y more than he had done
it on purpose to that other poor creature of God. _She did not
understand._

Her fair, sweet face, which he had shuddered at as at a leper's, came
back to him, smiling at him with a soft reproach. Ah! It was a child's
face. That was the secret of it all. That was one of the reasons why he
had so worshipped it, that dear face. She had not meant to hurt him with
her pretty hand.

Later on, some day, not in this world perhaps, but some far-off day she
would come to herself, and, looking back, she would feel as he felt now
at the recollection of his infant cruelty, only a thousand times more
deeply. He hoped to God he might be near her when that time of grief
came, to comfort her, to assure her that the pain she had inflicted had
been nothing, nothing, that it did not hurt.

An overwhelming, healing compassion, such as he had never known in all
the years of his great tenderness for Fay, welled up within his arid
heart.

Michael's racked soul was steeped in a great peace and light!

Time and time again his love for Fay had been wounded nearly to the
death, and had been flung back bleeding upon himself. He had always
enfolded it, and withdrawn it, and cherished it anew in a safer place.

A love that has been thus withdrawn and protected does not die. It
shrinks home into the heart, that is all. Like a frightened child
against its mother, it presses close and closer against the Divine Love
that dwells within us, which gave it birth. At last the mother smiles,
and takes her foolish weeping child, born from her body, which has had
strength from her to wander away from her--back into her arms.

CHAPTER XVII

And no more turn aside and brood
Upon Love's bitter mystery.

--W. B. YEATS.

It seems is if in the early childhood of all of us some tiny cell in the
embryo brain remains dormant after the intelligence and other faculties
have begun to quicken and waken. While that cell sleeps the child is
callous to suffering, even ingenious in inflicting it. The little cell
in the brain wakes and the cruelty disappears. And the same cell that
was slow to quicken in the child is often the first to fall asleep in
the old. The ruthless cruelty of old age is not more of a crime than the
ruthless cruelty of young children. Childhood does not yet understand.
Old age ceases to understand.

But some there are among us who have passed beyond childhood, beyond
youth, into middle age, in wh