name was signed to the dainty sheets of paper which always bore the
perfume of wild strawberries.

But the man who read them in silence knew and understood.

The letter he held to-day was not an unsigned sheet of her diary--it
was a direct, personal appeal--tender and beautiful in its sincerity.
She begged him to forget the past, because she needed his friendship
and advice, and asked that he come to see her at once.

This letter was his first temptation to break the resolution by which
he had lived for years. He rose and paced the room with fury, as he
began to realize how desperate was his desire to go.

"Have I fought all these years for nothing?" he cried.

The thing that drew him with all but resistless power was the deeper
meaning between the lines. He knew that each day the incompleteness of
her life had been borne in upon her with crushing force. He knew that
the mad impulses which had expressed themselves in luxury, dress,
extravagance, balls and bizarre entertainments were but the strangled
cries of a sorrowing heart. And he knew that the fatuity of it all had
begun at last to terrify her. The more desperately he fought the
impulse to go the keener became his desire to see her again. And yet he
must not. He felt, by an instinct deeper than reason, that the day he
returned from his exile and touched her hand would mark the beginning
of a tragedy for both.

And yet the desire to go clamoured with increasing madness. The changes
that had come into his life counted for nothing--to-day only a great
passion remained--torturing, challenging, tempting. Could he never live
it down? He looked about his office, reminded himself of his dignity
and responsibility, and sought refuge in his sense of duty to the
people.

"I've done some things worth while!" he cried, with brooding pride.

And the record confirmed his boast.

In the past nine years he had thrown his life away only to find it in
greater power. He recalled it now with a renewed sense of gratitude.

The first year which he had given of unselfish devotion to the service
of the people had been a failure. He saw at the end of it that in
reaching an individual here and there he was merely trying to bale out
the ocean with a soup ladle. He saw that if he would serve the people
he must work through them. He must appeal to the masses, teach, lead,
uplift and inspire them to action. And he entered politics. Only
organic social action could get anywhere or ac