AN INDEX FINGER.

AN INDEX FINGER

BY
TULIS ABROJAL

“All the Sutras are but fingers that point out the shining moon.”
“Man, thou livest forever.”
Has any one supposed it is lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him, or her, it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look’d at the crowded heaven.
And I said to my spirit: When we become the unfolders of those orbs, and the
pleasure and knowledge of everything in them, shall we be filled and satisfied then?
And my spirit said: No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.
—Walt Whitman.

R. F. FENNO & COMPANY, 9 and 11 EAST
SIXTEENTH STREET: NEW YORK CITY
1898

Copyright, 1897
BY
TULIS ABROJAL.

An Index Finger.

DEDICATION.

To those who faithfully follow their ideals, ever doing the work they love to do, always giving to the world the best that is in them—the truth as they see it—though in the face of difficulties, disasters and defeat; enduring persecution, poverty and want, meeting the dread spectre of starvation, suffering death itself if need be, yet counting all not too great a price to pay for the freedom of their souls, this book is sympathetically dedicated.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

The good old custom of the author telling his readers in a preface why he wrote his book, happily has not yet gone out of date. Though no particular friend to guide-board literature in general, I confess to a weakness for the preface. It has its helpful uses. There the author can talk directly to his readers, without filtering his thoughts through the brains of his characters; and in consequence the readers come into closer sympathy with him and understand him better. In not a few cases I have wished books were all preface. I hope others may not wish so in this case.

In the preface we meet the author face to face, as it were, and he becomes ours or we become his at once. It is a little confidential glimpse into his soul, which he kindly gives us before we enter it by means of the book.

Yes, I am decidedly in favor of the preface, both as reader and author.

A time-honored method of prefatory writing, made the author assume a modesty that was self-depreciatory in the extreme. More often than not he warned readers off by throwing out hints disparaging his own ability. To such few readers as he thought might follow him through the book in spite of his assurance that it would be unprofitable to do so, he apologized with the utmost humility for the waste of their time and drain upon their patience for which he was about to be responsible.

I shall do no such thing. On the contrary, I believe that he who reads this book will not find his time ill spent. Its theme is the most important that can engage the human race. It is my answer to the mightiest question ever propounded. My answer. Its value extends that far and no farther. “It is only insight into the ground of being that secures satisfaction and thorough knowledge.” My light may be only a rush-light; but such as it is I obey the behest to let it shine.

Says one of the greatest of modern philosophers: “If anything in the world is worth wishing for—so well worth wishing for that even the ignorant and dull herd in its more reflective moments would prize it more than silver or gold—it is that a ray of light should fall on the obscurity of our being, and that we should gain some explanation of our mysterious existence, in which nothing is clear but its misery and its vanity.”

To each of us things are what they appear from each particular point of view. Our idea is our limitation.

He who writes a book presents to other minds a picture of life as it appears to him, from whatever point of view he has chosen. His work portrays both that which he sees outside himself and that which is within. It is a combination of himself and the world as he sees it, for of subject and object are all things made.

When we read a tale it is the author we learn to know, rather than his people; but we know him through his people. They are the dwellers within his mind, and we cannot know them without entering that realm and knowing it, be it enchanted or disenchanting.

Sight and insight make up all literature. Every book is a combination of the author and what he looks upon and studies objectively as well as subjectively. It is truth as he sees it.

I have read many interesting works of fiction; but for the most part I laid them down dissatisfied. They lacked something for which I was always searching. They gave no answer to the questions that early began to trouble me—questions that nobody could answer and few cared to be bothered with. Often they were very attractive pictures of that which the world is to so many—a fool’s paradise.

They dealt with the emotions of those whose lives they portrayed, and they appealed to the emotions of those who read them; and all had ever the one, one theme—the pursuit of happiness. And all pursuers saw the alluring phantom in the same shape, and gave chase to it by the same road. Sometimes they captured it, and then—the book ended. There was nothing else for the author to do when he reached that point, but to let the curtain drop and turn out the lights, lest his audience see that the happiness so hotly pursued was not the true thing after all; but only an appearance, an illusion, a disappointment, as veritable a phantom as ever—which left the one in possession of it no better off than he was before he captured it.

Now the form of this phantom, was the love of the man and the woman for each other, and the possession of each by the other. Romances have been mostly amplified sex chases. They wrought upon the reader’s emotions through many harrowing chapters, the end thereof being that a certain man married the particular woman he was pursuing.

An old man whom I knew in my youth said he only read the first and last chapters of a novel. In the one he became acquainted with the hero and heroine; in the other he found out “whether he got her or not.” By so doing he escaped much emotional wear and tear to which less discriminating readers subjected themselves. As we all know, sometimes “he didn’t get her.” What then? Well, perhaps she died or he died, and that ended the story. Everybody accepted that event as final and incontestable. That was the end, and nobody ventured to ask what lay behind it. It was the end of the successful as well as of the disappointed—the end of everybody in the world, yet nobody sought its meaning.

In this respect the people outside of books were precisely like the people in books. They had the same ideal of happiness, chased it through the same difficulties and disasters, and would not admit that it was a phantom; would not see that Death stalked behind every joy, sat at every feast, touched elbows right and left with the victorious as well as with the defeated, and waited for everybody under the sun. They knew it, of course, but they did not want to think about it or talk about it.

And what was this spectre to which all closed their eyes because of terror? Death was death. That was all they knew. It was the terrible and final thing that could happen. More; it was sure to happen; but it must be put off as long as possible and ignored in the meantime.

To me it ever was incomprehensible that so dreadful an issue was so hopelessly accepted and so little inquired into.

I pondered much on this strange problem. The dream haunted my mind that somewhere there was a solution.

I sought it everywhere from men and books; but long without success. At last a ray of light fell upon my path. Faithfully following it through years of earnest inquiry I learned that Death is not death. With that knowledge happiness took a new form and beckoned to me over a new road.

Because of the new ideals it placed before me I wrote this book. Its people are my people; its gospel my gospel. From the truth as I was led to see it I found a reason for my own being as well as for that of the book, and I have tried to give it to the reader as simply as it came to me.

The psychical phenomena described are not exaggerated. Most of it came within my own experience, and would be accessible to any one who devoted to the study as much patience, time and effort as I did.

