ence, "The child can not live," and in these hours I discovered that
it is the sweetest love that casts the blackest shadow. My joy in my
daughter was an agony of fear and remorse--why had I not acted sooner?

As I imagined my world without that radiant face, that bird-like voice,
I fell into black despair. My only hope was in the nurse, who refused to
give her up. I could not talk or write or think of any other thing. The
child's sufferings filled my mind with an intolerable ache of
apprehension. I had possessed her only a few years and yet she was
already woven into the innermost fibers of my heart.

That night, which I dare not dwell upon, put my youth definitely behind
me. When the blessed word came that she would live, and I was permitted
to look upon her small wasted face, I was a care-worn middle-aged
man--willing to give up any part of my life to win that tiny sufferer
back to health and happiness.

Pitiful little Mary Isabel, pale wraith of my sturdy comrade! When she
lifted her beseeching eyes to me and faintly, fleetingly smiled--unable
to even whisper my name, I, forbidden to speak, could only touch her
cheek with my lips and leave her alone with her devoted nurse--for, so
weak was she that a breath might have blown her away, back into the
endless shadow and silence of the grave.

At that moment I asked myself, "What right have men and women to bring
exquisite souls like this into a world of disease and death? Why
maintain the race? What purpose is subserved by keeping the endless
chain of human misery lengthening on?"

In times like these I was weaker than my wife. I grant her marvelous
fortitude, sustained by something which I did not possess and could not
acquire. She met every crisis. I leaned upon her serenity, her courage,
her faith in the future which was in no sense a religious creed. It was
only a womanly inheritance, something which came down the long line of
her maternal Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

At last the day came when the nurse permitted me to take my daughter
again in my arms and carry her out to the easy chair before the fire.
The moment was perfect. The veil of snow falling without, the leaping
firelight on the hearth, and the presence of my wife and father, united
to fill me with happiness. I became the fond optimist again--the world
was not so black--our year was worthy of Thanksgiving after all.

Nevertheless I was aware that a bitter ineradicable dusk had gathered in
the corners an