ife his mother had lived, feeling all she had felt.
God! the bliss, the agony of it all!

And Paul Zalenska, surrounded by the messages from the past that had
given him being, and looking at the ruin of his own life with eyes newly
awakened to the immensity of his loss, bowed his face in his hands and
wept like a heart-broken child over the falling of his house of cards.

Ah! his mother had understood--she had loved and suffered. She was older
than he, too, and had known her world as he could not possibly know it,
and yet she had bade him take the gifts of life when they came his way.

And--God help him!--he had not done so!

CHAPTER XXI

The next morning, Paul Zalenska rose early. He had not slept well. He
was troubled with conflicting emotions, conflicting memories. The wonder
and sorrow of it all had been too much even for his youth and health to
endure. His mother had won so much from life, he thought--and he so
little! He thought of Opal--indeed, when was she ever absent from his
thoughts, waking or sleeping?--and the memory of his loss made him
frantic. Opal--his darling! And _they_ might have been just as happy as
his mother and father had been, but they had let their happiness slip
from them! What fools! Oh, what fools they had been! Not to have risked
anything--everything--for their happiness! And where was she now? In
Paris, in her husband's arms, no doubt, where he could hold her to him,
and caress her and kiss her at his own sweet will! God! It was
intolerable, unthinkable! And he--Paul, her lover--lying there alone,
who would have died a thousand deaths, if that were possible, to save
her from such a fate!

At last he forced the thought of his own loss from him, and thought
again of his mother. Ah, but her death had been opportune! How glorious
to die when life and love had reached their zenith! in the fullness of
joy to take one's farewell of the world!

And in the long watches of that wakeful night, he formed the resolution
that he put into effect at the first hint of dawn. He would spend one
entire day in solitude. He would traverse step by step the primrose
paths of his mother's idyllic dream; he would visit every scene, every
nook, she and her lover had immortalized in their memories; he would see
it all, feel it all--yes, _live_ it all, and become so impregnated with
its witchery that it would shed lustre and glory upon all the bleak
years to come. So well had she told her story, so per