it? Well, Miss Laura can get what comfort she can
out of her baby shop; but me? Every man to his trade as Kyle Perry said
when he tried to buy a dozen scissors and got a sewing machine--me?--I
get my heart balm selling hats, and if others gets theirs coddling
brats--'tis the good God's wisdom that makes us different and no
business of mine so long as they bring grist to the profit mill! The
trouble with their temples is that they don't pay taxes!"

So in the matter of putting up temples--particularly in the matter of
erecting temples not made with hands, the town worked blindly. But so
far as Laura Van Dorn was concerned, while she was working on her part
of the temple, she had the vision of youth still in her heart. Youth
indeed is that part of every soul that life has not tarnished, and if we
keep our faith, hold ourselves true and bow to no circumstance however
arrogant it may be, youth still will abide in our hearts through many
years. Now Laura, who was born Nesbit and became Van Dorn, was taking up
life with that large charity that comes to every unconquered soul. She
held her illusions, she believed in herself, and youth shone like a
beacon from her face and glowed in her body.

For Thomas Van Dorn, who had been her husband, she had trained herself
to hold no unkind thought. She even taught Lila--when the child asked
for him--to harbor no rancor toward him. So the child turned to her
father when they met, the natural face of a child; it was a sad little
face that he saw--though no one else ever saw it sad; but the child
smiled when she spoke and looked gently at him, in the hope that some
day he would come back to her.

Now it happened that on the night when Laura's laugh first echoed
through her temple another rising temple witnessed a ceremony entirely
befitting its use.

That night--late that night when a pale moon was climbing over the
valley below the town, Margaret and her lover stood alone in the great
unfinished house which they were building.

Through the uncurtained windows the moonlight was streaming, making
white splashes upon the floors. Across the plank pathways they wandered
locating the halls, the great living-room, the spacious dining-room, the
airy, comfortable bedrooms exposed to the south, the library, the
kitchen, and the ballroom on the third floor. It was to be a grand
house--this house of Van Dorn. And in their fancy the man and the woman
called it the temple of love erected as an al