reasure because
he had heard her admire Jane's amethysts, and she, all unconscious
of any wrong-doing, had ever regarded it as the one evidence of his
thoughtful tenderness, it being the one gift she had ever received from
him; how she parted with it, as she had parted with her other jewels,
in order to obtain money to purchase comforts for him while he was in
prison--Jane could not have understood. The fact of an older woman being
fond of a young man, almost a boy, was beyond her mental grasp. She had
no imagination with which to comprehend that innocent, pathetic, almost
terrible love of one who has trodden the earth long for one who has just
set dancing feet upon it. It was noble of Jane Carew that, lacking all
such imagination, she acted as she did: that, although she did not,
could not, formulate it to herself, she would no more have deprived the
other woman and the dead man of that one little unscathed bond of tender
goodness than she would have robbed his grave of flowers.

Viola looked at her. "I cannot tell you all about it; you would laugh at
me," she whispered; "but this was mine once."

"It is yours now, dear," said Jane.

THE UMBRELLA MAN

IT was an insolent day. There are days which, to imaginative minds, at
least, possess strangely human qualities. Their atmospheres predispose
people to crime or virtue, to the calm of good will, to sneaking vice,
or fierce, unprovoked aggression. The day was of the last description.
A beast, or a human being in whose veins coursed undisciplined blood,
might, as involuntarily as the boughs of trees lash before storms,
perform wild and wicked deeds after inhaling that hot air, evil with the
sweat of sinevoked toil, with nitrogen stored from festering sores of
nature and the loathsome emanations of suffering life.

It had not rained for weeks, but the humidity was great. The clouds of
dust which arose beneath the man's feet had a horrible damp stickiness.
His face and hands were grimy, as were his shoes, his cheap, ready-made
suit, and his straw hat. However, the man felt a pride in his clothes,
for they were at least the garb of freedom. He had come out of prison
the day before, and had scorned the suit proffered him by the officials.
He had given it away, and bought a new one with a goodly part of his
small stock of money. This suit was of a small-checked pattern. Nobody
could tell from it that the wearer had just left jail. He had been there
for several years f