ourselves. Nay; we don't have many
come. Brother William was the last. Why did he come?" She looked coldly
at Athalia, who had asked the question. "Because he saw the way to
peace. He'd had strife enough in the world. Yee," she admitted, briefly,
"some fall from grace, and leave us. The last was Lydia. She was one
of our children, and I thought she was of the chosen. But she was only
thirty when she fell away, and you can't expect wisdom at that age. That
was nearly twenty years ago. When she has tasted the dregs of the world
she will come back to us--if she lives," Eldress Hannah ended.

Athalia listened breathlessly, her rapt, unhumorous eyes fixed on
Eldress Hannah's still face. Now and then she asked a question, and
once cried out that, after all, why wasn't it the way to live? Peace and
self-sacrifice and love! "Oh," she said, turning to her husband, "can't
you feel the attraction of it? I should think even you could feel it!"

"I think I feel it--after a fashion," he said, mildly; "I think I have
always felt the attraction of community life."

Afterward, when they had left all this somnolent peace and begun the
long walk back to the station, he explained what he meant: "I couldn't
say so before the Eldress, but of course there are times when anybody
can feel the charm of getting rid of personal responsibility--and that
is what community life really means. It's the relief of being a little
cog in a big machine; in fact, the very attraction of it is a sort
of temptation, to my way of looking at it. But it--well, it made me
sleepy," he confessed.

For once his wife had no reply. She was very quiet on that return
journey in the cars, and in the days that followed she kept referring to
their visit with a persistence that surprised her husband. She thought
the net caps were beautiful; she thought the exquisite cleanness of
everything was like a perfume--"the perfume of a wild rose!" she said,
ecstatically. She thought the having everything in common was the way to
live. "And just think how peaceful it is!"

"Well, yes," Lewis said; "I suppose it's peaceful--after a fashion.
Anything that isn't alive is peaceful."

"But their idea of brotherhood is the highest kind of life!"

"The only fault I have to find with it is that it isn't human," he said,
mildly. He had no desire to prove or disprove anything; Athalia was
looking better, just because she was interested in something, and that
was enough for Lewis. When sh