justify. He was, aside from his
relationship to Leila, a man whose hardness suggested a bitter knowledge
of dark ways of life. Now, crouched down in the depths of his chair, he
kept watching Leila with a gaze of smouldering adoration, revealing that
love for her which had been strong enough to break down those barriers
which she had erected in the years while he had worked for her in
Jacob's bondage. In her he seemed to be discovering, all over again, the
vestal to tend the fires of his faith.

Dick Allport, too, bending forward over the table on which his hands
fell clenched, was studying Leila with an inscrutable stare that seemed
to be of query. I was wondering what it meant, wondering the more
because my failure to understand its meaning hung another veil between
my vision and my shrine of belief in the fullness of love, when the
song outside came to an end and Leila turned back to us.

Her look, winging its way to Standish, lighted her face even beyond the
glow from the lamps which she switched on. For an instant his heavy
countenance flared into brightness. Dick Allport sighed almost
imperceptibly as he turned to me. I had a feeling that such a fire as
the Burtons kindled for each other should have sprung up in the moment
between Dick and me, for we had fought and labored and struggled for our
love as Standish and Leila had never needed to battle. Because of our
constancy I expected something better than the serene affectionateness
that shone in Dick's smile. I wanted such stormy passion of devotion as
Burton gave to Leila, such love as I, remembering a night of years ago,
knew that Dick could give. It was the old desire of earth, spoken in the
street girl's song, that surged in me until I could have cried out in my
longing for the soul of the sacrament whose substance I had been given;
but the knowledge that we were, the four of us, conventional people in a
conventional setting locked my heart as it locked my lips until I could
mirror the ease with which Leila bore herself.

"I have been thinking," she said, lightly, "that I should like to be a
street singer for a night. If only a piano were not so cumbersome, I
should go out and play into the ears of the city the thing that girl put
into her song."

"Why not?" I asked her, "It would be an adventure, and life has too few
adventures."

"It might have too many," Dick said.

"Not for Leila," Standish declared. "Life's for her a quest of joy."

"That's it,"