spite of that he now hated her--or told himself that he did.
Under the heel of his intellectuality was the face, the beauty that he
adored. He despised and yet loved it. Life had played him a vile
trick--love--thus to frenzy his reason and then to turn him out as mad.
Now, never again, should love affect him, and yet the beauty of woman
was still his great lure--only he was the master.

And then one day Suzanne appeared.

He scarcely recognized her, so sudden it was and so quickly ended. She
was crossing Fifth Avenue at Forty-second Street. He was coming out of a
jeweler's, with a birthday ring for little Angela. Then the eyes of this
girl, a pale look--a flash of something wonderful that he remembered and
then----

He stared curiously--not quite sure.

"He does not even recognize me," thought Suzanne, "or he hates me now.
Oh!--all in five years!"

"It is she, I believe," he said to himself, "though I am not quite sure.
Well, if it is she can go to the devil!" His mouth hardened. "I will cut
her as she deserves to be cut," he thought. "She shall never know that I
care."

And so they passed,--never to meet in this world--each always wishing,
each defying, each folding a wraith of beauty to the heart.

L'ENVOI

There appears to be in metaphysics a basis, or no basis, according as
the temperament and the experience of each shall incline him, for
ethical or spiritual ease or peace. Life sinks into the unknowable at
every turn and only the temporary or historical scene remains as a
guide,--and that passes also. It may seem rather beside the mark that
Eugene in his moral and physical depression should have inclined to
various religious abstrusities for a time, but life does such things in
a storm. They constituted a refuge from himself, from his doubts and
despairs as religious thought always does.

If I were personally to define religion I would say that it is a bandage
that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstance; an
envelope to pocket him from the unescapable and unstable illimitable. We
seek to think of things as permanent and see them so. Religion gives
life a habitation and a name apparently--though it is an illusion. So we
are brought back to time and space and illimitable mind--as what? And we
shall always stand before them attributing to them all those things
which we cannot know.

Yet the need for religion is impermanent, like all else in life. As the
soul regains its heal