er little practice piano her eyes fell on the pages of Schubert's
unfinished symphony.

"Unfinished!" she said. "And yet even there is the phrase that comes and
comes again, sweeter and more full of meaning in every renewed variety.
So I must have love to play through my life, or else it will be nothing
but a medley. It must be my music's theme; even if the symphony is
unfinished. Are there women who can do without it, who can take a life
alone and make it sweet and satisfying? Not I, oh God, not I! I'm no
exceptional creature. I'm just a plain woman. And if life doesn't give
me wifehood and motherhood, it gives me nothing. I wonder if all women
feel this way. This pretty little Lena,--is she bursting with primal
need of giving and taking? At any rate she has put something in Dick's
face that was never there before--that I'd give my soul to see in a
man's face when he looks at me."

Hitherto the world had ambled along in an amiable way; and now it
suddenly turned and delivered a blow in the face. Every one is destined
to receive such blows, some get little else. But the test comes in the
way they are received. You may use belladonna as a poison, or you may
use it to help the blind to see. So when pain comes, you may take it to
your bosom and suckle it till it becomes a fine healthy child, too heavy
for you to carry; or cast out the changeling and leave it on the
doorstep to die. It matters little how much anguish skulks about the
outside of life, so long as it finds no lodgment in the sacred shrines
of the heart. Madeline met her first grief and fought it off; and, even
while she thought it had given her a mortal wound, came the revelation
of the powerlessness of the poor thing. She put her arms down on the
window-sill to cry deliberately, but something dried her tears.

"I couldn't put that look in Dick's face, but could he put it in mine?
Was this taking of things for granted the best love of which I am
capable? I've found out to-day that there are all kinds of things in me
that I have never dreamed of before, and passion is one of them, and
rebellion. Great heavens! I might have married him and been serene and
never found things out."

She seemed to be looking at a new Madeline; and while she stared,
startled, this self grew greater and stronger.

"This is not the end of life; it is the beginning," she whispered. "I've
been looking down the wrong road. Dick has no such power over me as to
consign me to misery ev