nce rounded cheeks and full
pouting lips, in the transparency of her skin and in the sweet eyes that
when not filled with the merry laughter that had through thick and thin
filled her dwelling place with sunshine and music, had a faraway
expression in them, as if they were looking into another world.

They showed most of all in The Dreamer himself. To him these years had
been years of fierce battle; battle, not for wealth, but for bread;
battle not so much for selfish ambition as for his country, and in a
high sense--for he had fought valiantly to win a place for America in
the world of letters; battle with himself--with the devils that sought
mastery over his spirit--the devil of excitement and exhilaration that
lay in the bottom of the cup, the devil of blessed forgetfulness,
accompanied by magical dreams that dwelt in the heart of the poppy, the
devil of melancholy and gloom to whom he felt a certain charm in
yielding himself, the devil of restlessness and dissatisfaction with
whatsoever lay within his grasp--a dog-and-shadow sort of desire to drop
the prize in hand in a chase after that of his vision,--the impish devil
of the perverse.

At times he had been victorious, at other times there had been defeat.
But always the warfare had been fierce and the scars remained to tell
the story. They remained in the emaciation and the deep lines of his
still beautiful face; remained in the drooping curves of the mouth;
remained above all in the ineffable sadness of the large, deep, luminous
eyes.

Yet that sweet spring day when the three were moving into Fordham
cottage, the years that had wrought upon them thus were as they had not
been.

Their little possessions had dwindled pitifully. Virginia's golden harp
that had been the glory of the sitting-room was gone to pay a debt. One
by one others of their household gods had provided bread. But the spurt
of prosperity the damages recovered in the "Thomas Done Brown" suit
brought, made possible a new checked matting for the sitting-room floor
and so bright and clean did it look that they felt it almost furnished
the room of itself. It would mean much to them in saving the dear Mother
the most laborious feature of her labor. It was a more difficult matter
than formerly for her to get down upon her knees to scrub the floor and
it had become impossible for the frail Virginia to help her in such
work; yet as long as the floor was bare she had kept it as spotless and
nearly as wh