of them had been responsible for this final
+frustration.  She wondered--and then she ceased to wonder at all.  She
+knew that the frustration had been accomplished--and that she was
+suddenly too weary even to cry out.
+
+It was at the moment when she realized all this fully, when she sat
+staring at the deformed and lifeless thing which she had brought forth,
+that a letter from Charlotte was handed to her.  It came from New
+York--where was Peter.  Sheila opened it with shaking fingers--and
+found what she desired:
+
+
+I have seen Peter [wrote Charlotte] and he seems to have fitted
+himself, very happily, into the right place.  I say happily, but I do
+not use the word literally, for Peter is scarcely happy.  But he is
+appreciated here, and he likes his work.  I'm sure you'll be glad of
+that.
+
+As for happiness--I sometimes question whether those of us who catch a
+glimpse of a happiness perfect and transcendent ever experience the
+reality.  I doubt, in fact, if any reality could stand, unimpaired, by
+that vision.  It may be that we have to choose between the
+vision--beheld for an instant and forever remembered--and an earthy,
+faulty, commonplace little happiness.  We may have to choose between a
+fairy tale that can never be anything but a wonderful fairy tale, and a
+grubby reality that will spoil fairy tales for us evermore.  If that be
+true, Peter is not to be pitied.  He is manifestly one of the chosen;
+he's had his matchless vision; he still believes in the fairy tale.
+
+I told you, once, that I might marry him--in spite of him, as it were!
+Now I know that I will never marry him.  But you must not be sorry for
+me, my dear.  I, too, have had my vision.  I'll always believe in the
+fairy tale.
+
+
+Sheila laid the letter down--beside the stillborn child of her gift.
+And fleetingly she saw again the pure gold of her idea--saw it gleaming
+through the misshapen thing she had actually fashioned.  After all,
+though she could never create masterpieces, she had had her vision of
+them; that, at least, had been vouchsafed to her.  And she had had her
+vision of the perfect love; not even unspeakable sorrow and humiliation
+had dimmed it.  She, also, was one of the chosen; she would always
+believe in the fairy tale.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+It is, perhaps, only after we have put many dreams and hopes behind us
+that we stumble upon life's real gift to us.  And thus it happened for
+Sheila.  It was as if, seeing that she held out her hands for gifts no
+longer, life capriciously resolved to thrust one upon her.  But beneath
+the apparent caprice was a fine justice--for life was at last kind to
+Sheila through her son.
+
+As Eric grew older, there sprang up between them such a comradeship as,
+even in her gladdest moments of motherhood, Sheila had never foreseen.
+He was a manly boy, fond of other boys and of boyish sports, but for
+all that his companionship with his mother persisted, and as he matured
+somewhat, deepened into an intimate, understanding relation such as
+Sheila had not thought to know again.  Their kinship was not of the
+flesh only; that was the thing that Sheila began presently to see.
+
+It was then that she began to dream once more; to visualize a future
+beyond her own unrealized future.  But she didn't so much as stretch
+out a shaping hand; she didn't say an illuminating, a determining word.
+She remembered instances--many of them--of children's lives having been
+moulded by their parents, and with pitiful mischance.  She had known
+men and women who, with entirely unconscious tyranny, had thrust
+ready-made destinies on their sons and daughters, saying in extenuation:
+
+"We want our children to do all the brave deeds we've failed to do.  We
+want them to fulfill our defeated ambitions and to become what we have
+never become.  We want to save them from our mistakes and our regrets.
+We haven't done much with our own lives--but we're going to live again,
+more wisely and effectually, in our children's lives."
+
+And so they had advised and coerced, and destroyed individuality and
+independence, and extinguished, only too often, the very joy of life
+itself by striving to transfer the flame to a vessel of their own
+choosing.
