d
to the caress of keen air upon healthy skin, of glorious light
upon healthy eyes, when there are others shut out and shut
away from these joys forever. Then she said to herself, "But
no one need apologize for being alive and for hoping. I must
try to justify him for all he did for me."

A few miles of beautiful water highway between circling shores
of green, and afar off through the mist Madame Clelie's
fascinated eyes beheld a city of enchantment. It appeared and
disappeared, reappeared only to disappear again, as its veil
of azure mist was blown into thick or thin folds by the light
breeze. One moment the Frenchwoman would think there was
nothing ahead but more and ever more of the bay glittering in
the summer sunlight. The next moment she would see again that
city--or was it a mirage of a city?--towers, mighty walls,
domes rising mass above mass, summit above summit, into the
very heavens from the water's edge where there was a fringe of
green. Surely the vision must be real; yet how could tiny man
out of earth and upon earth rear in such enchantment of line
and color those enormous masses, those peak-like piercings of
the sky?

"Is that--_it?_" she asked in an awed undertone.

Susan nodded. She, too, was gazing spellbound. Her beloved
City of the Sun.

"But it is beautiful--beautiful beyond belief. And I have
always heard that New York was ugly."

"It is beautiful--and ugly--both beyond belief!" replied Susan.

"No wonder you love it!"

"Yes--I love it. I have loved it from the first moment I saw
it. I've never stopped loving it--not even----" She did not
finish her sentence but gazed dreamily at the city appearing
and disappearing in its veils of thin, luminous mist. Her
thoughts traveled again the journey of her life in New York.
When she spoke again, it was to say:

"Yes--when I first saw it--that spring evening--I called it my
City of the Stars, then, for I didn't know that it belonged to
the sun-- Yes, that spring evening I was happier than I ever
had been--or ever shall be again."

"But you will be happy again dear," said Clelie, tenderly
pressing her arm.

A faint sad smile--sad but still a smile--made Susan's
beautiful face lovely. "Yes, I shall be happy--not in those
ways--but happy, for I shall be busy. . . . No, I don't take the
tragic view of life--not at all. And as I've known misery, I
don't try to hold to it."

"Leave that," said Clelie, "to those who have known