ght her; and that knowledge was irrevocably part of
the woman she had become.

Wait now! Was this only habit, routine, dulled lack of divining
imagination of what another life could be? That was the challenge
Vincent would throw down. She gazed steadily at the wall before her, and
called up, detail by detail, the life which Vincent Marsh thought the
only one that meant richness and abundance for the human spirit. It hung
there, a shimmering mass of lovely colors and exquisite textures and
fineness and delicacy and beauty. And as she looked at it, it took on
the shape of a glorious, uprooted plant, cut off from the very source of
life, its glossy surfaces already beginning to wither and dull in the
sure approach of corruption and decay. But what beauties were there to
pluck, lovely fading beauties, poignant and exquisite sensations, which
she was capable of savoring, which she sadly knew she would live and die
without having known, a heritage into which she would never enter;
because she had known the unforgettable taste of the other heritage,
alive and rooted deep!

This faded out and left her staring at the blank wall again, feeling old
and stern.

Nothing more came for a moment, and restless, feeling no bodily fatigue
at all, she got out of her bed, took up the candle, and stepped
aimlessly out into the hall. The old clock at the end struck a muffled
stroke, as if to greet her. She held up her candle to look at it.
Half-past two in the morning. A long time till dawn would come.

She hesitated a moment and turned towards the door of a garret room
which stood open. She had not been in there for so long,--years perhaps;
but as a child she had often played there among the old things, come
down from the dead, who were kept in such friendly recollection in this
house. Near the door there had been an old, flat-topped, hair-covered
trunk . . . yes, here it was, just as it had been. Nothing ever changed
here. She sat down on it, the candle on the floor beside her, and saw
herself as a little girl playing among the old things.

A little girl! And now she was the mother of a little girl. So short a
time had passed! She understood so very little more than when she had
been the little girl herself. Yet now there was Elly who came and stood
by her, and looked at her, and asked with all her eyes and lips and
being, "Mother, what is the meaning of life?"

What answer had she to give? Was she at all more fit than anyone else to