no longer full of cowardice and distrust and enmity.
Life was a thing beautiful to them. It was flushed with the color of
hope, of fine enthusiasms. They might suffer. They might be defeated.
But nothing could extinguish the joy in their souls. They walked like
gods, immortals, these brothers to the spent and the maimed. For they
had found spiritual values in it that made any material profit of small
importance. Alice got a vision of the great truth that is back of all
true reforms, all improvement, all progress.

"Love," she said almost in a whisper, "is forgetting self."

Jeff lost his stride and pulled up. He thought he could not have heard
aright. "I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing. I was just thinking out loud. Go on please."

But she had broken the thread of his talk. He attempted to take it up
again, but he was still trying for a lead when Alice saw Mrs. Van Tyle
and Beauchamp coming toward them.

She rose. Her eyes were the brightest Jeff had ever seen. They were
filled with an ardent tenderness. It was as if she were wrapped in a
spiritual exaltation.

"Thank you. Thank you. I can't tell you what you've done for me."

She turned and walked quickly away. To be dragged back to the
commonplace at once was more than she could bear. First she must get
alone with herself, must take stock of this new emotion that ran like
wine through her blood. A pulse throbbed in her throat, for she was in a
passionate glow of altruism.

"I'm glad of life--glad of it--glad of it!" she murmured through the
veil she had lowered to screen her face from observation.

It had come to her as a revelation straight from Heaven that there can
be no salvation without service. And the motive back of service must
be love. Love! That was what Jesus had come to teach the world, and all
these years it had warped and mystified his message.

She felt that life could never again be gray or colorless. For there was
work waiting that she could do, service that she could give. And surely
there could be no greater happiness than to find her work and do it
gladly.

CHAPTER 17

All sorts of absurd assumptions pass current as fixed and
non-debatable standards. We might be free, and we tie
ourselves to the slavery of rutted convention. Afraid of
ideas, we come to no definite philosophy of life that is the
result of clear and pellucid thinking.

We must get rid of our bonds, but only in order to take on
new