his experience of
life; he had not known that there could be balm like this for a bruised
and broken spirit. This girl, seeking nothing for herself, refusing
anything he could offer, had held up a mirror in which he saw himself
limned against dancing, mocking shadows. Nothing in her arraignment had
given him a sharper pang than her reference to his loneliness, his
failure to command sympathy and confidence in his home relationships. No
praise had ever been so sweet to him as hers; she not only saw his
weaknesses and dealt with them unsparingly, but she recognized also the
strength he had wasted and the power he had abused. She saw life in
broad vistas as he had believed he saw it; he was not above a stirring
of pride that she appreciated him and appraised his gifts rightly. He
had long played skillfully upon credulity and ignorance; he had
frittered away his life in contentions with groundlings. It would be a
relief, if it were possible, to deal with his peers, the enlightened,
the far-seeing, and the fearless, who strove for great ends. So he
pondered, while outside the sentinel kept watch like a fate.

"Yes," Sylvia was saying slowly, "you can make restitution. But not to
the dead--not to my mother asleep over there at Montgomery, oh, not to
me! What is done is past, and you can't go back. There's no going back
in this world. But you can go on--you can go on and up--"

"No! You don't see that; you don't believe that?"

"Yes, I believe it. The old life--the life of mystery and duplicity is
over; you will never go back to the old way."

"The old way?" he repeated.

"The old unhappy way."

"Up there at the lake you knew I was unhappy; you knew things weren't
right with me?"

"Things weren't right because you were wrong! Success hadn't made you
happy. The shadows kept dancing round you. Mrs. Bassett's troubles came
largely from worrying about you. In time Marian and Blackford will begin
to see the shadows. I should think--I should think"--and he saw that she
was deeply moved--"that a man would want the love of his children; I
should think he would want them to be proud of him."

"His children; yes; I haven't thought enough of that."

She had so far controlled herself, but an old ache throbbed in her
heart. "In college, when I heard the girls talking of their homes, it
used to hurt me more than you can ever know. There were girls among my
friends whose fathers were fine men,--some of them great and famous; and
I