ain and said: "I'll go now. I must
not tire you. But remember, I'm going to come and see you, and I'm
going to do you good. Every time I see you I am going to will to you
some of my vitality--my love of life. For I love life--it is beautiful
to live."

She gave him her hand, and he bowed and left her.

She lay quietly after he went away and smiled, a little, wan smile,
which made her pallor the more pitiful. It was all so romantic and
wonderful--this big man's coming. He was so unspoiled and so direct of
manner. She had the hope he would come again, and it seemed not
impossible that he might help her, his voice was so stirring and his
hands so big and strong.

Yet she was beyond the reach of even the conjectures of passion. She
had come to a certain exterior resignation to her fate. The world had
lost its poignant interest--it was now a pageant upon which she was
looking for the last time, yet she was too tired, too indifferent to
lift her hand to stay it in its course even had it been within her
power.

At times, however, she rebelled at her fate. There were hours, even
yet, when she lay alone in her bed hearing her father's regular
stertorous breathing till a great wave of longing to live swept upon
her, and she was forced to turn her face to her pillow to stifle her
mingled coughing and sobbing.

"Oh, Father, let me live! I want to live like other women. Oh, dear
Father, grant me a little life!"

These waves of passionate rebellion left her weaker, sadder, more
indifferent than ever, and as coldly pallid almost as if death had
already claimed her.

On the night following Clement's talk with her she fell asleep while
musing upon one mind's influence upon another. Perhaps if she could
only believe she might be helped; perhaps he was sent to help her. It
had been long since such a personality had stood before her--indeed,
no such man had ever touched her hand or looked into her eyes.

He came down out of the mountain heights with the elemental vigor of
wind and sun and soil about him like an aura. A man of great natural
refinement, he had grown strong and simple and masterful in his close
contact with Nature. The clay that might have brutalized another
nature had made him a mystic.

There was something mysterious in his eyes, in the clasp of his hand.
The world was all inexplicable to her anyhow. Perhaps God had sent him
to help her just as He sends healing water down from the mountain
peaks.

In thinking