it mean if not enduring, eternal love? Life had brought her a great
treasure--a great love and an artist for a lover.

"Go, Eugene!" she cried at last tragically, almost melodramatically. His
face was in her hands. "I will wait for you. You need never have one
uneasy thought. When you are ready I will be here, only, come soon--you
will, won't you?"

"Will I!" he declared, kissing her, "will I? Look at me. Don't you
know?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" she exclaimed, "of course I know. Oh, yes! yes!"

The rest was a passionate embrace. And then they parted. He went out
brooding over the subtlety and the tragedy of life. The sharp October
stars saddened him more. It was a wonderful world but bitter to endure
at times. Still it could be endured and there was happiness and peace in
store for him probably. He and Angela would find it together living in
each other's company, living in each other's embrace and by each other's
kisses. It must be so. The whole world believed it--even he, after
Stella and Margaret and Ruby and Angela. Even he.

The train which bore him to New York bore a very meditative young man.
As it pulled out through the great railroad yards of the city, past the
shabby back yards of the houses, the street crossings at grade, the
great factories and elevators, he thought of that other time when he had
first ventured in the city. How different! Then he was so green, so raw.
Since then he had become a newspaper artist, he could write, he could
find his tongue with women, he knew a little something about the
organization of the world. He had not saved any money, true, but he had
gone through the art school, had given Angela a diamond ring, had this
two hundred dollars with which he was venturing to reconnoitre the great
social metropolis of the country. He was passing Fifty-seventh Street;
he recognized the neighborhood he traversed so often in visiting Ruby.
He had not said good-bye to her and there in the distance were the rows
of commonplace, two family frame dwellings, one of which she occupied
with her foster parents. Poor little Ruby! and she liked him. It was a
shame, but what was he to do about it? He didn't care for her. It really
hurt him to think and then he tried not to remember. These tragedies of
the world could not be healed by thinking.

The train passed out into the flat fields of northern Indiana and as
little country towns flashed past he thought of Alexandria and how he
had pulled up his stakes an