derstand how to meet it, how to cope with it in others, what to
say or do. Yet I would help if help is possible. Is it?

"I think you have always thought me immature, young in experience,
negligible as to wisdom, of an intellectual capacity
inconsequential.

"These are the facts: I was married when I was very young, and I
have known little of such happiness; but I have met sorrow and have
conquered it, and I have seen bitter hours, and have overcome them,
and I have been tempted, and have prevailed. Have you done these
things?

"As for wisdom, if it comes only with years, then I have everything
yet to learn. Yet it seems to me that in the charity wards of
hospitals, in the city prisons, in the infirmary, the asylum--even
the too brief time spent there has taught me something of human
frailty and human sorrow. And if I am right or wrong, I do not
know, but to me sin has always seemed mostly a sickness of the
mind. And it is a shame to endure it or to harshly punish it if
there be a cure. And if this is so, what you may have done, and
what others may have done to you, cannot be final.

"My letter is longer than I meant it, but I had a great need to
speak to you. If you still think well of me, answer me. Answer in
the way it pleases you best. But answer--if you still think well
of me.

"AILSA PAIGE."

A touch of rose still tinted the sky overhead, but already the lamp
lighters were illuminating the street lamps as he came to London
Terrace--that quaint stretch of old-time houses set back from the
street, solemnly windowed, roofed, and pilastered; decorously
screened behind green trees and flowering bushes ringed by little
lawns of emerald.

For a moment, after entering the iron gateway and mounting the
steps, he stood looking up at her abode. Overhead the silken folds
of the flag hung motionless in the calm evening air; and all the
place about him was sweet with the scent of bridal-wreath and early
iris.

Then, at his tardy summons, the door of her house opened to him.
He went in and stood in the faded drawing-room, where the damask
curtain folds were drawn against the primrose dusk and a single
light glimmered like a star high among the pendant prisms of the
chandelier.

Later a servant came and gave the room more light. Then he waited
for a long while. And at last she entered.

Her hands were cold--he noticed it as the fingers touched his,
briefly, and were withdrawn. She had scarcely glan