the thought of me had grown so strong as to pierce the silence I
had imposed on her. We wrote to one another--like common friends
with a certain restraint between us at first, and with a great
longing to see her once more arising in my heart. For a time I left
that hunger unexpressed, and then I was moved to tell it to her. And
so on New Year's Day in the Year Four, she came to Lowchester and
me. How I remember that coming, across the gulf of fifty years! I
went out across the park to meet her, so that we should meet alone.
The windless morning was clear and cold, the ground new carpeted
with snow, and all the trees motionless lace and glitter of frosty
crystals. The rising sun had touched the white with a spirit
of gold, and my heart beat and sang within me. I remember now the
snowy shoulder of the down, sunlit against the bright blue sky. And
presently I saw the woman I loved coming through the white
still trees. . . .

I had made a goddess of Nettie, and behold she was a fellow-creature!
She came, warm-wrapped and tremulous, to me, with the tender promise
of tears in her eyes, with her hands outstretched and that dear
smile quivering upon her lips. She stepped out of the dream I had
made of her, a thing of needs and regrets and human kindliness. Her
hands as I took them were a little cold. The goddess shone through
her indeed, glowed in all her body, she was a worshipful temple of
love for me--yes. But I could feel, like a thing new discovered,
the texture and sinews of her living, her dear personal
and mortal hands. . . .

THE EPILOGUE

THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER

This was as much as this pleasant-looking, gray-haired man
had written. I had been lost in his story throughout the earlier
portions of it, forgetful of the writer and his gracious room, and
the high tower in which he was sitting. But gradually, as I drew
near the end, the sense of strangeness returned to me. It was more
and more evident to me that this was a different humanity from any
I had known, unreal, having different customs, different beliefs,
different interpretations, different emotions. It was no mere change
in conditions and institutions the comet had wrought. It had made
a change of heart and mind. In a manner it had dehumanized the
world, robbed it of its spites, its little intense jealousies, its
inconsistencies, its humor. At the end, and particularly after
the death of his mother, I felt his story had slipped away from my
sympat