mesick. It was as if the city cried: "It is winter; the
world is dark and dead. Come, my children, gather together; gather here
in my arms, you millions; laugh and converse together, toil together,
light fires, turn on lights, warm your hands and souls at my flaming
hearth. We will forget the ice and the twilight! Come, winter is the
time for human beings!"

And so Myra awoke to the fact that she was indeed a child of the
city--that the magic was in her blood and the enchantment in her heart.
It was useless to recall the mean toil, the narrow life, the unhealthy
days. These, dropped in the great illusion of crowded New York, were
transformed into a worthy struggle, a part of the city's reality. She
suddenly felt as if she would go crazy if she stayed in the country--its
stillness stifled her, its emptiness made her ache.

But there was a deeper call than the call of the city. She wanted to be
with Joe. Her letters to him had been for his sake, not hers. She had
tried to save him from herself, to shut him out and set him free, to
cure him of his love. Desperately she did this, knowing that the future
held nothing for them together. And for a time it had been a beautiful
thing to do, until finally she was compelled to believe that he really
was cured. His notes were more and more perfunctory, until, at last,
they ceased altogether. Then, when she knew she had lost him, it seemed
to her that she had condemned herself to a barren, fruitless life; that
the best had been lived, and it only remained now to die. She had given
up her "whole existence," cast out that by which she truly lived. There
were moments of inexpressible loneliness, when, reading in the orchard,
or brooding beside some rippling brook, she glanced southward and sent
her silent cry over the horizon. Somewhere down there he was swallowed
in the vastness of life; she remembered the lines of his face, his dark
melancholy eyes, his big human, humorous lips, his tall, awkward
strength; she felt still those kisses on her lips; felt his arms about
her; the warmth of his hand; the whisper of his words; and the wind in
the oaks.

That afternoon at the riverside he had cast his future at her feet. She
had been offered that which runs deeper than hunger or dream or toil,
the elemental, the mystic, the very glory of a woman's life. She had
been offered a life, too, of comradeship and great issues. And now, when
these gifts were withdrawn, she knew she would nevermore