her. I saw her clearly for a
moment--saw her as I had never seen her before--young and gentle
and--yes, this is the only word for it--loving. It was just as if a
curse had turned into a blessing, for, while she stood there, I had a
curious sensation of being enfolded in a kind of spiritual glow and
comfort--only words are useless to describe the feeling because it
wasn't in the least like anything else I had ever known in my life. It
was light without heat, glow without light--and yet it was none of these
things. The nearest I can come to it is to call it a sense of
blessedness--of blessedness that made you at peace with everything you
had once hated.

Not until afterwards did I realize that it was the victory of good over
evil. Not until afterwards did I discover that Mrs. Vanderbridge had
triumphed over the past in the only way that she could triumph. She had
won, not by resisting, but by accepting, not by violence, but by
gentleness, not by grasping, but by renouncing. Oh, long, long
afterwards, I knew that she had robbed the phantom of power over her by
robbing it of hatred. She had changed the thought of the past, in that
lay her victory.

At the moment I did not understand this. I did not understand it even
when I looked again for the apparition in the firelight, and saw that it
had vanished. There was nothing there--nothing except the pleasant
flicker of light and shadow on the old Persian rug.

HIS SMILE[11]

By SUSAN GLASPELL

(From _The Pictorial Review_)

Laura stood across the street waiting for the people to come out from
the picture-show. She couldn't have said just why she was waiting,
unless it was that she was waiting because she could not go away. She
was not wearing her black; she had a reason for not wearing it when she
came on these trips, and the simple lines of her dark-blue suit and the
smart little hat Howie had always liked on her, somehow suggested young
and happy things. Two soldiers came by; one of them said, "Hello, there,
kiddo," and the other, noting the anxiety with which she waited, assured
her, "_You_ should worry." She looked at them, and when he saw her face
the one who had said, "You should worry," said, in sheepish fashion,
"Well, _I_ should worry," as if to get out of the apology he didn't know
how to make. She was glad they had gone by. It hurt so to be near the
soldiers.

The man behind her kept saying, "Pop-_corn_! _Pop_-corn right _here_."
It seemed she must