him had visited her often--not, however, alone, but always
with one or more prospective purchasers of Simiti stock in tow whom
he sought to influence favorably through Carmen's interesting
conversation about her native land. Harris came every Sunday, and
the girl welcomed the great, blundering fellow as the coming of the
day. At times he would obtain Madam Elwin's permission to take the
girl up to the city on a little sight-seeing expedition, and then he
would abandon himself completely to the enjoyment of her naive wonder
and the numberless and often piquant questions stimulated by it. He
was the only one now with whom she felt any degree of freedom, and
in his presence her restraint vanished and her airy gaiety again
welled forth with all its wonted fervor. Once, shortly after Carmen
had been enrolled, Harris took her to a concert by the New York
Symphony Orchestra. But in the midst of the program, after sitting
in silent rapture, the girl suddenly burst into tears and begged to be
taken out. "I couldn't stand it!" she sobbed as, outside the door,
she hid her tear-stained face in his coat; "I just couldn't! It
was heavenly! Oh, it was God that we heard--it was God!" And the
astonished fellow respected this sudden outburst of pent-up emotion
as he led her, silent and absorbed, back to the school.

With the throwing of the girl upon her own thought came a rapid
expansion of both mind and body into maturity, and the young lady who
left the Elwin school that bright spring afternoon under the
protection of the self-sufficient Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was very far
from being the inquisitive, unabashed little girl who had so
greatly shocked the good Sister Superior by her heretical views
some six months before. The sophistication engendered by her
intercourse with the pupils and instructors in the school had
transformed the eager, trusting little maid, who could see only good
into a mature woman, who, though her trust remained unshaken,
nevertheless had a better understanding of the seeming power "that
lusteth against the spirit," and whose idea of her mission had been
deepened into a grave sense of responsibility. She saw now, as never
before, the awful unreality of the human sense of life; but she
likewise understood, as never previously, its seeming reality in
the human consciousness, and its terrible mesmeric power over
those materialistic minds into which the light of spirituality had as
yet scarcely penetrated. Her thought