There will be those who will give to the book only the sneer of conceited ignorance. For such I have no message. With them, the first condition of all learning—receptively—is lacking. I make no argument. I try to convince no one. I simply tell a story. It will bear its own message to those ready to receive it. None else can understand. God Himself cannot give us what we will not receive.

The book is but a finger that aims to point out to others a moon that made glorious light for me. And if you will patiently look in the direction it points, you, too, will see the shining moon.

The Author.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.
THE CHILD AND HER OWN PEOPLE.

There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, “Now deal us your hardest blow; give us what you will; but let us never again suffer as we suffered when we were children.”

The barb in the arrow of childhood’s suffering is this; its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance.—Olive Schreiner.

Under a great tree a child was singing softly to herself:

Beautiful, dear, and noble old tree
Bend your green branches caressing o’er me.
For oh! a day’s coming, and soon will be here,
When I shall be far from your presence and cheer;
And my heart will be lonely without your embrace,
And you—you will long for a sight of my face.
Your branches bend low to the ground,
Bend low and caressingly,
And they sway with a murmurous sound—
A language of nature profound—
Sway softly and caressingly,
As they bend, with a sigh, to the ground.
They chant the grand chorus of ages,
In musical monotone;
And open the past’s mystic pages—
The wonderful, solemn, sealed pages—
So vaguely and dimly known.
They sing me the song of the ages.
When I listen with spirit and soul
To each swaying, whisp’ring bough,
The silent centuries backward roll
And open before me like a scroll.
And I view the “Then as Now”—
When I listen with spirit and soul.

She was lying on the grass, with her face toward the sky, which she could only see in spots through the tree’s thick branches, which hung low and swayed in the slightest breeze, with a motion that was very like a caress to one beneath them. A house stood near, but the tree completely hid it on one side. One coming from the south saw only a beautiful grassy hill surmounted by a great green umbrella.

Under this friendly shelter the woman-child lay, singing her own words to her own tunes. Oblivious to outward sounds, she heard no footsteps until the branches parted and a stranger entered her temple.

At this a dog that had been enjoying the profoundest of slumber near her, sprang to his feet with a great show of vigilance, making up for his tardiness by the most energetic barking.

“Be quiet, Bliss,” said the child, rising to a sitting posture and looking steadily at the stranger, with the utmost composure. The dog at once became silent, but he went close to her and posed as on the defensive.

“I beg pardon,” said the intruder, politely raising his hat, “I saw no one, and thought to rest a bit in the shade, and get a cool drink of water, too.”

“The well is on the other side of the house,” she said, making a motion in that direction with a thin, nervous, unchildlike hand. Her words and manner expressed the utmost indifference—yet there was a gleam of interest in her big, clear eyes.

The stranger moved on, murmuring thanks. She looked after him with a sudden yearning in her heart for his return. He was not of her world, that was sure; and yet somehow it was quite clear to her that he was of her world—the world of her dreams, where she longed to be, fancied she had been, and from whence she had somehow sadly strayed. Yes, in that instant of contact she understood that in spite of all apparent difference their worlds were the same.

In another moment he returned. Gracefully begging permission, he seated himself on the grass and leaned against the tree. His manner captivated her. It was respectful and deferential as to a woman grown. It enchanted her, for she was one of those misunderstood children who have thoughts and feelings far beyond their years and suffer great humiliation when treated patronizingly.

“You are not at all afraid of me although I came unannounced and unintroduced, are you?” he asked, half laughing.

“Afraid? Why should I be? I am in my own door-yard. Besides, you don’t look like a wild beast, and if you were one, here is Bliss to take care of me.”

“Thank you. It’s a comfort to know you have no doubt that I am human. But what is this?” he asked, as a piece of cardboard blew toward him. “Ah! a drawing. May I look at it?”

She nodded her consent.

It was a pencil drawing of a woman’s head, and interested him at first glance, because, imperfect though it was, it had that which makes art great when it is so—the human quality, the power to express its creator, the aim and object of all art. This penciled face gave an insight into the artist’s mind, showing that which she had tried to express and yet had not made clear. It showed the height to which she rose in fancy, and the long and rugged road between present performance and the perfection of which she dreamed.

All this the stranger saw, because we see what is within ourselves. It takes genius to recognize genius. He had traveled the road on which she was taking her first feeble steps.

“Is it your work?” he asked.

“Yes,” she nodded, coloring faintly. It was plain that she expected no praise, yet longed for a helping word.

“Is it a copy?” he asked, for there was about it, although but half expressed, that which he thought must have been suggested by something from a master hand.

“No.”

“Then who is it?” There was unaffected interest in his voice.

“One of my people,” she answered.

“Does she live here?”

“She is here sometimes, not always.”

“Well, she must be a beautiful woman—even more beautiful than you depict her.”

“You understand,” said the child. “I cannot put her on paper as I see her. I know but little of drawing, but I am always trying to draw faces—the faces of my own people—and trees, for they are my own people too; but I am never satisfied with my work. They do not get on the paper as they are in my mind.”

“Why not have some instruction?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

The stranger understood, but in order not to seem to, he began to pick up some scattered leaves of paper near him. Seeing that they contained writing he was about to lay them down with an apology when the child said:

“It is a letter I have written to Helen, the woman whose picture you have just been looking at. You may read it, only not aloud. I couldn’t stand that.”

“But why should I read it at all?” he said. “It would be impertinent on my part. Besides, I am not afflicted with the despicable vice of curiosity.”

“If you don’t mind, I wish you would read it,” she said. “It may help me. You will understand when you have finished.” But she looked ill at ease, nevertheless.

The stranger read:

My dearly Beloved Helen:—Since you went away I am very lonely indeed. None other is so near and dear to me as you. I fill the hours with thoughts of you—thoughts so intense and absorbing that at times I actually see you by my side. But, alas! you do not stay when you come like that. You fade out of my sight; you go back to your world and I cannot follow you only with my thoughts, my dreams, my love and my letters.

