arded. She made trial of this a few
times and was convinced: up to the day of the cruel discovery of that,
Gabriella had never dreamed what her social world could be to one who
had dropped out of it.

Her church and the new life--these two had been left her. She no longer
had a pew, but she had her faith and this was enough; for it always
gave her, wherever she was, some secret place in which to kneel and
from which to rise strengthened and comforted. As for the fearful
fields of work into which she had come, a strange and solitary learner,
these had turned into the abiding, the living landscapes of life now.
Here she had found independence--sweet, wholesome crust; found another
self within herself; and here found her mission for the future--David.
So that looking upon the disordered and planless years, during which it
had often seemed that she was struggling unwatched, Gabriella now
believed that through them she had most been guided, When many hands
had let hers go, One had taken it; when old pathways were closed, a new
one was opened; and she had been led along it--home.

David's illness had deepened beyond any other experience her faith in
an overruling Providence. His return to health was to her a return from
death: it was an answer to her prayers: it was a resurrection.
Henceforth his life was a gift for the second time to himself, to her,
to the world for which he must work with all his powers and work
aright. And her pledge, her compact with the Divine, was to help him,
to guide him back into the faith from which he had wandered. Outside of
prayer, days and nights at his bedside had made him hers: vigils,
nursing, suffering, helplessness, dependence--all these had been as
purest oil to that alabaster lamp of love which burned within her
chaste soul.

The sun had gone down. The hush of twilight was descending from the
clear sky, in the depths of which the brightest stars began to appear
as points of silvery flame. The air had the balm of early summer, the
ground was dry and warm.

Gabriella began to watch. The last time she had gone to see him, as he
walked part of the way back with her, he had said:--

"I am well now; the next time _I_ am coming to see YOU."

Soon, along the edge of the orchard from the direction of the house,
she saw him walking slowly toward her, thin, gaunt; he was leaning on a
rough, stout hickory, as long as himself, in the manner of an old man.

She rose quickly and hastened to him