d understand human beings so well, could possess your
fierceness and your mercy toward them, without holding the key to
suffering."

"Wise Jane Judd," he smiled. "I have had a long journey with Fate. For
twenty years I have been paying for youthful folly. Do you know about
me, Jane?"

"Jerry told me that you are married, that your wife lives."

"She has moved from one sanatorium to another for twenty years, Jane."

"How dreadful, my friend."

"I go to see her when I can. I have been with her this summer. It is
like visiting some little girl I knew when I was a lad.... I wanted you
to know."

"Does she suffer?"

"Apparently not. She just is, that's all. No past, no future."

"But your past, your future, Martin?"

"I can have none," he said steadily.

"Did you love her very much?"

"I suppose so, as a boy. What does a child of twenty know of love? She
was eighteen when we ran away. After about five years this malady
developed, a sort of melancholia at first, then a kind of mental vacuity
for all these many years."

"It's unfair; it's cruel!" she cried.

"So it is. There have been times when I have cursed God in fury, but
after all it is not left us to choose our own tests. If Fate were only
kind, we would not need to woo her. Perhaps I needed my hard years as
you needed yours."

"I can't believe that, but I know what they have made of you--what I
have reaped from them."

He laid his hand on hers for a second.

"Thank you, Jane. You've been a little flowering place for me, of repose
and peace. Tell me about the work."

"It grows in plan, but not in execution. I lie abed until noon, these
days, and I spend the time thinking about the book. I make notes;
sometimes I write a chapter. But I feel that when my baby comes I shall
suddenly enter a new world, I shall know such wonderful things to put in
my book."

"Assuredly. You could not plumb the one greatest spiritual and physical
experience without your eyes being unsealed to all the fundamental
verities."

Jane rose, and turned a canvas, which leaned against the wall, into the
light, where Martin could see it.

"Do you like this?" she asked.

He looked at it silently for several moments.

"Jerry has sensed it, too," he said. "This is a fine thing--his best."

"He can paint, if I can get him away from those portraits."

"It's a cursed thing for an artist to be clever. He would better be
mediocre. It's your husband's curse. He may have a big gif