e asked if it were happiness, and still she could find no
answer. The quickened vibration of the pulses, the concentration of
thought upon a single presence, the restless imagination which leaped
from the disappointment of to-day to the possible fulfilment of
to-morrow--these things were bound up in her every instant, and yet
could she, even in her own thoughts, call these things happiness? She
told off her minutes by her heartbeats; but there were brief suspensions
of feeling when she turned to ask herself if in all its height and force
and vividness there was still no perceptible division between agony and
joy.

For at times the way grew dark to her and she felt that she stumbled
blindly in a strange place. From the heights of the ideal she had come
down to the ordinary level of the actual; and she was as ignorant of the
forces among which she moved as a bird in the air is ignorant of a cage.
Gerty alone, she knew, was familiar with it all--had travelled step by
step over the road before her--yet, she realised that she found no help
in Gerty, nor in any other human being--for was it not ordained in the
beginning that every man must come at last into the knowledge of the
spirit only through the confirming agony of flesh?

"No, I am not happy now because he is not utterly and entirely mine,"
she thought, "there are only a few hours of the day when he is with
me--all the rest of the twenty-four he leads a life of which I know
nothing, which I cannot even follow in my thoughts. Whom does he see in
those hours? and of what does he think when I am not with him? Next week
in the Adirondacks we shall be together without interruption, and then I
shall discern his real and hidden self--then I shall understand him as
fully as I wish to be understood." And that coming month appeared to her
suddenly as luminous with happiness. Here, now, she was dissatisfied and
incapable of rest, but just six days ahead of her she saw the beginning
of unspeakable joy. An impatient eagerness ran through her like a flame
and she began immediately the preparations for her visit.

CHAPTER VI

THE FEET OF THE GOD

When Kemper, in an emotional moment, had declared that he would give up
his trip to Europe, he had expected that Laura would see in the
sacrifice a convincing proof of the stability of his affection; but, to
his surprise, she had accepted the suggestion as a shade too much in the
natural order of events. Europe, empty of his pre