d her to pause and
reflect and probably would have been the deciding factor in her life.
Her removal from the old life and the glimpses of the new had
unconsciously wrought a change within her. She began to see things as
they really are when shorn of their glamour. The life she hitherto had
known, she realized, was purely a superficial condition, not only
foreign to the realities of things, but superfluous to man himself.
Never had Captain Forest appeared so sane and her father so superficial
as the hour in which she grasped that truth. It is not what the world
makes of you, but what you make of yourself that counts, the beauteous,
seductive night kept whispering to her. Why, then, if this be true,
should the world about her appear so remote? It was not the actual
world--the world as it really is that she would be called upon to give
up, but merely the world of that particular set of men and women in
which she hitherto had moved.

The same earth rolled beneath her feet--the same stars that looked down
upon her in the past still glittered in the heavens overhead--the same
winds that crept through the garden and sighed among the trees, wafting
the spicy, fragrant odors of the flowers into her face, were the same
that had fanned her cheek in the past. All things remained practically
the same, only the people were different. But could the old interests
and friendships and associations compensate her for the loss of the man
that had come into her life to remain for the rest of her days whether
she chose to keep him or not? These new and perplexing questions she was
forced to ask herself for the first time, and she knew that there could
be but one answer forthcoming.

Love was knocking at the portals of her heart as it had never knocked
before. It had come to her warm and living, deep and subtle and
indefinable, leaving nothing to be said or desired. She saw clearly
that principle, as the world conceives it, was not involved. Affection
recognizes no such principle--only virtuous longing and desire which is
a principle in itself--the fulfillment of creation's grandest purpose;
and it rested with her to accept this truth or pass it by.

The chill of the early morning caused her to draw her wrap more closely
about her shoulders. A deep sigh of relief escaped her as she glanced
upwards once more for a last look at the paling stars. How satisfactory
it was to know even though the knowledge pained her!

She had entered the gard