ou
who have felt it stabbed and crushed _refuse_ to die, perhaps you can
understand that strange and fitful strength that came and went; that
outburst of hope, that silence of despair which made, in turn, my dear
one's torture.

One night I found her sitting in the moonlight with her face dropped
forward on the windowsill. So pure, so white, so frail of body, and so
strong of soul, she might have been some marble priestess waiting there
for God's breath to move in passion through the pulseless stone.

"Claudia, dear, are you asleep?" I whispered.

"No, I was thinking if the moon would ever shine upon the night when I
shall feel no more the pangs of hunger."

I took her in my arms and wept, although her eyes were strangely
tearless. She put out her hand and stroked away my tears.

"Don't, dear," she begged. "It is all right. It is only that there is no
place for me. The niche I wish to fill has never been chiseled in the
wall of this world's matters. It is God's mistake if one is made, and
God must look to it. I tell you, Gertie," and she rose up grandly in her
pride and in her wrath, "there are but two niches made for woman in this
world. There's but one choice, wife or harlot. The poor, who refuse
still to be vile, must step aside, since honest poverty by man's decree
is but a myth. There's no room in this world for such."

She was growing bitter, bitter, driving on, I thought, to that fatal
rock from which the wrecks of lost women cry back to rail at God who
would not save them from destruction, although they prayed aloud and
shrieked their agony up heavenward, straight to His ears. I think
sometimes I should not like to sit in God's stead when such women come
to face His judgment. Women who called, and called, and never had an
answer, and so went down, still calling.

It was thus _she_ called.

One day I came upon her where she had thrown herself upon a little
garden stool to rest. A book lay on her knee, her eyes upon the page;
and as I listened, for she read aloud, slowly, as when one reads to his
own heart, I caught the meaning of the poet's words as they had found
interpretation by her:--

"'For each man deems his own sand-house secure,
While life's wild waves are lulled; yet who can say,
If yet his faith's foundations do endure,
It is not that no wind hath blown that way?'"

She was silent a moment, then repeated the first line of the stanza
again, even more softly than before,

"'Fo