But I shall go and find you some day. I shall be one of the people of your world, and shall be busy with work which shall fill my time, my brain and my heart. I shall meet all my people there—my very own people, and shall love them and work with them and know loneliness no more. I have a story to tell you, Dear Heart. It is this:

In a world nameless to all mankind, lived a woman, sweet and fair. It was a beautiful world. There the men were all true and the women all faithful. Misery was unknown and none sought happiness, for all possessed it.

But this one woman dreamed dreams and saw visions. She heard voices calling to her from another world—a world whose people sought continually and vainly to attain a condition they knew only in name, and which they called Happiness. All believed in the existence of this condition and gave chase to it, each in his own way, but none found it. Often hearing the voices of these unhappy people and seeing them in visions, this woman longed to go and help them. The longing disturbed the harmony of life in all her world, until it was decreed that she must leave it and go to that other whose vibrations of anguish had shaken the spheres. But they did not tell her of her destiny. “She will know when she is there,” they said.

So she slept, and the sleep was long in the eyes of the children of Time.

When she awoke, memory was gone, and everything had to be learned over again. At first her consciousness was very dim, and her strength feeble, and having slept so long she could scarcely keep awake at all.

But after a time a faint memory of the past came to her, and she saw that all was different from that other time, which now seemed like a dream. This was not the same world, nor were these the same people she had known, for she was in the sad world she had seen in visions, whose people so persistently and often frantically sought Happiness and never found it—and that sad world was this in which we live.

She was changed in appearance, too, for when she looked in a mirror she saw a face that was new to her and a tiny figure. She was like a child, and everybody called her a child, though to herself she seemed not to be a child, because part of her memory had come back, and it was the memory of a woman.

It was very hard to feel like a full-grown person in mind and be treated like a creature with almost no mind at all. One of the most painful things she saw was that sometimes the most ignorant and unfeeling were in positions of power over sensitive children. She suffered much from the very beginning of consciousness.

To go back to the world she could so dimly remember was her one dream. But when she spoke of it those about her laughed and said she had never been in any other world, because there was no other.

Once in a dream she went back, or perhaps it was that some of her old friends came to her. They told her to be patient; that she had been sent to help the unhappy ones who had so often called to her; that scattered all over the planet in which she dwelt now were others like herself, who had come for the same purpose; that she would meet them from time to time and that would pay her for much of her pain.

They said, too, that she had a particular work to do here and could not leave until it was done, but she must find out what it was herself; that the road would often seem very hard and very long, but it had an end, and if she did her work well—

There the dream ended; but it comforted her, all unfinished as it was.

By and by her childhood was gone. She was a woman, and went forth to find her work, earnest, enthusiastic and eager, and they said she had precious gifts.

“I will paint pictures,” she said, “for always in my mind are noble faces and figures, like the gods when they walked among men, and these shall show mankind how glorious it can itself become.”

Beautiful creations, perfect shapes of beauty came forth from her hand, but the world, for the most part, passed them by. It said, “We see nothing in these,” and it spoke the truth, for that in them could only be seen by those like unto them.

A few, however, stood before them filled with delight. They were people of the planet from which the artist came, and they recognized their kindred in the faces and forms she had depicted; but she herself was never satisfied with what she had done. Within her mind, faces more glorious, and forms more perfect struggled for expression.

“I have a tale to tell,” she said, “that many will be glad to hear, for it contains help for all.” But again the world did not understand. It said, “The people of this book are impossible people, and what is the author trying to say? We see nothing in it.” A few only understood; but these were of her planet.

“Now,” she said, “I will write again, and this time the world will read and be charmed. I will give it what it wants, not what I want to give it.”

She spoke truly. She wrote and many were pleased; but the people of her planet closed her book with pain in their faces, and she herself found no joy in it. To her conscience she made this excuse: “I want bread and the easy, comfortable things of life, and the world wants foolishness, so we exchange products. Some day I will write that which pleases myself. Then I shall make no concessions, no bids for favor. I shall say what I feel and think.”

Time went on, and the world became interested in new names, and almost forgot hers. Days of discouragement and distress arrived. The ease which she had bought by pleasing the commonplace, vanished, and loneliness, ill-health and poverty came in its stead. Weary and sick unto death in spirit and body, she longed to end it all, and so longing fell asleep, and sleeping dreamed.

She saw again the faces of those from her other world who had come to comfort her when a child. One, the most beautiful of all, and yet just now the saddest, seemed nearer and dearer than the others. It was a glorious face, radiant with strength and sweetness, a type of perfect womanhood. All her life it had visited her in dreams and haunted her imagination. Sometimes the name that belonged to it hovered on her lips, yet was never spoken, for it always vanished before it took shape in her mind.

“Did you find your work?” they asked.

“I tried hard, dear friends,” she said. “I have not been idle.” But their faces showed no joy.

“Have I not done my work well?” she questioned, beginning to be afraid.

“Have you given your best?” they asked.

A flush of shame covered her face. “No; the world did not want it.”

They were silent, and there was that in their eyes which made her more and more ashamed.

“I needed bread,” she said, anxious to make excuse.

“Is bread all that is worth striving for, that you paid for it so high a price?” they asked.

She was silent.

“Did you come to please or help the people of this world?” they asked.

“You told me long ago that I came to help,” she answered, “but they made it very hard. When I wrote that which burned within my soul they cared not to hear it, but wanted something that entertained and diverted them from what they call the cares of life; and I—well, I was often hungry—so I gave them what they wanted.”

“And did they reward you?”

“You see I have nothing,” she answered. “For a time I had some of the possessions all value so much; but they are gone.”

“You tried to tell these people what you thought and felt, but they would not listen, you say; so you told them little foolish tales, like those that please children, but instruct not, help not, and thus you passed your life neglecting to unfold your own soul by expressing it truly. Only the weak and feeble of will, or the indolent and indifferent, turn back at the first obstacle. Where was your faith?”

“I sold it, as you see, for a pitiful price,” she answered, weeping.

“And were you satisfied?”

“Never. My conscience always lashed me. I have been punished already. Give me no further penance.”

“It is not ours to punish or pardon, nor in all the universe is there either punishment or pardon. There is only unchangeable, ever-active law. Had you done your work well”—

“What is it to do one’s work well?” she interrupted.

And now the woman of the glorious face came near and answered: “It is to give the highest and best that is in you, without caring whether it will please or offend; to express truth, as you see it, though the world be against you; to pay whatever price is asked, though it be starvation and disgrace for the freedom of your soul, for the soul is only free when it faithfully follows its Ideal.”

