mory of it sent a strange, an almost
divine happiness to his heart. Was it possible that the will of God had
moved here while he slept? Was it possible, he asked himself in an
ecstasy of wonder, that in spite of all sin, all failure, all
degradation, all despair, he had really won Connie's soul?

CHAPTER IV

ADAMS WATCHES IN THE NIGHT AND SEES THE DAWN

For a week after her home-coming Connie lay ill and almost unconscious
in her chamber. Since her first wild outburst on the night of her return
she had allowed no hint of remorse or gratitude to break through the
obstinate silence upon her lips; and the impression she gave Adams, on
his occasional visits to her room, was of a soul and body too exhausted
for even the slightest emotional activity. She had made of her life what
her desire prompted; and she seemed to suggest now, lying there wrecked
and silent, that the end of all self-gratification is in utter weariness
of spirit.

Then gradually, as the long June days went by, life appeared feebly to
renew itself and move within her. At first it was only a look, raised to
Adams, when he bent over her, with something of the pathetic, expectant
wonder of a sick child; then a helpless expressive gesture, and at last
he found in her eye a clearer and fuller recognition of her surroundings
and of himself. The gratitude he had seen on that terrible night
surprised him again one day as he spoke to her; and after this he began
to watch for its reappearance with an eagerness which he himself found
it difficult to understand. Of all virtues gratitude was most lacking
in the woman who had been his wife; and this slow, silent growth of it,
showed to him as no less a miracle than the coming of the spring or the
resurrection of the dead earth beneath the rain. There were moments
even, when he felt that he must move softly, lest he disturb the working
of those spiritual forces which make for righteousness by strange and
wonderful ways. Strange and wonderful, indeed, he had found, beyond all
miracles were the means by which the soul might be brought back to the
knowledge of its immortal destiny. Was it not under the eyes of a harlot
that he, himself, had seen the mystery which is God's goodness? and so
might he not find that Connie had learned, in the depths of her
self-abasement, that the light which surrounds the pleasures of the
senses is full of enchantment only for the distant, deluded vision?

But there were other hours