ed life? Health after sickness is
lovely, and so is healing after disease, and quietness after unrest, and
peace after struggle. But that, Jim, is only for the body. It's only
for something of a day or two, or a year or two. When a soul is
redeemed, it's something that leaves you face to face with--with
Eternity!"

Again he studied her rapt and mournful eyes, at sea, wondering to what
new turn the sacrificial instinct of her sex was leading her.

"What has made you think of all this?" he demanded of her, a little
unhappily, a little afraid of the old wounds that were healing so slowly.
"Why should you remind me of how hard it is, and how little I've been
able to do?"

She was silent for several minutes again, as they walked on, slowly,
under the spectral autumn trees, with the rustling dead leaves at their
feet. She found it hard to answer him.

"'The saints are only the sinners who kept on trying!'" she quoted to
him, for the second time in their lives. Then she came to a full stop.

"Oh, Jim, I need you so much, now!" she cried out, at last, pitifully,
and still again he could not bridge the abyss that lay between one
thought and another.

"Need me?"

"Yes, need you!"

Again a dead leaf fluttered and drifted between them.

"What is it?" he asked, more gently.

She put her hand on his shoulder, and when she spoke her voice was little
more than a whisper.

And he, the man who had spoken of trivial mysteries, bowed before that
supremest mystery which broods and centres in the thought of motherhood.

"We'll have to be good now--terribly good!" she wailed. And she tried to
laugh up at him, with a touch of her old bravery, in a futile effort to
make light of her tears.

"30"

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