ding toward her with his face aglow, his
clear, blue eyes smiling, his tender man mouth open to greet her. So
her heart leaped to her throat and her arms trembled. Then--the fall
into the abyss as she caught herself. Then her head drooping upon her
arm and the racking, dry sobs.

How she did care! It was as if everything she had ever hungered for in
the past--all her beautiful, timid girlhood dreams; all that good part
of her later hunger for freedom; all of to-day and all that was worth
while of the days to come, had been gathered together, like jewels in a
single jewel casket, and handed over to him. He had them all. None
had been left her. She had none left.

She had always known that if ever she loved it was so that she must
love. It was this that she had feared. She had known that if she gave
at all she must give utterly--all that she ever had or hoped to have.
Suddenly she recalled Mrs. Chic. It was with a new emotion. The
latter had always been to her the symbol of complete self-sacrifice.
It centered around the night Chic, Junior was born. That night she had
been paler than Mrs. Chic herself; she had whimpered more than Mrs.
Chic. Outside, waiting, she had feared more than the wife within who
was wrestling with death for a new life. She had sat alone, with her
hands over her ears in an agony of fear and horror. She had marveled
that any woman would consent to face such a crisis. It had seemed
wrong that love--an affair of orange blossoms and music and
laughter--should lead to that. Wide-eyed, she had sobbed in terror
until it was over. It was with awe and wonder that a few days later
she had seen Mrs. Chic lying in her big white bed so crooningly happy
and jubilant.

Now she understood. The fear and horror had vanished. Had she been in
the next room to-day, her heart would have leaped with joy in tune with
her who was fighting her grim fight. Because the aches and the pains
are but an incident of preparation. Not only that, but one can so love
that pain, physical pain, may in the end be the only means for an
adequate expression of that love. The two may be one, so blended as to
lead, in the end, to perfect joy. Even mental pains, such as she
herself now suffered, can do that. For all she was undergoing she
would not have given up one second to be back again where she was a
month before.

Something comes with love. It is that more than love itself which is
the greatest thing in the