he path that his love shows us, instead of through conceit or
cowardice or mockery choosing another; to trust Him for our strength
and fitness as the flowers do, simply giving ourselves back to Him in
grateful service,--this is to keep the laws that give us the freedom
of the city in which there is no longer any night of bewilderment or
ignorance or uncertainty. So the woman who had lived a life of
bondage, whose hardest task-master was herself, and the woman who had
been both taught and inspired to hold fast her freedom, sat side by
side: the one life having been blighted because it lacked its mate,
and was but half a life in itself; while the other, fearing to give
half its royalty or to share its bounty, was being tempted to cripple
itself, and to lose its strait and narrow way where God had left no
room for another.

For as the play went on and the easily pleased audience laughed and
clapped its hands, and the tired players bowed and smiled from behind
the flaring foot-lights, there was one spectator who was conscious of
a great crisis in her own life, which the mimicry of that evening
seemed to ridicule and counterfeit. And though Nan smiled with the
rest, and even talked with her neighbors while the tawdry curtain had
fallen, it seemed to her that the coming of Death at her life's end
could not be more strange and sudden than this great barrier which had
fallen between her and her girlhood, the dear old life which had kept
her so unpuzzled and safe. So this was love at last, this fear, this
change, this strange relation to another soul. Who could stand now at
her right hand and give her grace to hold fast the truth that her soul
must ever be her own?

The only desire that possessed her was to be alone again, to make Love
show his face as well as make his mysterious presence felt. She was
thankful for the shelter of the crowd, and went on, wishing that the
short distance to her aunt's home could be made even shorter. She had
felt this man's love for her only in a vague way before, and now, as
he turned to speak to her from time to time, she could not meet his
eyes. The groups of people bade each other good-night merrily, though
the entertainment had been a little tiresome to every one at the last,
and it seemed the briefest space of time before Miss Fraley and Nan
and their cavalier were left by themselves, and at last Nan and George
Gerry were alone together.

For his part he had never been so happy as that nig