+
+This she must not do to Eric, Sheila told herself.  From the despotic
+impulse of parenthood--queer mixture that it was of too zealous love
+and a thoroughly selfish desire for a second chance through the medium
+of the child--she must protect Eric.  Therefore she restrained herself;
+she simply waited--as she might have waited for a seed to spring up
+from the secret sprouting place of some deep garden bed.  It requires a
+sort of earthy, benign patience thus to hold back one's hand and
+passively wait--especially when one has, in spite of oneself, the
+dominating parent instinct!--but Sheila forced herself to it.
+
+And then, when Eric was fourteen years old, the seed sprang up through
+the soil and turned its face to the light.  The boy came to Sheila one
+day, obviously bent upon a confidence.  Shy, hesitant, shamefaced he
+was, but so eager.  She wanted to kiss him as he stood there before
+her, awkward and winsome, a little too tall for his knickerbockers,
+child and adolescent contending in his face and the flush of some
+portentous thing upon his cheek.  She wanted to kiss him--but she
+didn't.  For she divined that the moment was for sterner stuff than
+kisses.
+
+"Mother, here's--here's a story I've written."
+
+That was all; but Sheila saw her own youth, her hopes, her dreams in
+his eyes.  What there was in her eyes she did not know, but at
+something there Eric suddenly exclaimed and put his arms around her.
+
+And then Sheila knew that she was crying.
+
+It was not a marvellous story--that first effort of her young
+son's--but _something was there_; something that raised the crude,
+immature pages above immaturity and crudity and made the little tale
+better than itself.  And sensing it--that evanescent, impalpable, but
+infinitely promising thing--she saw the future shining through the
+present.
+
+But it was not to Eric that she went first with her discovery.  She
+longed to make the boy's path smooth for him before she sped him on it,
+and so she went first to Ted, story in hand.
+
+Ted had not desired talent in his wife.  Would he desire it in his son?
+Would he cheer and encourage, would he even tolerate, a dreamer, a
+poet, a worker in mere beauty?  Would he ever regard art as more than a
+shadow of life?
+
+Sheila sought him now to learn that--with Eric's story to plead for
+itself.
+
+Ted was in his den, a place sacred to those masculine pursuits and
+possessions which he did not share with her.  Only for momentous
+affairs did she invade the shabby, comfortable, littered room, and now
+Ted glanced up at her from his pipe and papers with serious expectancy.
+
+"I'd like you to read this," she said, holding out the little
+manuscript.
+
+"Now?  Is it important?"
+
+"Yes, now.  It is very important.  I must have a talk with you when
+you've read it."
+
+He took it from her, and she sat down to await his verdict.  The story
+was short.  Her suspense could have lasted but a little while.  But
+Eric's fate was at stake, and the minutes seemed as laggard as years.
+
+She had given up her own talent; that it was now a crippled thing
+within her was because she had renounced it, long before, for Eric's
+life.  But she would not easily sacrifice Eric's talent--if talent he
+really had.  She was prepared to fight for it, if need be.  Yet, as she
+watched Ted, reading with inscrutable face, her heart grew heavy within
+her for dread of dissension, of struggle between them.  That hot,
+rebellious heart of hers had come at last to a sort of peace.  The
+affection between herself and Ted, in the past few quiet years, had
+become for her, unconsciously, more and more of a haven.  She had given
+up much to the end that she and Ted might live together in harmony, and
+she sickened now at the prospect of conflict.  For at conflict, old
+wounds would open, regrets long firmly suppressed would rush upon her,
+a devastating flood.  If she had to fight for Eric, she knew that she
+would fight with the strength of old bitterness, bitterness that she
+had striven to outlive.  And she could not bear that this should
+happen.  She could not bear that her affection for Ted should be thus
+jeopardized.
+
+She remembered, as she sat there, the anger she had felt toward him
+when he had condemned Alice North for her art--and, however innocently,
+through Alice North, herself.  She remembered how indignant she had
+felt, how hurt and _divided_.  And she remembered, too--thinking,
+against her will, of Peter--how divided from Ted she had felt in later
+years, in years not so long gone that she could recall them calmly.
