gger as she gazed. By flinging her
frail body into the dreadful surges could one reach peace and safety?

Faintly her spirit heard the answer of the pursuing hound of heaven,
faintly she heard the call of eternity and of the Eternal Love.

The great black billows called to her. Elsie wondered what all the poor
girls the waves toss up along the shores say to their Maker. She seemed
to feel with them as she stood there, how the waves seize the bodies of
the lost,--how the undertow takes them. Elsie put her hands to her face.

"Why am I here alone in the night?" she heard herself asking. Her voice
sounded strangely familiar, yet unfamiliar as if some one were speaking
to her. Then she knew that the voice was her own soul in the silence.

"Mother will forgive me, mother wants me back, mother will help me get
well--if there is any health in me. Mother knows that it wasn't all my
fault--" her thought defended her against that voice.

"Why am I here alone in the night?" the question was repeated.

"I will go home. I will begin again. Men begin again. Oh!..." A sob came
from her lips.... "No, no, no!"

She felt with every nerve of her quivering being that in the slow upward
climb of sex towards true love and true parenthood woman's battle is
man's,--felt that God and Nature are now demanding not less of men.

The suffering girl could not put her certainty into words, but in her
body and in her soul she knew--she knew.

Suddenly from the opened window of the nearest home she heard above the
wind the cry of a baby, the loud, sweet, prolonged, fiercely-demanding
cry of a hungry little baby.

A wistful smile twisted her lips as she listened.

Suddenly as the baby's cry was stopped she put her hands to her bosom and
a strange lovely light shone on her face.

CHAPTER XXX

AT THE WEDDING FEAST

Brightly shone the sunshine on the fields and woods surrounding Millville
and on the little house where Mrs. Welcome was busy putting the last
touches to the order and sweetness of home.

Patience and her husband were coming on the noon train.

Later in the day a few of their friends had promised to come to the
supper for which her mother had been making loaves of delicious cake.

"It is strange, strange that my child should be the wife of John Boland's
son," she mused. "I wonder what my poor man would say. Would he feel less
bitter if he could know that Boland s