to the end in silence, with a faint suggestion of a smile on her
finely-cut lips.

"You are just where I was," she said when Judith had finished the
recital, "many years ago. Only I was not so conscious of things as you
are--and I had not done what you have done."

"You mean--_The Dispatch_?"

"Yes. That is doing a splendid work--it is waking people up."

"But I haven't done it. It's no credit to me, really."

"I know. But you made it possible. Perhaps you haven't done as much for
it as it has done for you. But in either case, much has been
accomplished."

"Oh, Mrs. Dodson--if I could only do what you have done--be what you
are...." There was no pretence in Judith's admiration as she looked up
into the quiet, kindly face of one of the most misunderstood women of
her community. It was not a beautiful face. Nature had not been kind to
it. But it was a face which, once looked upon, could never afterward be
forgotten. It had the beauty which comes of strength and courage and
travail, the beauty with which one is never born, but which must be
made. It was the face of one who has grasped life firmly with both
hands, and through pain and discouragement, has hewn something which
must endure always.

Mrs. Dodson was silent at Judith's honest, if girlish, outburst. She
smiled sadly, and her eyes clouded.

"I have done little," she said softly. "And I am--little. I saw my road,
long ago. I see it more clearly every day. But I'm not big enough to
follow it--very far. I'm too timid. To go on that road, where I know I
should go--where I know better and better as the years come--I should
have had to leave everything behind. I wasn't equal to that. Those
little things--they didn't mean much--they don't now ... but I can't
shake them off--quite. I can't follow the road and take them too. And I
can't rest with them and forget the road. So I've--tried to do both. I
can't, of course--but I try. I try very hard. It makes me enemies. It
makes me unhappy. Even my children--I've stayed partly for them--the
road led to such a wild and desolate country--even they don't
understand. Perhaps that's why I was so cruel to that young man
to-night. He said things that I wanted to say--and couldn't."

Mrs. Dodson, suddenly looking very old and tired and weak, faded away,
and in her place Judith saw Good. "If we were angels," he was saying.
"If ... but we're not. We're only humans...."

Then Good vanished, and Mrs. Dodson, again her quiet, ef