his innocent one would restore him more than a walk on the hills. "It
is the spirit of beauty, my child, you are moved by the loveliness of
the scene; is it a new one to you?"

"No, oh no, but I always feel the same. As if something here was hungry,
don't you know?" and she laid her little hand on her breast.

He did not know, but he smiled upon her notwithstanding, and made her
talk and talk till the gush of the sweet child spirit with its hidden
longings and but half understood aspirations, bathed his whole being in
a reviving shower, and he felt as if he had wandered into a new world
where the languors of the tropics were unknown, and passion, if there
was such, had the wings of an eagle instead of the siren's voice and
fascination.

Her name was Paula, she said, and before leaving he found that she was a
relative of the woman he loved. This was a slight shock to him. The lily
and the cactus abloom on one stalk! How could that be? and for a moment
he felt as if the splendors of the glorious woman paled before the
lustre of the innocent child. But the feeling, if it was strong enough
to be called such, soon passed. As the days swept by bringing evenings
with light and music and whispered words beneath the vine-leaves, the
remembrance of the pure, sweet hour beside the river, gradually faded
till only a vague memory of that gentle uplifted face sweet with its
childish dimples, remained to hallow now and then a passing reverie or a
fevered dream.

But to-night its every lineament filled his soul, vying with the
memories of his mother in its vividness and power. O why had he not
learned the lesson it taught. Why had he turned his back upon the high
things of life to yield himself to a current that swept him on and on
until the power of resistance left him and--O dwell not here wild
thoughts! Pause not on the threshold of the one dark memory that blasts
the soul and sears the heart in the secret hours of night. Let the dead
past bury its dead and if one must think, let it be of the hope, which
the remembrance of that short glimpse into a pure if infantile soul has
given to his long darkened spirit.

One, two, three, FOUR; and the fire is dead and the night has grown
chill, but he heeds it not. He has asked himself if his life's book is
quite closed to the higher joys of existence? whether money getting and
money holding is to absorb him body and soul forever; and with the
question a great yearning seizes him to loo