mission and opportunity had been given her, and
had centred, and he almost doubted whether the thing that was urging
itself with him to be asked for last and greatest of all, were right
to ask; whether it existed for him, and a way could be made for it
to be given him. Yet the question was in him, strong and earnest; a
question that had never been in him before to ask of any woman. Why
had it been put there if it might not at least be spoken? If there
were not possibly, in this woman's keeping, the ordained and perfect
answer?

While he sat and scrupled about it, it sprang, with an impulse that
he did not stop to scruple at, to his lips.

"I shall want to ask you questions every day, dear friend! What are
we to do about it?"

Desire's eyes flashed up at him with a happiness in them that waited
not to weigh anything; that he could not mistake. The color was
bright upon her cheek; her lips were soft and tremulous. Then the
eyes dropped gently away again; she answered nothing,--with words.

So far as he had spoken, she had answered.

"I want you there, by my side, to help me make a real human home
around which other homes may grow. There ought to be a heart in it,
and I cannot do it alone. Could you--_will_ you--come? Will you be
to me the one woman of the world, and out of your purity and
strength help me to help your sisters?"

He had risen and walked the few steps across the distance that was
between them. He stopped before her, and bending toward her, held
out his hands.

Desire stood up and laid hers in them.

"It must be right. You have come for me. I cannot possibly do
otherwise than this."

The deep, gracious, divine fact had asserted itself. A house here,
or a house there could not change or bind it. They belonged
together. There was a new love in the world, and the world would
have to arrange itself around it. Around it and the Will that it was
to be wedded to do.

They stood together, hands in hands. Christopher Kirkbright leaned
over and laid his lips against her forehead.

He whispered her name, set in other syllables that were only for
him to say to her. I shall not say them over on this page to you.

But there is a line in the blessed Scripture that we all know, and
God had fulfilled it to his heart.

Strangely--more strangely than any story can contrive--are the
happenings of life put side by side.

As they sat there a little longer in the quiet library, forgetting
the late evening hour,