“Then I know I have not done my work well,” said the woman, sadly. “I seldom gave my best. I had not the courage. I was afraid the price I would have to pay would be too high. But what is the fate of those who do not do their work well?”

The faces of the company were full of pity, as they answered, “They must do it over again.”

Then the woman wept aloud. “But not just yet,” they said. “You are very tired; your strength is gone. You shall rest for a time.”

Then one touched her eyes gently, and they closed to the light of this world!

Helen, dearest, I dreamed that story, and I was the woman who did not do her best. It always seems to me that I lived long ago somewhere—many lives perhaps. At times I can almost remember scenes and people of that far-off time. It may be that it was right here in this world, and that I have been sent back to do what I left undone. Or it may be that here in this life I shall not do what I ought to do, and must come again. Ever with me is the thought that there is some particular thing for me to do and that I must make haste to find it and do it, because the time is short.

Part of my work is to find my people—thy own people whom I knew in that far-away life, you are one of them, and—

The stranger laid the unfinished letter down and looked curiously at the author. He had not observed her closely until then. He saw in her face that which is higher than beauty, but is only seen and understood by its spiritual kindred. The mouth, that unmistakable key to character, because it is the door through which the soul expresses itself, was perfect in shape and exquisitely sensitive, though the other features had a dash of boyish ruggedness in them. But the eyes, the dark grey eyes, mottled with tawn, had in them a look, indefinable, yearning, appealing,—a look that might have ages of suffering behind it—and perhaps before it—that went to the stranger’s heart like a knife, and filled his eyes with a mist. In after years more than one strong spirit lost its strength and wept it knew not why, before that flash-light of a soul.

In the same moment the stranger saw another thing. It was that the child was entirely without self-consciousness and the consequent coquetry which so often spoils the manners of even very little women. She was not thinking how she appeared in his eyes. He could see that. It was nothing to her that her feet were naked, her hair twisted and her clothing crumpled. It was plain that these unconventional facts did not even present themselves to her mind. Her shoes and stockings and big straw hat lay near her on the grass, and she gave no sign of embarrassment because she was not arrayed in them. She met him on the ground of mind to mind. In her shining, yearning eyes was an eager interest.

“A free, original, aspiring spirit,” he mused. “Life will be a rough pilgrimage for her. She will find it hard to shape herself to iron-clad standards. The vast army of the commonplace, unable to understand her, will claw at her like birds of prey. It is a pity that she must be bruised and beaten into the usual shape, as she surely will be. But the world is a relentless potter, with inflexible ideas of how its human jugs and vases are to be modeled; and it shapes us all, in a measure, in spite of ourselves.”

“If the question isn’t impertinent, how old are you?” he asked, with a cadence of melancholy in his voice.

“Eleven; but I feel very old sometimes. Old, old, old!”

“Yet you are not old enough to be writing of loneliness,” he said.

“Ah; you think so? Can you imagine the loneliness of a child who is not altogether a child and yet not a woman?”

“Where are your dolls?” he asked, hoping to divert her mind from subjects too serious.

Her handsome mouth curved into a sneer. “Dolls?” she echoed. “Dolls? Poor, miserable little images made by stupid people to deceive those they believe to be stupider. Well, I have several. They were given to me by foolish friends who meant to be kind; but they live in boxes upstairs. I never get any good from them, wretched imitations of people that they are, with expressionless faces and stuffed bodies. I prefer my own people.”

“The lady of the picture and letter is one of them, you said. But of course they are not all grown up like her.”

“Yes, they are, for I like grown-up people best. I don’t like those of my own age. At least I have seen but few whom I liked. The reason I am so fond of my own people, is because I make them myself, and so, of course, I make them to suit me. They are charming, and very fond of me. You would call them unreal; but to me they are more real than the flesh and blood people hereabouts, and much more agreeable.”

“Ah! I understand now,” said the stranger. “They are your own people in the sense of being congenial, companionable, of your own way of thinking. You have gone direct to a great truth, little friend. Our own people are those with whom we are in intellectual sympathy, no matter where we find them.”

“But your other people,” he went on, after a short pause, motioning with his hand toward the house, “your family,—you love them, too?”

“No; we don’t love each other,” she answered, frankly; “we seem not to fit well together—not to be thinking the same thoughts. The most of me is completely shut away from them. I cannot talk to them as I am talking to you. They would laugh at me; they would ridicule me, and that enrages as well as hurts me. And they are going away one by one, interested in their own lives and knowing nothing of my dreams and longings. Two of my sisters married recently and have gone far away, and last week my oldest brother left. I watched him out of sight as he went down the road, with my heart almost bursting. So it was when the others went. Everything was desolate without them, and they will never be back here again in the old way. Not that the old way was so good, for it wasn’t, but I could not bear to see the end. I suffer if only an animal dies or is taken away. And I always wanted to love them; but they did not understand.”

The stranger’s eyes grew pitiful, not so much for what she had suffered as for what she was destined to suffer. He saw her as she was, and as no other had seen her, none having the power to understand,—a sensitive, affectionate, aspiring soul, held for a time in a place alien to her spirit, among people most truly not her own.

“Another,” he said, mentally, “destined to travel the rough road that leads to the heights. Another with a dash of the weightiest gift of the gods. I did not think to find one of the climbers of Olympus here. Yet where none dreams to find them there they are. Poor little soul touched with the wand of genius, already living in a world of her own creation, because the other world is ungenial and intolerable, and longing for sympathy, which is recognition, appreciation, and encourages expression, which is life itself. The old, old spirit in the new body, not comprehended, often wounded, yet striving, striving, always striving against hard conditions to tell what it feels.

“But you have some friends of your own age among the real people—those we call real—have you not?”

“Yes; and I play with them sometimes in their way; but in a little while I am tired of them, and am generally glad when they are gone, so that I can be with the friends I have been telling you about. But I have one comrade of my own age whom I love. She talks very little; but she understands. We often spend whole days together away from everybody. She doesn’t fit into her family much better than I do in mine, but she is happier, because her family are kinder than mine. They love each other better.”

