it was as if they had claimed her too entirely and tenaciously ever to
release her. Even in silence and solitude and a belated sense of
liberty and rights, she could not be free of them. She could not
decide whether one or all of them had been responsible for this final
frustration. She wondered--and then she ceased to wonder at all. She
knew that the frustration had been accomplished--and that she was
suddenly too weary even to cry out.

It was at the moment when she realized all this fully, when she sat
staring at the deformed and lifeless thing which she had brought forth,
that a letter from Charlotte was handed to her. It came from New
York--where was Peter. Sheila opened it with shaking fingers--and
found what she desired:

I have seen Peter [wrote Charlotte] and he seems to have fitted
himself, very happily, into the right place. I say happily, but I do
not use the word literally, for Peter is scarcely happy. But he is
appreciated here, and he likes his work. I'm sure you'll be glad of
that.

As for happiness--I sometimes question whether those of us who catch a
glimpse of a happiness perfect and transcendent ever experience the
reality. I doubt, in fact, if any reality could stand, unimpaired, by
that vision. It may be that we have to choose between the
vision--beheld for an instant and forever remembered--and an earthy,
faulty, commonplace little happiness. We may have to choose between a
fairy tale that can never be anything but a wonderful fairy tale, and a
grubby reality that will spoil fairy tales for us evermore. If that be
true, Peter is not to be pitied. He is manifestly one of the chosen;
he's had his matchless vision; he still believes in the fairy tale.

I told you, once, that I might marry him--in spite of him, as it were!
Now I know that I will never marry him. But you must not be sorry for
me, my dear. I, too, have had my vision. I'll always believe in the
fairy tale.

Sheila laid the letter down--beside the stillborn child of her gift.
And fleetingly she saw again the pure gold of her idea--saw it gleaming
through the misshapen thing she had actually fashioned. After all,
though she could never create masterpieces, she had had her vision of
them; that, at least, had been vouchsafed to her. And she had had her
vision of the perfect love; not even unspeakable sorrow and humiliation
had dimmed it. She, also, was one of the chosen; she would always
believe in the fairy ta