d, and the laugh belittled them both. But Jeff at
that instant saw, not Alston, but a new vision of life. It might have
been that a tide had rushed in and wiped away even the prints of
Esther's little feet. It might have been that a wind blew in at the
windows of his mind and beat its great wings in the corners of it and
winnowed out the chaff. As he saw life then his judgments softened and
his irritations cooled. Nothing was left but the vision of life itself,
the uncomprehended beneficence, the consoler, the illimitable beauty we
look in the face and do not see. For an instant perhaps he had caught
the true proportions of things and knew at last what was worth weeping
over and what was matter for a healthy mirth. It was all mirth perhaps,
this show of things Lord God had set us in. He had not meant us to take
it dumbly. He had hoped we should see at every turn how queer it is, and
yet how orderly, and get our comfort out of that. He had put laughter
behind every door we open, to welcome us. Grief was there, too, but if
we fully understood Lord God and His world, there would be no grief:
only patience and a gay waiting on His time. And all this came out of
seeing Alston Choate, who thought he was a free man, hobbled by Esther's
web.

Jeffrey got up and Alston looked at him in some concern, he was so
queer, flushed, laughing a little, and with a wandering eye. At the door
he stopped.

"About Weedie," he said. "We shall have to do something to Weedie.
Something radical. He's not going to be mayor of Addington. And I rather
think you'll have to get into politics. You'd be mayor yourself if you'd
get busy."

Jeffrey had no impulse to-day to go and ask Esther if she were afraid of
him as he had when Reardon told him the same tale. He wasn't thinking of
Esther now. He was hugging his idea to his breast and hurrying with it,
either to entrust it to somebody or to wrap it up in the safety of pen
and ink while it was so warm. And when he got home he came on Lydia,
sitting on the front steps, singing to herself and cuddling a kitten in
the curve of her arm. Lydia with no cares, either of the house or her
dancing class or Jeff's future, but given up to the idleness of a summer
afternoon, was one of the most pleasing sights ever put into the hollow
of a lovely world. Jeffrey saw her, as he was to see everything now,
through the medium of his new knowledge. He saw to her heart and found
how sweet it was, and how full of love for