The stranger was struck with the simple and forceful analysis of the difference between the two families.

“When people love each other they are kinder, as a matter of course,” he said, feeling that he was guilty of the stupidest of platitudes, but anxious to keep the young philosopher talking. “But your family love you, surely?”

“No,” she said, decisively, the mottled eyes showing a flash of pain so intense that he turned away.

“What makes you think so?”

“They find fault with me all the time. It is a terrible thing to be blamed always and never praised. When I am grown, should I have power, should I be able to get others to listen to me, I shall tell them that if they want to make people better they must praise them. Fault-finding helps nobody. I am sure of that. It is the worst possible thing for me, for it fills my heart with rage and a sense of injustice, and of course it has the same effect on everybody else. I can see plainly enough what would make an angel of me, and angels of all others, too. Love and praise are what is needed. What couldn’t I be and do if they only loved me and saw good in me, and told me so. But to be nagged, and blamed, scolded, rebuked and humiliated incessantly is making me wicked in my mind all the time. I know how devils are made. They just take a child, neither better nor worse than others, and put it some place where it hears nothing but blame all the time, never a word of love or praise, and when it is grown up it is a devil, ready to give back the pain that had been inflicted on it. If it were not for my own people, my thought people, I could not endure life at all.”

“A bad case,” said the stranger to himself, with a sigh, “heart and intellect both hungry. I fear the road will be very rough.

“Why did you let your friend Helen go away? Since she is your own creation, why not keep her here at will, when you are so fond of her?”

“She is my own creation, but I could not keep her here. She has her own life to live, so she went back to the world from which I drew her, for I do truly believe away down inside of me, that she is what you call real. Just now she is in Paris, and she is a famous author, but not too conceited to love me and find pleasure in talking and writing to me. I was willing she should go away, as it gives me an opportunity of writing to her. I enjoy writing even more than talking, sometimes. I get letters from her often. I have a box full of them. Of course I have to write them myself, but after they are written it really seems that she, not I, is their author, and I enjoy reading them just as other folks enjoy sure-enough letters that come from the post office.”

“How do you send letters to your people?”

The yearning eyes became grave. “Well, that is awkward. I leave them in queer little places where big, bad, real people are not apt to find them—at the root of a flower, in the crevice of a wall, or under a stone—and persuade myself that somehow they reach their destination. Sometimes I carry them clear to the woods and leave them in hollow trees, or under great, cool rocks, where, perhaps, there are fairies or some kind of invisible messengers who will transport them for me.

“But when it rains, now and then, they are washed out of their places, and I find them all wet and blurred. Then a chilly feeling comes over me, and I am half afraid that, after all, my people have not seen them. You see it hurts me if I think nobody reads them. That’s why I wanted you to read my letter to Helen. I felt sure you would understand.”

“You have many of these unseen friends of yours?” asked the stranger.

“Yes, many; but Helen is my only confidante. Of course I am not a little girl when I am with my people. I am grown up, and am important, for I, too, am a famous writer, and I paint the most wonderful pictures. Yes, I have great fame and the wisest and most distinguished people are pleased to be received by me, and they—well,—they hang upon my words.”

“Of course,” said the stranger.

“It is beautiful,” continued the child, “to be treated with consideration. When will big folks learn that little ones are human beings like themselves, with the same feelings exactly, and that they can’t respect themselves if they are ordered about rudely, scolded, snubbed and generally treated as inferior beings?”

She was enjoying the first appreciation the world had accorded her; was breathing the air of her dreams, the congenial atmosphere which is only found where there are sympathetic souls to breathe it with us.

The stranger, understanding, thought of “how widely yawns the moat that girds a human soul,” whose “real world is always an invisible place, removed from the rush and chatter of crowds, for the most important portion of life is the secret and solitary portion.”

“Are your people all women, or do you permit poor, imperfect, earthly man to enter your paradise?” he asked.

“Our world is made up of human beings, and of course that means men and women,” she replied. “It would be a stupid place if it contained only women or only men. But our men are men, not merely creatures who pass as such, like so many one sees walking about here. And yet, I must confess that the men of my thought world are not quite so real to me as the women. I want to make them excellent, perfect; but I don’t succeed. When I get them just so far along, I seem unable to complete them, and so they are more or less dim and shadowy to me.”

“Ah, I see,” said her listener. “Your ideal of mankind is too high for even your imagination to give form to. What are these men like who still seem dim to you? Some of them are knights and lords of high degree, or kings, perhaps?”

“No; we don’t care for that kind. They would be too conceited for our world. We don’t like fighters, either. We have great men, of course, but they have earned their laurels; but even then they don’t talk about themselves, till they tire one all out like living men do. But we will not have any who are not truthful, and then they are courageous, for liars are always cowards, you know. And then, they are kind, very kind to everybody, and they don’t think themselves better than women. We couldn’t stand that, especially as our women are all so magnificent. I’m one of them, you know.”

It was beautiful to him to see her so frankly reveal herself as she saw herself. “Your men do something, I suppose,—something more than to be merely agreeable?” he said.

“We all work, but we dream too, and the dreamers are prized as highly as the workers if they dream good dreams.”

“For a dreamer lives forever,
And a toiler dies in a day,”

hummed the stranger softly.

Then in memory he turned to the past, murmuring, “Bohemia, thy grapes are sweet.”

He saw again its hot and dusty highways, its tangled byways and the long procession traveling thereon. One by one they passed him in review, some with road-worn feet, faded garments and weary eyes; some stepping lightly, with joy in their hearts and flowers in their hands. There were the hopeful, the mirthful, the witty and the merry. There, too, were the baffled and beaten, the hopeless and the joyless. The successful went by with proud mien, and smiling face, and they who had failed also bore themselves erect and smiled, that the world might not dream of the pain at their hearts. “Their heads were bloody but unbound.”

Grapes grew abundantly overhead, but a few, only a very few of the many travelers gathered them. He saw it all in memory as he had seen it all in reality. Now, as one by one the struggling, striving throng, dowered with the fateful gift of genius, passed again before him, he saw

“Their faces all showed suffering,
Though no voice uttered plaints.”

