; what road too steep if they essayed
it hand in hand?

And that--her confused thoughts ran on--that was what had changed all
life for Julie. She had forgotten Europe, forgotten all the idle
ambitions of her girlhood, because she loved her husband; and now the
new miracle was to come to her,--the miracle of a child, the little
perfect promise of the days to come. How marvellous--how marvellous
it was! The little imperative, helpless third person, bringing to
radiant youth and irresponsibility the terrors of danger and anguish,
and the great final joy, to share together. That was life. Julie was
living; and although Margaret's own heart was not yet a wife's, and
she could not yet find room for the love beyond that, still she was
strangely, deeply stirred now by a longing for all the experiences
that life held.

How she loved everything and everybody to-night,--how she loved just
being alive--just being Margaret Paget, lying here in the dark
dreaming and thinking. There was no one in the world with whom she
would change places to-night! Margaret found herself thinking of one
woman of her acquaintance after another,--and her own future, opening
all color of rose before her, seemed to her the one enviable path
through the world.

In just one day, she realized with vague wonder, her slowly formed
theories had been set at naught, her whole philosophy turned upside
down. Had these years of protest and rebellion done no more than lead
her in a wide circle, past empty gain, and joyless mirth, and the dead
sea fruit of riches and idleness, back to her mother's knees again? She
had met brilliant women, rich women, courted women--but where among
them was one whose face had ever shone as her mother's shone to-day?
The overdressed, idle dowagers; the matrons, with their too-gay
frocks, their too-full days, their too-rich food; the girls, all
crudeness, artifice, all scheming openly for their own advantage,--where
among them all was happiness? Where among them was one whom
Margaret had heard say--as she had heard her mother say so many,
many times,--"Children, this is a happy day,"--"Thank God for
another lovely Sunday all together,"--"Isn't it lovely to get up
and find the sun shining?"--"Isn't it good to come home hungry to
such a nice dinner!"

And what a share of happiness her mother had given the world! How she
had planned and worked for them all,--Margaret let her arm fall across
the sudden ache in her eyes as she thought