the world. As
her physical strength and beauty was the gift of her free mountain life,
the beauty and strength of her pure spirit was the gift of those kindred
spirits that are as mountains in the mental and spiritual life of the
race.

Love had come to Sibyl Andres, not as it comes to those girls who, in the
hot-house of passion we call civilization, are forced into premature and
sickly bloom by an atmosphere of sensuality. Love had come to her so
gently, so naturally, so like the opening of a wild flower, that she had
not yet understood that it was love. Even as her womanhood had come to
fulfill her girlhood, so Aaron King had come into her life to fulfill her
womanhood. She had chosen her mate with an unconscious obedience to the
laws of life that was divinely reckless of the world.

Myra Willard, wise in her experience, and in her more than mother love for
Sibyl, saw and recognized that which the girl herself did not yet
understand. Satisfied as to the character of Aaron King, as it had been
tested in those days of unhampered companionship; and seeing, as well, his
growing love for the girl, the woman had been content not to meddle with
that which she conceived to be the work of God. And why not the work of
God? Should the development, the blossoming, and the fruiting of human
lives, that the race may flower and fruit, be held less a work of divinity
than the plants that mature and blossom and reproduce themselves in their
children?

The character of Mrs. Taine represented those forces in life that are, in
every way, antagonistic to the forces that make the character of a Sibyl
Andres possible. In a spirit of wanton, selfish cruelty, that was born of
her worldly environment and training, "The Age" had twisted and distorted
the very virtues of "Nature" into something as hideously ugly and vile as
her own thoughts. The woman--product of gross materialism and
sensuality--had caught in her licentious hands God's human flower and had
crushed its beauty with deliberate purpose. Wounded, frightened,
dismayed, not understanding, unable to deny, the girl turned in reluctant
flight from the place that was, to her, because of her love, holy ground.

It was impossible for Sibyl not to believe Mrs. Taine--the woman had
spoken so kindly; had seemed so reluctant to speak at all; had appeared so
to appreciate her innocence. A thousand trivial and unimportant incidents,
that, in the light of the worldly woman's words, could be tw