of despair, hope, craven
fear, and sturdy resolution. Tortured in the human alembic, she was at
length resolved, seeing with a vision that pierced all her horizons. And
then, trembling, tense, there came--a thought? A vision? She knew not
what it was, nor was she conscious of attempting to ascertain. She knew
only that for a fleeting instant the veil had been lifted and that she
had gazed upon serenity and that all was well. Further, she had no
inclination to know. Not that she feared complete revelation; for that
matter, some subconscious conviction that all would be well illumined
her senses. This she spurned, or rather ignored, in a greater if
nameless exaltation. Stern with the real fibre of her womanhood, she
lifted her head in pride.

Then, moved by initiative not her own, her face turned, not to her
husband, but to her guests, each in turn. Arnold Bates was crushing a
napkin in his sensitive fingers, flushed, angry, rebellious, perhaps a
trifle discomfited. Dane was smiling foolishly; Bessie was leaning
forward on the table, dead white, inert. Doctor Allison's head was
shaking; he was clicking his tongue and his wife was twisting her stout
fingers one around another. So her gaze wandered, and then, as though
emerging from a dream, revivified, calm, she studied each intently. She
knew not why, but something akin to contempt crept into her mind.

It was as though seeking relief that her eyes rested upon Sybil Latham.
The Englishwoman's face was turned to Colcord; her color was heightened
only slightly, but in her blue eyes was the light of serene stars, and
about her lips those new lines of self-sacrifice, anxiety, sorrow, which
Evelyn had resented as marring the woman's delicate beauty, now imparted
to her face vast strength, ineffable dignity, nobility.

Evelyn Colcord's throat clicked; for a moment she did not breathe, while
a vivid flash of jealous emotion departed, leaving in its place a great
peace, an exaltation born of sudden knowing. Instinctively seeking
further confirmation, her eyes, now wide and big and flaming, swept to
Latham. His face, too, was turned toward her husband. It was the grimly
triumphant visage of the fighter who knows his own kind, of the friend
and believer whose faith, suddenly justified, has made him proud.

Evelyn rose and stood erect, staring into vacancy. Here were two who
_knew_, who understood--who had been through hell and found it worth
while.

Voices, expostulatory voic