ifting shadow, between your heart and the
sunshine that warms it. In the night of my wretchedness, you have
groped your way to me, and in defiance of the circumstances that are so
cruelly leagued to strangle me, you throw your confidence like a warm
mantle around my shivering soul; you have courageously laid your pure,
womanly hands in mine--oh, God bless you! God reward you! Do you think
I could bear to know that I had caused even a hand's breadth of cloud
to drift over the heavenly blue of your happy sky? The bow of promise
that spans your life is no secret. Let no thought of me jar the harmony
that reigned before I came here. Leave me to my doom, which human hands
cannot avert now; and be happy without questioning. Inexorable fate
stands behind men; makes them, sometimes, irresponsible puppets."

A deep flush had risen to Leo's temples, and withdrawing her hand, she
shaded her face for a moment. The great bell below the tower clock rang
sullenly.

"Good-bye, Miss Gordon. I had permission to stay here only till the
bell sounded. Pray for me, but do not come again. Visits to me could
bring you nothing but sorrow in return for your compassion, and that
would add to my misery. I wish you a pleasant Christmas, a happy New
Year, and as cloudless a life as your great goodness deserves."

Once more their hands met, in a long close clasp, then Leo laid on the
chancel railing a large square envelope.

"It is only a Christmas card, but so lovely, I know your artistic taste
cannot fail to admire it; and it may brighten your cheerless room. It
is the three-hundred-dollar-prize-card, and particularly beautiful."

"Thank you, dear Miss Gordon. It may help to deaden the merciless
stings of memory, which all day long has tortured me by unrolling the
past, where my Christmas days stand out like illuminated capitals on
black-letter pages."

Deaden the stings of memory? What spell suddenly evoked the image of
her invalid mother, all the details of the attic room, the litter of
pencils on the table; the windows of a florist's shop where, standing
on the pavement, she had studied hungrily the shapes of the blossoms
poverty denied her as models; the interior of the Creche, which she had
penetrated in order to sketch the heads of sleeping babies, as a study
for cherubs?

Leo had almost reached the door, when a passionate, indescribably
mournful cry arrested her steps.

"Too late!--too late! O, God! What a cruel mockery!"

Beryl s