How courageous they had been! How faithful! Not a few had met starvation face to face, and even that dread sight had not power to turn them from the pursuit of their ideals. Again and again he had seen the bravest and brightest fall, their aim unattained, their hands empty, their names unrenowned, their hearts broken. But now he saw, as by a revelation, that the defeated were victors too.

Putting his hand over his eyes as if to shut out the sight of the striving, suffering throng, he groaned mentally, for here in this quiet spot, far from the great centres of life, was another getting ready for a pilgrimage on the same hot, dusty road.

The child was the first to break the silence into which they had fallen.

“My own people are somewhere in the real world, I am sure, and I must go and find them,” she said. “I was singing about it to this dear old tree when you came, for when I go the tree will miss me and be lonely. We are great friends. I tell it many things, and it answers by waving its branches over me—see, like that, and I understand.”

“You are eleven years old,” said the stranger, “and are eager to go and find your people. I am many, many years older and yet have found very few of mine. The search is long and sometimes heart-breaking, but it has to be made. But remember one thing, and forget it not, I pray you. If you have some dream in your mind dearer than all others—some thought that burns to spring forth into life—be faithful to it, for it is your ideal. Follow it at any cost. Your story of the woman who did not do her best contains a great philosophical truth. Somewhere, sometime we are destined to reach a state where our dreams shall come true, where we shall have the desire of our hearts, where we shall be in accord with all beauty and all good. But we can only reach that state by doing our best every day—in little things and great. If we do less we shall have to do it over again.

“One is with you who always knows. It is your soul—your real self. When you want to find your work, when you are ready to tell what you feel, ask not the world what it wants, but say to your soul, ‘What wilt thou have me to do?’”

She looked at him admiringly, gratefully, and said, “I thank you. I know you are wise, for you come from the big, busy world that I long to enter, and shall enter. There one can see and learn everything. Less than a mile away two railroads cross each other. I hear the locomotives whistle every day as they pass, dragging people after them. I shall go, too, some day, and then, and then”—

“And then,” said the stranger, sighing; but she did not understand. How could she?

“And then I shall be happy,” she added.

“You must find me when you come into my world,” he continued, after a pause. “Perhaps I am one of your own people. At any rate, the great world knows me a little. Now I must leave you and go back to where the two railroads cross. My train was hours behind time, otherwise I should not have had the pleasure of meeting you. I assure you I shall not forget you, and when you come into my world I shall know you for one of us, even as I know you now.”

They had risen as he spoke. He took her slender, sunburned hand in his, bent down, kissed it and was gone.

“He is truly one of my very own people,” said the child to herself, as she watched him out of sight. “Now I am sure they live somewhere, and I shall find them and know them as soon as I see them, and shall be happy.”

CHAPTER II.
WHERE THE ROAD DIVIDES.

“O Urania! the earth and the air and the sea
And the infinite spaces are vocal with thee,
And the sunset and moonrise seraphic with thee.”
—Ben S. Parker.

The tall young man alone on the porch walked slowly back and forth, looking off into the sweet spring sunshine, with troubled eyes.

He stopped and his face flushed with pleasure as a young girl dressed for the street came out of the door.

“You here, Mr. Kendall?” she said, interrogatively. “You toil not neither do you spin to-day? How’s that?”

“Because I am weary and fain would rest,” he answered. “Yes, and I fain would do several other things, too; but I dare say I shall not. But you have been idling lately, too. Why so?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Like yourself I am weary and fain would do—I scarcely know what, and go I scarcely know where.”

“Do you mind my asking whither you are bound just now?”

“Not at all,” she answered, pleasantly, “only I can’t say definitely, because I don’t know. I shall probably fetch up at the nearest open square where there is some green grass on which I can rest my eyes a bit, and either lose myself or find myself for a little while.”

“May I go with you?” He made the request a little timidly, for she had a high-handed way with him that made him a little afraid of her, though she attracted him with resistless force.

“I shall be pleased.” Her voice had a sincere ring in it that flushed his face with pleasure. “You are always a good companion, because you don’t tire me talking too much.”

“A dubious compliment, but I am grateful for it, nevertheless. Though if it be intended as a hint for me to keep silent this morning it will not be taken, that’s all.”

They walked away together with the manner of persons accustomed to seeing much of each other.

The wide old streets had birds twittering in the trees, and sunshine warm upon them. The air was soft and mild, and brought with it the gentle melancholy peculiar to spring, a melancholy that creates or awakes a strange unrest, and makes us long to go journeying to far countries, we know not why.

Each of these two were touched by the spirit of this unrest. They spoke of the beauty of the day, of the joy of idling now and then, so sweet to busy people, but soon fell into silence, for their thoughts were not with their words. The young man’s eyes became misty from time to time, though his companion saw it not, for she did not look at his face. He was thinking that in after years he should often recall this walk. On his mind he was painting every object his eyes encountered, that he might treasure it as a comforting picture in the possible lonely future.

After wandering about awhile they sat down in a tiny park near a fountain, and idly watched the water spraying in the sunshine.

“How long have you been here, Miss Hill?” Kendall asked abruptly.

“Four years,” she answered, tossing a pebble into the fountain and showing little interest in anything but her own thoughts.

“And I five.”

As she said nothing, presently he went on: “Now, I want you to do me a service, a real service. I want you to decide a question, an important question for me, and I have determined to abide by your decision, whatever it may be. Yes, I will do exactly as you say.”

Expecting a word or look of interest from her, he paused; but she went on drawing lines on the gravel walk with her parasol, in silence. Being of the large, fair type of man, his face flushed with every emotion. Just now he colored deeply because of her apparent unconcern, but continued:

“There are times in each life when it is necessary to do one of two things. Until we reach this point we get on very well, and are untroubled by doubts. But when we have to decide whether to keep the right hand road or take the left, then we look about for something or somebody to cast the die for us. The doing is always comparatively easy; it’s the deciding that muddles and troubles us. Now I have come to the place where the road divides, and I want some help on the decision.”

She looked up at him now with unaffected interest.

