indred phenomena; the law of God bound about with its
fine chain of divine will and love the greater and the lesser bodies
moving through the universe. Upon such a comprehension, brotherhood of
man and tree and sun and flower, had been raised Mark King's haphazard
edifice of a theory of life. The stars reminded him that through the
eons all had been right with the world of worlds; they sang of hope and
happiness and beauty. They showed a man the way to rich, full
contentment. They lighted the path to generous dealings with other men.
They threw their searchlight upon the day a man had just done with and
set him thinking; they led his thoughts ahead to the day soon to dawn,
making him wish to make a better job of things.

But to-night between him and his beloved stars stretched a region of
shadows through which the eyes of his soul did not look. Something
within him had been stricken; sorely wounded; beaten to its knees;
chilled with death. He sought to think quite calmly, and for a long time
clear consecutive thought was beyond his reach. A moment had come when
he could only _feel_. He was swept this way and that. He had given to
Gloria his love without stint, without reservation, without limit. The
love which no other woman had ever awakened had poured itself out before
Gloria like a flood of clear swift water breaking free. He loved after
the only fashion possible to him, with his whole heart and soul, with
his whole being. He adored. He made of his beloved a princess, a
goddess. He saw her upon a plane where no woman ever lived, in an
atmosphere too rare for flesh-and-blood humanity. A man does not love
through human reason; rather through a reason, hidden even to him,
deeper than humanity. Then Gloria had put her hand into his; Gloria had
married him; Gloria had elected to come with him. After that he had seen
nothing in its true light; Gloria had remade the world into paradise
ineffable.

He had been on the heights, lifted among the stars. And without warning,
without mercy, the world had crashed about him. From the zenith to the
nadir. Small wonder that thoughts did not come logically! He floundered,
lost, crushed, bewildered.

Just yonder, on the bed of fir-boughs he had made for her, lay Gloria.
He did not look that way. The wind was rising; he heard it go rushing
through the tree-tops; it struck with sudden, relentless impact; it set
the shivering needles to shrill whistling; it made the staunch old
trunks s