+She remembered how she had come, finally, to see Ted, and his part in
+the destruction of her talent, all too clearly--and how her heart had
+turned from him then to one whom she had no right to love.  She had
+driven her heart back to its appointed path; she had constrained it to
+its duty--in so far as the heart can be constrained.  She had even
+achieved the supreme triumph of keeping alive for Ted, through
+disillusion and passionate resentment, that very real affection with
+which they had begun life together--but she trembled now at thought of
+any further pressure being brought to bear upon it.  It was as if she
+held out her hands to her husband, crying: "Oh, let me love you!  Do
+nothing that shall make it impossible for me to love you!"
+
+And yet--though conflict between them should destroy the love she had
+so endeavored, in spite of everything, to feel--if Ted opposed Eric's
+gift, there must be conflict.
+
+For she considered what her own unappeased gift had cost her--the
+hunger, the restlessness, the pain.  She considered how, throughout all
+the years of her marriage, she had suffered her gift's insistence and
+its reproach.  She thought of how she had never been able to look upon
+the miracle of the spring, the majesty of the stars, without an aching
+heart.  All beauty had been transmuted for her into unassuageable
+sorrow--because she had been born to create beauty and had failed of
+her destiny.  And it would be transmuted into sorrow for Eric,
+too--unless he were given the freedom she had foregone.  He, too, would
+face the stars with an aching heart; all high and exquisite creation
+would be for him the material of suffering--unless he were allowed to
+create also.
+
+She had nerved herself to any effort, any struggle that might be
+necessary, when Ted at last laid down Eric's story and turned to his
+desk without a word.  Was there as little hope as that?
+
+"Ted?" she cried.
+
+"Wait," he answered, rummaging in a drawer of his desk, with his back
+toward her.  And his voice sounded queer--almost as if it were choked
+with tears.  "Wait, Sheila."
+
+He rose, directly, and walked toward her, and his face was queer, too,
+unsteady with some rarely deep emotion.  Thus he had looked when he
+first bent over her after Eric's birth.  That flashed through Sheila's
+mind, touched her to sudden faith in his being, now, what she prayed to
+have him.  Then she saw that in his hand he had, not Eric's story, but
+a bulky package of yellowed manuscripts, tied clumsily with a faded
+ribbon.  In such fashion a romantic man might have tied love letters.
+But Ted was not romantic, and, never having been separated from him at
+any time since their marriage, she had written him no letters.
+Besides, these papers were large, business-like sheets.  She stared at
+them curiously.  What had they to do with Eric and Eric's future?
+
+But to Ted they had their significance.  He carefully untied the dingy
+ribbon and spread the loosened pages on the table before her--and she
+noticed that his fingers were shaking.
+
+"Look," he said, in that queer, blurred voice.
+
+She picked up one of the discolored pages--and her own writing
+confronted her; for the page was from the unfinished story she had been
+working on when Eric was taken ill with scarlet fever--the story that,
+in obedience to her vow, she had put aside, still uncompleted.
+
+"Why, Ted--_Ted_--!"  But even then she did not understand.
+
+"I found them," he explained, furtively stroking the shabby sheets, but
+attempting a bluff and off-hand tone, "I found them--Oh, years
+ago!--just stuck off in a cupboard _like trash that nobody wanted any
+more_.  And so--because I _did_ want them--I brought them down here."
+
+"_You_ wanted them?" Sheila gasped.  "But, Ted----"
+
+And then he had her in his arms, and his eyes--full of the tears he had
+tried to repress--were gazing down into hers!
+
+"Don't you suppose I realize what you might have done?  Don't you
+suppose I've seen what you've given up for me--for me and Eric?"
+
+She could not speak.  She could only gaze back at him, incredulous
+still of the comprehension that he had so long concealed from her.