“I am thinking that I ought to strike out and do something better than I am doing,—be something more than a cog in a great machine. I am tired of that. In the office over there”—making a motion with his hand in the direction of the commercial part of the city—“are men who would faint, I am sure, or weep like children, if they should lose their situations, such cowards have they become by long dependence on the weekly salary. Some have been there years, and have given their manhood as well as their time in exchange for the money they pocket every Saturday. They act like slaves in the presence of their employer. If he had bought them at the auction block they could not be more cringing to him. When he is in sight self-respect withers and they are mere worms, crawling in spirit at his feet. I don’t want to become like that, and yet I am sure to if I remain. That sort of thing is contagious. No man can stand forever against it. I know just enough of the degrading feeling to be willing to make a sacrifice to avoid familiarity with it. In reality the wage-earner and the man who hires him engage in a form of coöperation, each to be respected by the other; but the relation is universally misunderstood. The employer develops into an autocrat and the employee into a serf, and so both are injured. To be an employee too long is to become a dependent, helpless, pitiable being, a degenerate man. I am sure of it. Believing that, I feel I must escape from such direful consequences.

“Yet it takes courage to voluntarily give up what they call a good salary, and go into the wilderness, so to speak, and take the risks that all that implies. A ship sails from New York for San Francisco day after to-morrow. I have been thinking I would resign my situation and take passage on her. The territories are big and full of opportunities. I thought to go to one of them and carve out life for myself on broader lines, if possible. I have a little money, and I can still put forth effort. As I have no family to consult—not a relative in the world—and being on the fence, as it were, in the matter of deciding, I have a fancy for leaving it to you and will do what you say. Tell me, shall I go or stay?”

She looked at him with something like admiration shining in her eyes.

“Go,” she said, unhesitatingly. “Go, and be an individual, a fully developed unit, a man, not a mere cog in somebody else’s wheel. Cogs have their uses, but they have also their limitations, and they are so plentiful. You can be a whole machine, if you try. Yes, go and be a figure in the world, on your own account, not simply a cipher, useful only as auxiliary to the figures.”

“Good!” he said, with forced emphasis, making a brave effort to appear delighted, but in his heart wishing he could hide somewhere and take it out in a hearty schoolboy blubber. “Day after to-morrow at this time I shall be aboard my ship.”

He knew that her decision was wise, but it pained him that she was so ready to send him. And then, there was the ordeal of parting from her, a tug of war he could not calmly face.

“You should go for the sake of preserving your self-respect,” she continued, “lest in time you become like the slavish wretches by whom you are surrounded, and also to preserve your life if you care for it. Two years more here bent over your desk in dingy, close rooms, and you will be hopelessly ill of consumption.”

“I have thought of that,” he said, “and it has something to do with my wish to get away.”

“Well, when you go elsewhere, don’t make the mistake of beginning the same kind of life over again. Don’t imprison yourself, and don’t hire yourself out to any man. The air of the West will not save you unless you breathe it fresh and pure. Live outdoors as much as possible. How hideous is this habit of herding in cities—hideous and hurtful! How sensible of you to think of going where there is breadth, freedom and outlook in all senses of the words; but I am surprised, because I never heard you express any discontent.”

“To be honest, I had very little—too little for my own good,” he said, coloring deeply. “It has cost me a struggle to force myself to think of going. Don’t forget that it is you who are sending me after all; but for you I swear I should not go.”

“I am sure I am doing you a service,” she answered, “though I shall miss you, as a matter of course.”

“And you, what of your future? You advise me to leave this plodding existence, where there is neither growth nor freedom, and go where I can be more than I ever can be here; but you are passing your life in exactly the same jog-along way.”

“I—oh! I, too, shall be gone some day.” As she spoke she smiled, looking afar off.

“If I make a place for you will you come?” he asked.

There was nothing lover-like in his voice or attitude, yet he loved the girl beside him with a faithful, dog-like, worshipful affection. Not loving him, and not having a grain of coquetry or even vanity in her, she had never been aware of it. Even now, when his meaning became plain to her, she did not make a situation of it, or give it the slightest shading of the sentimental. Entirely unmoved herself, she knew not what the avowal cost him, made in the face of defeat, as he well knew beforehand.

“Oh, dear, no,” she said, simply, without a shade more or less of feeling in face or voice. “If I were a man, yes, I would go; but as it is, no. Be grateful that you are a man and have no hampering, cramping sex limitations to work against in the public mind if not in your own. You are free to go where you will and to do what you wish, and if it be but half-way well done, both fools and wise will chirrup your praises. One thing I ask of you. Throughout your life, never lose an opportunity of helping womankind to a freer, better, broader life. Do this in memory of me, and if I meet you in the future, either here or on the other side of life—should there be another side—I shall not fail to thank you.”

“I promise, and doubtless shall do more than that, in memory of you.” The last words had a quaver of agony in them, which she did not sense.

“I have been growing restless of late, too. Some day I shall be gone—perhaps before long.” She looked afar off with dreamy eyes as she spoke, and Kendall’s heart ached as he realized at last, that in the future of her dreams he had no part or place.

“Do not forget, wherever you may be, that I am always your loyal, humble servant,” he said, gently.

“I am sure of that, and I thank you,” she answered, with kindness in her voice.

It was like the man that he did not try to relieve his almost bursting heart by talking of his love for her, even though it was without hope, but he understood none of the arts of Eros, and was disciplined in repression.

In truth, it was preposterous that he should dream of winning this woman, and in a vague way he always knew it; yet he had dreamed. From the day he first saw her she had enthralled him, an achievement of which she seemed altogether unconscious, though everybody else read it clearly enough.

They had met daily in their common home, a boarding-house, for four years. They had enjoyed concerts, plays and lectures together; had walked and talked together and been good comrades and yet had never agreed. Nothing under the sun did they see from the same point of view, and the topic upon which they thought alike had never been found. In spite of this, Kendall patiently worshipped at her shrine. Had he not been of the steady, hopeful, never-give-up brand of lover, he would have lost heart long before. But he had the confidence of the self-satisfied and shortsighted, and a heart that held on to its fancies with the desperate clutch that wins sometimes when finer methods fail.

To his credit be it said that while his devotion was open and above-board, for all the world to see, he was never obtrusive. Early in his acquaintance with his torturer he had learned to take a third or fourth place about her candle and make no fuss. He was at her service whenever she needed him, and always out of the way when she didn’t need him.

