at last she arrived at fixed convictions that settled
matters forever with her. One day after she had arranged the fall
roses she had grown, and some roadside asters she had gathered in
passing, she sat in deep thought, when a car stopped on the road. Kate
looked up to see Robert coming across the churchyard with his arms full
of greenhouse roses. He carried a big bunch of deep red for her
mother, white for Polly, and a large sheaf of warm pink for Nancy
Ellen. Kate knelt up and taking her flowers, she moved them lower, and
silently helped Robert place those he had brought. Then she sat where
she had been, and looked at him.

Finally he asked: "Still hunting the 'why,' Kate?"

"'Why' doesn't so much matter," said Kate, "as 'where.' I'm enough of
a fatalist to believe that Mother is here because she was old and worn
out. Polly had a clear case of uric poison, while I'd stake my life
Nancy Ellen was gloating over the picture she carried when she ran into
that loose sand. In each of their cases I am satisfied as to 'why,' as
well as about Father. The thing that holds me, and fascinates me, and
that I have such a time being sure of, is 'where.'"

Robert glanced upward and asked: "Isn't there room enough up there,
Kate?"

"Too much!" said Kate. "And what IS the soul, and HOW can it bridge
the vortex lying between us and other worlds, that man never can,
because of the lack of air to breathe, and support him?"

"I don't know," said Robert; "and in spite of the fact that I do know
what a man CANNOT do, I still believe in the immortality of the soul."

"Oh, yes," said Kate. "If there is any such thing in science as a
self-evident fact, that is one. THAT is provable."

Robert looked at her eager face. "How would you go about proving it,
Kate?" he asked.

"Why, this way," said Kate, leaning to straighten and arrange the
delicate velvet petalled roses with her sure, work-abused fingers.
"Take the history of the world from as near dawn as we have any record,
and trace it from the igloo of the northernmost Esquimo, around the
globe, and down to the ice of the southern pole again, and in blackest
Africa, farthest, wildest Borneo, you will never discover one single
tribe of creatures, upright and belonging to the race of man, who did
not come into the world with four primal instincts. They all reproduce
themselves, they all make something intended for music, they all
express a feeling in their hearts by the ex