+
+"I've been a selfish brute, Sheila," he went on.  "I've craved all of
+you for myself and my child, and I've had all of you.  It's been my
+man's way, I reckon, for I couldn't have helped it.  If I had it to do
+over again, it would be just the same--though I'm ashamed of myself
+now.  Of course I didn't ask you to give up your writing, but I'd quite
+as well have asked you.  For I guessed that you'd done it--after Eric
+had scarlet fever--and I _let_ you, without a word.  I've let you
+sacrifice your talent ever since, too--needlessly.  Yes, I've _let_
+you--for I've seen the whole thing."
+
+She had sometimes felt that the tragedy of her life had been in all
+that Ted had not seen.  Now, finding that he had seen so much more than
+she had ever suspected--so much of what had been profound suffering to
+her--she might readily have blamed him more than she had ever done
+before.  But generosity rushed out of her to meet his
+generosity--belated though his was.
+
+"No, no," she interrupted, "it isn't that you let me give up my work.
+The fault isn't yours.  That awful night--when it seemed that Eric
+would die--I offered my work for his life--I offered it to _God_!  That
+was why I didn't write afterward."
+
+Ted fixed pitying eyes upon her: "You poor little girl!  Was it as bad
+as that with you?  I knew I was taking advantage of your conscience,
+but I never dreamed you'd carried your remorse so far.  Did you really
+believe you had to buy God's mercy?  Oh, no, dear.  It's only your
+husband that's seized the opportunity to extract a sacrifice from your
+Puritan conscience.  But with all my selfishness, I haven't stopped
+you--I haven't been the end of your talent."
+
+She started to tell him of her late emancipation from that unnecessary
+vow of hers; to tell him that she had tried to write again--and
+discovered that she could not.  But she did not tell him after all.
+For that could only hurt and shame him--in the hour of his penitence.
+So she was silent, and he continued with appealing eagerness.
+
+"I haven't been the end of your talent," he repeated.  "Don't you
+realize, dear, that your talent isn't ended at all?"
+
+"You mean--Eric?"
+
+"Yes, I mean that you've handed on your gift to Eric.  And he's going
+to have the chance I wasn't unselfish enough to let you have.  Don't be
+afraid for him--he's going to have his chance, And he'll know what to
+do with it!  I believe you'll be the mother of a great man--and that
+Eric will probably be the father of great men.  I believe it will go on
+and on and on--what you are, what you might have done."
+
+"But, Ted--Eric is only a child.  We cannot be sure yet--
+
+"I believe!" he insisted.  "I believe _this_ is to be your work--the
+work I haven't stopped."
+
+And as she listened, there came to her, too, a faith in Ted's prophecy.
+Her gift would have its fruition in Eric--and perhaps in Eric's sons
+and his sons' sons.  She was granted a vision of a torch passed on from
+one trustworthy hand to another throughout the years; and beholding
+that vision, she was aware that nothing she had suffered mattered at
+all.  She could face the stars now with a heart at peace.  She could
+watch the earth's miracles, feeling herself a part of them.  From the
+earth sprang flowers; from her flesh had sprung her son--her son who
+had been born to carry on the torch.  She had created beauty
+indeed--beauty that would outlive her life in her son's art.
+
+Even Peter's image was blurred for her as she beheld her supreme vision.
+
+And then she recalled Charlotte's words: "I sometimes question if those
+of us who catch a glimpse of a happiness perfect and transcendent ever
+experience the reality.  I doubt, in fact, if any reality could stand
+unimpaired by that vision."
+
+Charlotte was mistaken.  There were visions which became realities;
+this final vision of hers would become a reality--and it would be none
+the less perfect and transcendent for that.
+
+Sheila laid her hands on her husband's shoulders.  "I'm glad that I've
+lived!" she said.  And again, with a little sob, "Oh, my dear, I'm glad
+that I've lived!"
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Torch Bearer, by Reina Melcher Marquis
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TORCH BEARER ***
+
+***** This file should be named 32394.txt or 32394.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/3/9/32394/
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/32394.zip b/32394.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f897358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/32394.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc87fc0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #32394 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32394)