tood leaning against the railing of the altar, with the light of
the setting sun falling aslant on the gilded card she held up in one
hand; on her white convulsed face, where tears fell in a scalding
flood. Retracing her steps, Leo said falteringly:

"In my efforts to comfort you, have I only wounded more sorely? How
have I hurt you? What can I do?"

"No--no! you are an angel of pity, hovering over an abyss of ruin,
whose darkest horrors you only imagine faintly. What can you do?
Nothing, but pray to God to paralyze my tongue, and grant me death,
before I lose my last clutch on faith, and curse my Creator, and drift
down to eternal perdition! It was hard enough before, but this mockery
maddens."

With a sudden abandonment, she hurled the card away, threw her arms
around Leo's neck and sobbed unrestrainedly. Tenderly the latter held
her shivering form, as the proud head fell on her shoulder; and after a
time, Beryl lifted a face white as an annunciation lily, drenched by
tropical rain.

"I thought misfortune had emptied all her vials, and that I was nerved,
because there was nothing more to dread. But the worst is always
behind, and this is the irony of fate. You think that merely a
rhetorical metaphor, a tragic trope? How should you know? That
Christmas card is the solitary dove I sent out to hunt a resting-place
for mother and for me, when the flood engulfed us. It was my design
sent to Boston, to compete for the prizes offered. How I dreamed, how I
toiled! Haunting the flower shops for a glimpse of heartsease, and
passion flowers, and stars of Bethlehem; begging a butcher at the
abattoir to spare a lamb, until I could sketch it; kneeling by cradles
in the public Creche to get the full red curve of a baby's sucking
lips, as they forsook the bottle, the dimple in the tiny hands, the
tendrils of hair on the satin brow! Over that card I sang, and I wept;
I worked, hoped, prayed, believed! So much depended upon it! Could the
Christ to whom I dedicated it, fail to answer my prayer for success?
Three hundred dollars! What a mint! It would pay the doctor, and make
mother comfortable, and get her a warm new suit for coming winter. Oh!
it is so easy to believe in God, until He denies us; and to trust
Christ, till He hurls our prayers back, and the stones crush us. Only
three hundred dollars between life and death; between a happy, proud
girl with a noble future, and a disgraced, broken-hearted wreck
trampled into a convict