the sense of glad singing in the distances.
There was no sleep for hours this night, though of late, she had been
sleeping unusually well.... Why had the realization been so slow in
coming? An answer was ready enough: Because David was an old
acquaintance. But another thought came: For years, except in rare
reactionary hours, such as that afternoon in Beth's studio, she had put
away the thought of man as a mate.... For years, she had tried to
become a block instead of a battery; tried to give the full portion of
her life to the thing called work, and hated herself because she
couldn't. For years she had dreaded to go where men and women were,
because the rare sight of human happiness brought upon her a torrent of
dreams. The emptiness of her own life, together with the hatred of
self, because she could not be glad for the simple object lesson of a
man and woman happy in each other, made her miserable for hours. Late
years she had not cared if she looked tacky. "What does it matter," she
would ask, with a hateful glance into the glass, "when at best, I look
like a water-nymph with hay-fever?"... A long and hard fight, but she
had almost broken the habit of thinking what she might do with certain
prerogatives of women, which were not granted to her. A bitter fight,
and only she knew the hollowness of the honors her good work had
brought. It was not the hard work that had left her at the end of many
a long day--just a worn bundle of sparking nerve-ends.

And yet, this was the creature whom the new David Cairns had come to,
again and again and again. This mighty fact arose from the vortex of
confusion and alarm. "Ah, David," she thought, "is it not too late? Am
I not too old and weathered a world-campaigner?... I am old, David.
Older than my years. Older even than I look! I have warred so long,
that I think all peace and happiness from now on would kill me. Oh, you
don't want me. Surely you can't want me!"

But there were sad smilings upon the hundred hand-wrought faces in the
room. The Marys, the Magdalens, and the Marthas were a strangely
smiling Sisterhood.... "Child, you have been faithful in the little
things," came to her. "You have thought of us and wept with us and
loved us, and we have prevailed to bring you happiness."

And so the other side of the picture--Vina Nettleton's life
picture--now turned. The "Stations" were like panels of fairies, after
that. All the hidden shames and secrets of the years, the awful