give you for this as long as I
live--never!"

The two girls looked at each other. Just at that moment I am afraid
there was something in their hearts answering to that forbidden word,
that terrible word--hate. Ah, we feel so safe from it in our gentle,
happy, untempted lives, just as safe as they felt once. Remember this,
girls: _when Love goes out_, Hate comes in. In your heart there stands
an angel, watching, silent, on whose lips are kindly words, in whose
hands are patient, kindly deeds, whose eyes see "good in everything,"
something to love where love is hardest, some generous, gentle way to
show that love when ways seem closed. In your heart, too, away down in
its darkest corner, all forgotten, perhaps, by you, crouches something
with face too black to look upon, something that likewise watches and
waits with horrible patience, if perhaps the angel, with folded wing and
drooping head, may be driven out. It is never empty, this curious,
fickle heart. One or the other must stand there, king of it. One or the
other--and in the twinkling of an eye the change is made, from angel to
fiend, from fiend to angel; just which you choose.

Joy broke away from her cousin in a passion. Gypsy flew into the door of
the miserable house, up the stairs two steps at a time, to the door of a
low room in the second story, and rushed in without knocking.

"Oh, Peace Maythorne!"

The cripple lying on the bed turned her pale face to the door, her
large, quiet eyes blue with wonder.

"Why, Gypsy! What is the matter?"

Gypsy's face was white still, very white. She shut the door loudly, and
sat down on the bed with a jar that shook it all over. A faint
expression of pain crossed the face of Peace.

"Oh, I didn't mean to--it was cruel in me! How _could_ I? Have I hurt
you _very_ badly, Peace?" Gypsy slipped down upon the floor, the color
coming into her face now, from shame and sorrow. Peace gently motioned
her back to her place upon the bed, smiling.

"Oh, no. It was nothing. Sit up here; I like to have you. Now, what is
it, Gypsy?"

The tone of this "What is it, Gypsy?" told a great deal. It told that it
was no new thing for Gypsy to come there just so, with her troubles and
her joys, her sins and her well-doings, her plans and hopes and fears,
all the little stories of the fresh, young life from which the cripple
was forever shut out. It told, too, what Gypsy found in this quiet room,
and took away from it--all the help and the