te generosity was the essence of her gift, and that
this woman, so far above him in courage, and self-command, and purity,
scorned to close her fingers on a single coin of the wealth which she
held out to him. And he, like Norbert, answered reverently: "I take you
and thank God."

For just because he knew it, and was penetrated to the core by her
munificence, he took the draught of love as from a sacred chalice, which
a meaner nature would have grasped as a festal goblet. He might have
grasped it thus, and the sacramental wine would have been a Circe's
potion, and Lettice would have given her gift in vain. But nature does
not so miscalculate her highest moods. "Spirits are not finely touched
but to fine issues." Lettice's giving was an act of faith, and her faith
was justified.

This was the true source of Alan's self-respect, and from self-respect
there came a strength greater and more enduring than he had ever known
before. Redeemed from the material baseness of his past when he changed
the prison cell for Lettice's ennobling presence, he was now saved from
the mental and moral feebleness to which he might have sunk by the
ordeal through which his soul had passed.

Lettice felt that her work was accomplished, and she was supremely
happy. When Clara Graham kept her promise, and came to see her
friend--though she had not been able to bring her husband with her--she
was struck by the blithe gaiety of Lettice's looks and words.

"There is no need to tell me that you are satisfied!" she said, kissing
the tender cheeks, and gazing with wistful earnestness into the eyes
that so frankly and bravely met her own.

"Satisfied?" Lettice answered, with something like a sigh. "I never
dreamed that satisfaction could be so complete."

When Alan came in, and Clara, who had expected to see a face lined and
marred with sorrow, found that he too had caught the radiance of
unblemished happiness, she felt that Lettice had not spent her strength
in vain. And she went home and renewed her efforts to make her husband
see things as she saw them, and to give Alan Walcott his countenance in
the literary world.

But that was a task of no slight difficulty. James Graham had always
believed Walcott guilty of a barbarous attack on his wife; he thought
that he had been lightly punished, and would not admit that he was to be
received when he came out of prison as though he had never been sent
there. When Clara told him of Lettice's audacity h