n though temporary thrall. The good angel was
dominant within her, while the bad angel slept.

Far down the vista of the ages, she was looking into a stable where a
baby lay, warm in its swaddling-clothes, the mother bending over it. She
saw above the stable a single star, which, palpitating with prophecy,
shook its long rays out into the form of a cross, then drew them in
until they circled into a blazing crown. Far above the star the air was
populous with lambent forms and resonant with shouting voices, and she
heard the words: "Peace on earth, good-will to men!" The chimes melted
into her reverie; the kindly sun encouraged it; the voices of happy
children fed it, and she was moved to tears.

What could she do now but think over her past life--a life that had
given her no children--a life that had been filled neither by peace nor
good-will? She had married an old man for his money; had worried him
out of his life, and he had gone and left her childless. She would not
charge herself with the crime of hastening to the grave her father and
mother, but she knew she had not been a comfort to them. Her
willfulness; her love of money and of power; her pride of person and
accomplishments; her desire for admiration; her violent passions, had
made her a torment to others and to herself. She knew that no one loved
her for anything good that she possessed, and knew that her own heart
was barren of love for others. She felt that a little child who would
call her "mother," clinging to her hand, or nestling in her bosom, could
redeem her to her better self; and how could she help thinking of the
true men who, with their hearts in their fresh, manly hands, had prayed
for her love in the dawn of her young beauty, and been spurned from her
presence--men now in the honorable walks of life with their little ones
around them? Her relatives had forsaken her. There was absolutely no one
to whom she could turn for the sympathy which in that hour she craved.

In these reflections, there was one person of her own blood recalled to
whom she had been a curse, and of whom, for a single moment, she could
not bear to think. She had driven him from her presence--the one who,
through all her childhood, had been her companion, her admirer, her
loyal follower. He had dared to love and marry one whom she did not
approve, and she had angrily banished him from her side. If she only had
him to love, she felt that she should be better and happier, but she