the frantic nerves, playing
upon them fiendish tunes.

Yet he could not reconcile that hell with the God that made the
lilac-bush whose purple clusters shook perfume and little flowers
against his window-sill, while the old locust in rivalry bent down and
flaunted against the lilacs its pendants of ivory grace and heavenly
fragrance.

Against that torment of beauty came glimpses of Drury and Irene in the
lurid cavern under the wreck. Beyond those delicate blossoms he imagined
the battle-fields of Europe and the ruined vessels where hurt souls
writhed in multitudes.

He could not be satisfied with any theory of the world. He could not
find that pain was punishment here, or see how it could follow the soul
after the soul had left behind it the fleshly instrument of torture. The
why of it escaped his reason utterly; for Drury had been good, and he
had come upon an honorable errand when he fell into the pit.

Doctor Crosson stood at his window and begged the placid sky for
information. He looked through the lilacs and the locusts and all the
green wilderness where beauty beat and throbbed like a heart in bliss.
It was the Sabbath, and he was not sure. But he was sure of a melting
tenderness in his heart for Irene Straley, and he felt that her power to
feel sorry for her lover--sorry enough to defy all the laws in his
behalf--was a wonderful power. He longed for her sympathy.

By and by he began to feel a pain, the pain of Drury Boldin. He was
glad. He groaned. "I hurt! I hope that I may hurt terribly."

Suddenly it seemed that he actually was Drury Boldin in the throes of
every fierce and spasmic thrill. Again he most vividly was Irene Straley
watching her lover till she could not endure his torture or her own, and
with one desperate challenge sent him back to the mystery whence he
came.

Doctor Crosson, when he came back to himself, could not solve that
mystery or any mystery. He knew one reality, that it hurts to be alive;
that everybody is always hurting, and that human heart must help human
heart as best it can. Pain is the one inescapable fact; the rest is
theory.... He prayed with a deeper fervor than he had ever known:

"God give me pain, that I may understand, that I may understand!"

THE BEAUTY AND THE FOOL

There was once a beautiful woman, and she lived in a small town, though
people said that she belonged rather in a great city, where her gifts
would bring her glory, riches, and a brilliant