haps, by themselves--as revealed in
their judgments, rather than in their professions--will think
it was quite unnecessary to awaken her gradually; they will
declare her a hard-hearted person, caring deeply about no one
but herself, or one of those curiosities of human nature that
are interested only in things, not at all in persons, even in
themselves. There may also be those who will see in her a
soft and gentle heart for which her intelligence finally
taught her to construct a shield--more or less
effective--against buffetings which would have destroyed or,
worse still, maimed her. These will feel that the sea voyage, the
sea change, suspending the normal human life, the life on land,
tided her over a crisis that otherwise must have been disastrous.

However this may be--and who dares claim the definite
knowledge of the mazes of human character and motive to be
positive about the matter?--however it may be, on Thursday
afternoon they steamed along a tranquil and glistening sea
into the splendor and majesty of New York Harbor. And Susan
was again her calm, sweet self, as the violet-gray eyes gazing
pensively from the small, strongly-featured face plainly
showed. Herself again, with the wound--deepest if not
cruelest of her many wounds--covered and with its poison under
control. She was ready again to begin to live--ready to
fulfill our only certain mission on this earth, for we are not
here to succumb and to die, but to adapt ourselves and live.
And those who laud the succumbers and the diers--yea, even
the blessed martyrs of sundry and divers fleeting issues
usually delusions--may be paying ill-deserved tribute to
vanity, obstinacy, lack of useful common sense, passion for
futile and untimely agitation--or sheer cowardice. Truth--and
what is truth but right living?--truth needs no martyrs; and
the world needs not martyrs, not corpses rotting in unmarked
or monumented graves, but intelligent men and women, healthy
in body and mind, capable of leading the human race as fast as
it is able to go in the direction of the best truth to which
it is able at that time to aspire.

As the ship cleared Quarantine Susan stood on the main deck
well forward, with Madame Clelie beside her. And up within
her, defying all rebuke, surged the hope that cannot die in
strong souls living in healthy bodies.

She had a momentary sense of shame, born of the feeling that
it is basest, most heartless selfishness to live, to respon