upon which she leaned.

And Carmen--what had been her thought when foul calumny laid its sooty
touch upon her? What had been the working of her mind when that world
which she had sought to illumine with the light of her own purity had
cast her out?

When the blow fell the portals of her mind closed at once against
every accusing thought, against every insidious suggestion of defeat,
of loss, of dishonor. The arrows of malice, as well as those of
self-pity and condemnation, snapped and fell, one by one, as they
hurtled vainly against the whole armor of God wherewith the girl stood
clad. Self sank into service; and she gathered the bewildered,
suffering Beaubien into her arms as if she had been a child. She would
have gone to Ames, too, had she been permitted--not to plead for
mercy, but to offer the tender consolation and support which, despite
the havoc he was committing, she knew he needed even more than the
Beaubien herself.

"Paul had been a murderer," she often said, as she sat in the darkness
alone with the suffering woman and held her trembling hand. "But he
became the chief of apostles. Think of it! When the light came, he
shut the door against the past. If he hadn't, dearest, he never could
have done what he did. And you, and Mr. Ames, will have to do the
same." And this the Beaubien could do, and did, after months of
soul-racking struggle. But Ames sat in spiritual darkness, whipped by
the foul brood of lust and revenge, knowing not that the mountainous
wrath which he hourly heaped higher would some day fall, and bury him
fathoms deep.

Throughout the crisis Father Waite had stood by them stanchly. And
likewise had Elizabeth Wall. "I've just longed for some reasonable
excuse to become a social outcast," the latter had said, as she was
helping Carmen one day to pack her effects prior to removing from the
Hawley-Crowles mansion. "I long for a hearthstone to which I can
attach myself--"

"Then attach yourself to ours!" eagerly interrupted Carmen.

"I'll do it!" declared Miss Wall. "For I know that now you are really
going to live--and I want to live as you will. Moreover--" She paused
and smiled queerly at the girl--"I am quite in love with your hero,
Father Waite, you know."

Harris, too, made a brief call before departing again for Denver.
"I've got to hustle for a living now," he explained, "and it's me for
the mountains once more! New York is no place for such a tender lamb
as I. Oh, I've been well