denied. She had
thus slowly and painfully achieved whatever personality she had since
she came for the first time a pale child into Judge Orcutt's court. If
any one had talked to her about the "obligations of wealth," "social
service," or "love of humanity," she would have listened with a vacant
stare and replied like a child of ten. The judge seemed to know that.

It was only by idleness and Archie and unhappiness and the fire and the
tragic death of her child that she had come to realize that there were
other people in the world besides herself and the few who were a
necessary part of herself, and that these other lives were of importance
to themselves and might be almost as important to her as her own. It had
taken Adelle a good many years of foolish living and reckless use of her
magic lamp to get this simple understanding of life. But she was not yet
twenty-six, really at the start of life. If already she had come so far
along the road, what might she not reach by fifty? In such matters it is
the destination alone that counts....

Just now, as has been said, a greater illumination had come over her
spirit than was ever there before, although for the life of her Adelle
could not have expressed in words what she felt, or at this time put her
new thought into concrete acts. But with Adelle acts had never been
wanting when the time for them came, and her slow mind had absorbed all
the necessary ideas. The judge recognized the illumination in the young
woman at his side. For the first time in her life, perhaps, at least for
one of the rare moments of it, her face was in no sense vacant. The wide
gray eyes that looked forth upon the sordid world of Clark's Field were
seeing eyes, though they did not see merely physical facts. Instead of
their usual blankness or passive intelligence, they had a quality in
them now of dream. And this gave Adelle's pale face a certain rare
loveliness that in human faces does not depend upon color or line or
emotional vivacity. It is rather the still radiance of the inner spirit,
penetrating in some inexplicable manner the physical envelope and
creating a beauty far more enduring, more compelling to those who
perceive it, than any other form of beauty intelligible to human eyes.
The judge perceived it. As the carriage slowly retraced its way through
the crowded streets of Clark's Field, he silently took the young woman's
hand and held it within his own, smiling gently before him as one who