en her smile vanished.

"It's time you started to prove God," she said earnestly. "Won't you
begin now--to-day? Haven't you yet learned that evil is the very
stupidest, dullest, most uninteresting thing in the world? It is,
really. Won't you turn from your material endeavors now, and take time
to learn to really live? You've got plenty of time, you know, for you
aren't obliged to work for a living."

She was leaning close to him, and her breath touched his cheek. Her
soft little hand lay upon his own. And her great, dark eyes looked
into his with a light which he knew, despite his perverted thought,
came from the unquenchable flame of her selfless love.

Again that unfamiliar sentiment--nay, rather, that sentiment long
dormant--stirred within him. Again his worldly concepts, long
entrenched, instantly rose to meet and overthrow it. He had not yet
learned to analyze the thoughts which crept so silently into his
ever-open mentality. To all alike he gave free access. And to those
which savored of things earthy he still gave the power to build, with
himself as a willing tool.

"You will--help me--to live?" he said. He thought her the most
gloriously beautiful object he had ever known, as she sat there before
him, so simply gowned, and yet clothed with that which all the gold of
Ophir could not have bought.

"Yes, gladly--oh, so gladly!" Her eyes sparkled with a rush of tears.

"Don't you think," he said gently, drawing his chair a little closer
to her, "that we have quite misunderstood each other? I am sure we
have."

"Perhaps so," she answered thoughtfully. "But," with a happy smile
again lighting her features, "we can understand each other now, can't
we?"

"Of course we can! And hasn't the time come for us to work together,
instead of continuing to oppose each other?"

"Yes! yes, indeed!" she cried eagerly.

"I--I have been thinking so ever since I returned yesterday from
Washington. I am--I--"

"We need each other, don't we?" the artless girl exclaimed, as she
beamed upon him.

"I am positive of it!" he said with suggestive emphasis. "I can help
you--more than you realize--and I want to. I--I've been sorry for you,
little girl, mighty sorry, ever since that story got abroad about--"

"Oh, never mind that!" she interrupted happily. "We are living in the
present, you know."

"True--and in the future. But things haven't been right for you. And I
want to see them straightened out. And you and I can do it,