faintly luminous out of the surrounding darkness. Not the future alone
but the desert places through which he had come had blossomed, and the
beauty which was revealed to him at last was the beauty in all things
that have form or being--in the earth no less than in the sky, in the
flesh no less than in the spirit, for were not earth and flesh, after
all, only sky and spirit in the making? The perfect plan, he had
learned, in the end, is not for any part but for the whole.

Across the ferry, he found a cab which took him to Gerty's house, and in
response to his message, she came down immediately, looking excited and
perturbed, in an evening gown of black and silver.

"Have you brought me news of Laura?" she asked breathlessly. "Perry's
dragging me to a dinner, but if she's ill, I can't go--I won't."

"Don't go," he answered, "she's not ill, but if she were it would be
better. Will you come with me now and bring her back with you?"

Without replying to his question, she ran from the room and returned, in
a moment, wearing a hat and a long coat which covered her black and
silver dress.

"The carriage is waiting now," she said, "we can take it and let Perry
go to his dinner in a cab."

"But--good Lord, Gerty--what am I to say to them?" demanded Perry while
he shook hands with Adams. "I never could make up an excuse in my life,
you know."

Then his eyes blinked rapidly and he fell back with merely a muttered
protest, for Gerty shone, at the instant, with a beauty which neither he
nor Adams had ever seen in her before. The wonderful child quality
softened her look, and they watched her soul bloom in her face like a
closed flower that expands in sunlight.

"I don't know, my dear," she responded gently, and with her hand on
Adams's arm, she ran down the steps and into the carriage before the
door. As they drove away, she looked up at him with a tender little
smile.

"I am so glad that she has you," she said.

"In having you, she has a great deal more."

"It is you who have done it all--you expected me to have courage, so I
have it. Had you expected me to be cowardly, I should have been so."

"Well, I expect you to save her," he answered quietly.

"Does she need it? What was it? What does it mean?"

"You'll know to-night, perhaps. I shall never know, but what does it
matter?"

"I saw Arnold to-day," she said, "he is terribly--terribly--" she
hesitated for a word, "cut up about it. Yet he swears he can't for the