ing needed
and had risen to it in his own wonderful way. The letter was consistently
egotistical, and seemed to him even a trifle patronizing, yet it was just
what she had wanted. A strong realization of his brother's charm and
intensity and power came over him; he felt the breath of that whirlwind
of flame in which Adriance passed, consuming all in his path, and himself
even more resolutely than he consumed others. Then he looked down at this
white, burnt-out brand that lay before him.

"Like him, isn't it?" she said, quietly. "I think I can scarcely answer
his letter, but when you see him next you can do that for me. I want
you to tell him many things for me, yet they can all be summed up in
this: I want him to grow wholly into his best and greatest self, even at
the cost of what is half his charm to you and me. Do you understand me?"

"I know perfectly well what you mean," answered Everett, thoughtfully.
"And yet it's difficult to prescribe for those fellows; so little makes,
so little mars."

Katharine raised herself upon her elbow, and her face flushed with
feverish earnestness. "Ah, but it is the waste of himself that I mean;
his lashing himself out on stupid and uncomprehending people until they
take him at their own estimate."

"Come, come," expostulated Everett, now alarmed at her excitement. "Where
is the new sonata? Let him speak for himself."

He sat down at the piano and began playing the first movement, which was
indeed the voice of Adriance, his proper speech. The sonata was the most
ambitious work he had done up to that time, and marked the transition
from his early lyric vein to a deeper and nobler style. Everett played
intelligently and with that sympathetic comprehension which seems
peculiar to a certain lovable class of men who never accomplish anything
in particular. When he had finished he turned to Katharine.

"How he has grown!" she cried. "What the three last years have done for
him! He used to write only the tragedies of passion; but this is the
tragedy of effort and failure, the thing Keats called hell. This is my
tragedy, as I lie here, listening to the feet of the runners as they pass
me--ah, God! the swift feet of the runners!"

She turned her face away and covered it with her hands. Everett crossed
over to her and knelt beside her. In all the days he had known her she
had never before, beyond an occasional ironical jest, given voice to the
bitterness of her own defeat. Her courage h