life but to choose where she would live, to take a house, to fill it
with furniture, to gratify every reasonable want, on the one condition
that she should devote herself to honest hard work, and give to her
fellow-creatures the best that she was capable of producing.

It was all that her ambition had ever led her to desire, and it came to
her at a time of life when her enjoyment was likely to be most keen and
complete. Unless her own hand put aside the cup, it was hers to drink
and to be satisfied.

And what did Alan think of it? She wondered dimly now and then if he had
read it, and what he thought of the words that she had spoken out of a
full heart to him and to him alone. Did he guess it? And would he ever
know? She would have been answered if she could have seen him on a
certain day in April, when she was in Florence and he in London town.

Alan Walcott sat in his room, on the first floor of a house between the
Strand and the River Thames, reading Lettice Campion's book. He had read
it once, from beginning to end, and now he was turning back to the
passages which had moved him most deeply, anxious not to lose the light
from a single facet of the gem that sparkled in his hands. It would have
been a gem to Alan even if the world had not seen its beauty, and he was
jealous of those who could lavish their praise on this woman whom he
knew and worshipped, when his own hard fate compelled him to be silent.

How well he recognized her thoughts and moods in every page of the
story! How familiar were many of the reflections, and even the very
words which she employed! Here and there the dialogue recalled to his
mind conversations which he had held with her in the happy days gone by.
In one case, at least, he found that she had adopted a view of his own
which he had maintained in argument against her, and which at the time
she had not been willing to accept. It rejoiced him to see the mark of
his influence, however slight, upon one who had so deeply impressed her
image on his mind.

The novel was a revelation to him in more ways than one. It was as if
she had spoken to him, for himself alone, words of wisdom and comfort
and encouragement. That, indeed, was precisely what she had
done--consciously and of set purpose--though he did not know it. The
plot went home to his heart. When the heroine spoke to the hero he
seemed to catch the very tones of her voice, to see the lips in motion,
and to read in her eyes the spirit an