seemed to Katie in her hurt and bewilderment. And the
bewilderment came chiefly because of the hurt. It appalled her to find it
did hurt like that.

But it was spring--and she knew that there were trees!

She paused and watched a gardener removing some debris that had covered a
flower bed. It was spring, and there were new shoots and this gardener
was wise and tender in taking the old things away, that the new shoots
might have air. Katie could see them there--and tender green of them, as
he lifted the old things away that the growing things might come through.
The gardener did not seem to feel he was cruel in taking the dead things
away. As a good gardener, he would scout the idea of its being unkind to
take them away just because they had been there so long. What did that
matter, the wise gardener would scornfully demand, when there were
growing things underneath pushing their way to the light?

And if he were given to philosophizing he might say that the kindest
thing even to the dead things was to let the new things come through.
Thus life would be kept, and all the life that had ever been upon the
earth perpetuated, vindicated, glorified.

It seemed to Katie that what life needed was a saner gardener. Not a
gardener who would smother new shoots with a lot of dead things telling
how shoots should go.

She drew a deep breath, lifted her face to the sky, and _knew_. Knew that
she herself had power to push through the dead things seeking to smother
her. Knew that if she but pushed on they must fall away because it was
life was pushing them away.

She walked on slowly, breathing deep.

And swinging along in the April twilight she had a sense of having
already set her face toward a more spacious country. And of knowing that
it had been inevitable all the time that she should go. The delay had
been but the moment's panic. Her life itself mattered more than what any
group of people thought about her life.

Spring!--and new life upon the earth. It was that life itself, not the
philosophy men had formulated for or against it, was pushing the dead
things away. It was not even arrested by the fear of displacing
something.

She had held herself back for so long that in the very admission that she
longed to see him there was joy approaching the sweetness of seeing him.
A long time she walked in the April twilight--knowing that it was
spring--and that there was new life upon the earth.

Harry Prescott would be married