in him to lift life to new levels, while the
breath was in his body, while the glow was in his brain.

And he thought of Myra, his mate in the mystery, and in the night he
yearned for her, hungered through all his being. She had written him a
note; it came to him from the mountains. It ran:

DEAR JOE,--You will be glad to know that I am getting
back to myself. The peace and stillness of the
white winter over the hills is healing me. It seems
good merely to exist, to sleep and eat and exercise and
read. I can't think now how I behaved so unaccountably
those last few weeks, and I wonder if you will
ever understand. I have been reading over and over
again your long letter, trying hard to puzzle out its
meanings, but I fear I am very ignorant. I know nothing
of the crisis you speak of. I know that "ye have
the poor always with you," I know that there is much
suffering in the world--I have suffered myself--but I
cannot see that living among the poor is going to help
vitally. Should we not all live on the highest level
possible? Level up instead of leveling down. Ignorance,
dirt, and sickness do not attract me ... and
now here among the hills the terrible city seems like
a fading nightmare. It would be better if people lived
in the country. I feel that the city is a mistake. But
of one thing I am sure. I understand that you cannot
help doing what you are doing, and I know that it would
have been a wrong if I had interfered with your life.
I would have been a drag on you and defeated your
purposes, and in the end we would both have been very
unhappy. It seems to me most marriages are. Write
me what you are doing, where you are living, and how
you are.

Yours,

MYRA.

He had smiled over some of the phrases in this letter, particularly, "I
feel that the city is a mistake." Would Myra ever know that her very
personality and all of her life were interwoven inextricably with the
industrial city--that the clothes she wore, the food she ate, the books
she studied, the letter she wrote him, even down to ink, pen, and paper,
the education and advantages she enjoyed, were all wrought in the mills,
the mines, the offices, and by the interchange and inweaving and mighty
labors of industrialism? The city teacher is paid by taxes levied on the
commerce and labors of men, and the very farmer cannot heighten his life
without exchange with the city.

And so her letter made