etter long after she had finished
it. An hour passed thus. Then she was aware that it was beginning to
rain. The drops falling on the open letter dissolved the ink into
blurred smears. She sprang up hastily and went into the salon, where
she stood irresolute for a moment, and then, without calling Helene,
went to her room and dressed for the street. She moved very quickly as
though there were some need for extreme haste, and when she stepped
into the street she fell at once automatically into the swinging step
of the practised walker who sees long miles before him.

Half an hour later she was looking up at the facade of Notre Dame
through the rain, and seeing there these words: "I shall be waiting at
Austin Farm to hear if you are at all able to sympathize with me in
what I have done. The memory of our last words together may help you
to imagine with what anxiety I shall be waiting."

She pushed open the greasy, shining leather door, passed into the
interior, and stood for a moment in the incense-laden gloom of the
nave. A mass was being said. The rapidly murmured Latin words came
to her in a dim drone, in which she heard quite clearly, quite
distinctly: "There is another kind of beauty I faintly glimpse--that
isn't just sweet smells and lovely sights and harmonious lines--it's
the beauty that can't endure disharmony in conduct, the fine, true ear
for the loveliness of life lived at its best--Sylvia, finest, truest
Sylvia, it's what you could, if you would--you more than any other
woman in the world--if we were together to try--"

Sylvia sank to her knees on a prie-Dieu and hid her face in her hands,
trying to shut out the words, and yet listening to them so intently
that her breath was suspended.... "What Morrison said is true--for
him, since he feels it to be true. No man can judge for another. But
other things are true too, things that concern me. It's true that an
honest man cannot accept an ease founded, even remotely, on the misery
of others. And my life has been just that. I don't know what success I
shall have with the life that's beginning, but I know at least it
will begin straight. There seems a chance for real shapeliness if the
foundations are all honest--doesn't there? Oh, Sylvia--oh, my dearest
love, if I could think you would begin it with me, Sylvia! Sylvia!"

The girl sprang up and went hastily out of the church. The nun
kneeling at the door, holding out the silent prayer for alms for the
poor, loo