ble. Then
she sat back against the luxurious cushions, trying to control the
terror that had come suddenly upon her spirit. She no longer doubted and
hesitated. The shock had revealed the depths of her own heart which she
had not sounded. She came in a moment to know that love is not a feeling
to be analyzed or nurtured or trained into growth; the thing she had
been repressing and torturing into subjection suddenly became a divine,
reverential passion.

As they drove through the tree-shaded streets she trembled lest John
Allingham might already have crossed the mysterious boundary which
separates the living from the dead, and she would meet only a life-long
sorrow at her door,--a sorrow which would crown her life with
sanctifying, uplifting influences, even though it crushed her heart and
benumbed her soul. But even that, she realized, was infinitely better
than the starving of love with which she had been cheating herself. She
bent her head and prayed while the carriage rolled rapidly on under the
overarching elms and up the graveled driveway to her house.

Once within she passed rapidly upstairs, unfastening her wraps as she
did so, and going towards the rooms where she knew the injured men would
be carried. They had been taken, she was told, to her father's old room,
where the doctor was already with them. Dared she go in?

Throwing her wraps in at the door to her own apartment, she turned again
towards the sick-chamber. And then she stood face to face with John
Allingham.

"John," she sobbed. "O, John."

Taken by itself, it was a meaningless sentence; but it satisfied him. He
held out his arms and she nestled into them.

"You are really not fit to walk alone," she smiled up at him after an
eloquent moment. "Ask me again to walk with you."

So it fell out that on the eve of the next mayor's inaugural, there was
a wedding; and all of Roma rejoiced with the couple who pronounced the
holy vows. For the loving heart of the woman was to stand alongside the
strong desire of the man; and all Roma would be guided and helped by the
two.

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AZALEA

By ELIA W. PEATTIE

The first book of the "Blue Ridge" Series

Azalea is the heroine of a good, wholesome story that will appeal to
every mother as the sort of book she would like her daughter to read. In
the homy McBirneys of Mt. Tennyson, down in the Blue Ridge country, and
their hearty mountain