flush of the sunbeams behind it.

Now the beams were gone, and it hung white and bloodless.

In the crisis of our lives such trifles as these flash over us. In
the greatness of other things--often turning points in our
life--Nature sometimes points it all with a metaphor.

For Nature is the one great metaphor.

Helen knew that she and the cloud were now one.

But she was not a coward, and with her heart nerved and looking him
calmly in the face, she talked on and told him of the wretched
condition of affairs at Millwood. And as she talked, the setting sun
played over her own cheeks, touching them with a halo of such
exquisite colors that even the unpoetic soul of Harry Travis was
touched by the beauty of it all.

And to any one but Harry Travis the proper solution would have been
plain. Not that he said it or even meant it--for she was too proud a
spirit even to have thought of it--there is much that a man should
know instinctively that a woman should never know at all.

Harry surprised himself by the patience with which he listened to
her. In him, as in his cousin--his pattern--ran a vein of tact when
the crisis demanded, through and between the stratum of bold
sensuousness and selfishness which made up the basis of his
character.

And so as he listened, in the meanness and meagerness of his soul, he
kept thinking, "I will let her down easy--no need for a scene."

It was narrow and little, but it was all that could come into the
soul of his narrowness.

For we cannot think beyond our fountain head, nor can we even dream
beyond the souls of the two things who gave us birth. There are men
born in this age of ripeness, born with an alphabet in their mouths
and reared in the regal ways of learning, who can neither read nor
write. And yet had Shakespeare been born without a language, he would
have carved his thoughts as pictures on the trees.

Harry Travis was born as so many others are--not only without a
language, but without a soul within him upon which a picture might be
drawn.

And so it kept running in his mind, quietly, cold-bloodedly,
tactfully down the narrow, crooked, slum-alleys of his mind: "I
will--I will drop her--now!" She ceased--there were tears in her eyes
and her face was blanched whiter even than the cloud.

He arose quickly and glanced at the setting sun: "Oh, say, but I must
get the Gov'nor's mare back. Jim will miss her at feeding time."

There was a laugh on his lips and his foot w