rush served more
effectually to banish Laura than any amount of determined opposition
would have done.

CHAPTER VI

THE FINER VISION

So far as Connie was concerned the trip South had been, to all outward
appearance at least, entirely successful. Adams had watched her bloom
back into something of her girlish prettiness, and day by day, in the
quiet little Florida village to which they had gone, the lines of
nervous exhaustion had faded slowly from her face. For the first two
weeks she had been content to lie motionless in the balmy air beneath
the pines, while she had yielded herself to the silence with a
resignation almost pathetic in its childish helplessness. But with her
returning vigour the old ache for excitement awoke within her, and to
stifle her craving for the drug which Adams had denied her, she had
turned at last to the immoderate use of wine. So, hopelessly but with
unfailing courage, he had brought her again to New York where he had
placed her in the charge of a specialist in obscure diseases of the
nerves.

Except for the hours which he spent in his office, he hardly left her
side for a minute day or night, and the strain of the close watching,
the sleepless responsibility, had produced in him that quivering
sensitiveness which made his self-control a bodily as well as a mental
effort. Yet through it all he had never relaxed in the fervour of his
compassion--had never paused even to question if the battle were not
useless--if Connie herself were worth the sacrifice--until, almost to
his surprise, there had come at last a result which, in the beginning,
he had neither expected nor desired. A closer reconciliation with life,
a stronger indifference to the mere outward show of possession, a deeper
consciousness of the reality that lay beyond, above and beneath the
manifold illusions--these things had become a part of his mental
attitude; and with this widening vision he had felt the flow in himself
of that vast, universal pity which has in it more than the sweetness,
and something of the anguish of mortal love. In looking at Connie he saw
not her alone, but all humanity--saw the little griefs and the little
joys of living creatures as they were reflected in the mirror of her
small bared soul. Though he had schooled himself for sacrifice he found
presently that he had entertained unawares the angel of peace--for it
was during these terrible weeks that the happiness at which Gerty
Bridewell had w