comfort or of ease it can give you! Cruel, cruel--to refuse! It is mine
to give and yours to spend!"

Juliet Sparling's daughter. There was the great consecrating,
liberating fact! What claim had she to the ordinary human joys? What
could the ordinary standards and expectations of life demand from her?
Nothing!--nothing that could stem this rush of the heart to the
beloved--the forsaken and suffering and overshadowed beloved. Her
future?--she held it dross--apart from Oliver. Dear Sir James!--but he
must learn to bear it--to admit that she stood alone, and must judge for
herself. What possible bliss or reward could there ever be for her but
just this: to be allowed to watch and suffer with Oliver--to bring him
the invention, the patience, the healing divination of love? And if it
were not to be hers, then what remained was to go down into the arena,
where all that is ugliest and most piteous in life bleeds and gasps, and
throw herself blindly into the fight. Perhaps some heavenly voice might
still speak through it; perhaps, beyond its jar, some ineffable reunion
might dawn--

"First a peace out of pain--then a light--then thy breast!..."

She trembled through and through. Restraining herself, she rose, and
went to her locked desk, taking from it the closely written journal of
her father's life, which had now been for months the companion of her
thoughts, and of the many lonely moments in her days and nights. She
opened on a passage tragically familiar to her:

"It is an April day. Everything is very still and balmy.
clouds are low, yet suffused with sun. They seem to be
tangled among the olives, and all the spring green and
flowering fruit trees are like embroidery on a dim yet
shining background of haze, silvery and glistening in the
sun, blue and purple in the shadows. The beach-trees in the
olive garden throw up their pink spray among the shimmering
gray leaf and beside the gray stone walls. Warm breaths
steal to me over the grass and through the trees; the last
brought with it a strong scent of narcissus. A goat tethered
to a young tree in the orchard has reared its front feet
against the stem, and is nibbling at the branches. His white
back shines amid the light spring shade.

"Far down through the trees I can see the sparkle of the
waves--beyond, the broad plain of blue; and on the headland,
a mile away, white foam is dash