Many a night he had climbed to his fourth-story room, humming a cheery song, while his heart was being gnawed in holes by the monster Jealousy, all because Miss Hill was chatting and laughing in the parlor with some of the other moths who circled about her. When chaffed about his ill-requited devotion, he laughed it off, and said he was happy to be tolerated at all. To himself, as a matter of graveyard whistling, he said: “It is a question of waiting. She cares for none of them. When she tires of them she may think of me. Meanwhile I think of her because I can’t help it.”

He kept this up for four years. Then a restlessness of spirit came upon him; the unseen forces of destiny began to work upon his mind and urge him to go forth, he knew not where. Yet how could he go out of the sight of her, voluntarily? There was but one thing that would give him the required courage, and that was to make her bid him go. Then he could feel that, at least, he was obeying her, hence his little plan of having her cast the die. It might comfort him in the future.

The four years of their life together under the same roof rolled through Kendall’s mind in panorama, and filled his heart to bursting. The daily sight of the girl beside him had sweetened the days—had been life itself to him, for she radiated light and life, like a sun. That she did not love him, mattered little in that moment. The years in which he had lived in her presence could not be taken from him. Remembering this his spirit was lifted up, and the poor, common, selfish ambition to possess her vanished, and the joy of having known and loved her took its place.

He looked at her long, earnestly, adoringly, photographing her on the fadeless walls of memory that he might carry the picture with him through all the years to come.

“I want to make a confession to you, Miss Hill,” said Kendall, when he thought the mental photograph of her was complete. “You have converted me to broader views, not by words, but by your daily life. I see you filling a useful place, unaided, in a profession that only men, heretofore, to my knowledge, have attempted. You not only succeed, but you excel most of your male co-workers. You make as much money as any of them, and you have more brains, and you command everybody’s respect. Thinking over these things, I am ashamed to remember that I thought I ought to vote, but women must be kept from it at all hazards. Your example has enlightened me by taking some of the masculine conceit out of me. I feel small and mean that I in my insignificance should have thrown a straw in the path of women like you.”

“I am glad your mental horizon has widened,” she said. “It will be a pleasure to think of you as one of my converts. I may never make another, unless, as in this case, it be done by example and not argument. I begin to believe that discussion availeth little. When I hear poor, undeveloped beings fighting the ideas that would make them free, I do nothing to convert them to my way of thinking, I just silently say, ‘May God enlighten them,’ for that’s all that can be done, and the enlightening process is usually slow.”

“I remember now,” he said, “that I haven’t been able to draw you into a discussion in many a day. I suppose you saw it was a hopeless case and just simply prayed for my enlightenment.”

“Yes; and it has come sooner than I expected. So now I am more than ever persuaded that argument is useless. None can be taught until ready to learn. ‘Except ye become as little children’—receptive, teachable, ready for light—applies to entering all kingdoms as well as the heavenly one.”

“While I am confessing,” said Kendall, “I will tell you that I used sometimes to take sides against you for the pleasure of hearing you express yourself—you do it so well.”

She looked at him and her eyes made him ashamed, as she said: “That was not kind. I was always in earnest. However, I am learning a little more about human nature every day. I shall soon cease to be a Galatea, I think.”

“No; it was not kind nor honest, but I did not realize it until this moment, and now I ask your pardon. Many of the offences of us men are the outcome of ignorance rather than meanness. We know no better. Our conceit has stood in the way of our enlightenment. Forgive all my shortcomings, and remember my defects no more. Be a little kinder still and do one other service for me. Read me my future.”

“I am no occultist,” she answered, laughing.

“No matter. I have a fancy for believing you are for the time being. Tell me what lies ahead. It may keep up my courage. Since you are my confessor, I don’t mind telling you that there are moments when I feel a childish cowardice about what I may have to meet, and wish I could run away from it all and hide forevermore.”

“That recalls a bit of rhyme I read years ago which has always stuck in my memory,” she said:

“‘What is Life, Father? A battle, my child,
Where the strongest arm may fail;
Where the wariest eye may be beguil’d,
And the stoutest heart may quail.’

“’Tis no shame to admit that one’s courage is not always high. No one lives always on the heights. I know something about those moments of childish cowardice you speak of; but there, I belong to the sex that is supposed to have the right to be cowardly—we are even driven to it. Courage brings reproach upon us, while the more we shrink and cower and quail and complain the more ‘womanly’ we are said to be. What a fine outlook for the human race! But as to your future. Now I am an astrologer and must draw your horoscope.” (This was accomplished by scratching several circles on the walk with the end of her parasol.) “There, the rings and dots and figures all mean tremendous things. I shall not weary you, however, by telling you the why and wherefore of everything. I shall stick to facts. Here goes: I see a journey by water which ends where the sun sets. You will meet disappointments and difficulties; will know privations and dangers, and also that most dreadful form of homesickness—the homesickness of one who has no home. But you will overcome all obstacles and be what is called successful; you will find your place and hold it. You will become bigger and stronger in body and in character, and you will never come back here.”

“And the indescribable thing called Happiness; has it no place in my horoscope?” he asked, after a pause.

“Is it not included in the thing called Success?” she answered. “Can the defeated be happy?”

“On the whole your reading is not half bad, as the English say, when they want to compliment a thing, and I believe in it.” Yet he sighed as he spoke. The promised success was not alluring, meaning as it did, lifelong separation from the sun that warmed his life.

Still he was in dead earnest when he said he believed in her prophecies. Long ago he had made up his mind that this girl was his fate—not in the sense that she was likely to unite her life to his. He had never been honestly hopeful of that in spite of his steady perseverance; but it seemed to him that in some way she was to direct his life, to be the star of his destiny, as it were. And never was that belief stronger upon him than now when he knew that the end of their daily association had come.

Rising, she said, “Let us each cast a pebble in the pool of this fountain and see whose circles will last longer.”

As they watched the rings widen, multiply and vanish until those made by her pebble had obliterated his, he said,

“There! Your spirit will trouble the waters of life to greater purpose than mine and longer. It needs no divination to tell that.”

When they went back to the house they met Westfield coming out. “Will she eventually throw herself away on him?” was the query Kendall put to himself.

At the breakfast table next morning Kendall’s chair was vacant, and the place was to know him no more under the sun.

CHAPTER III.
CONFIDENCES AND QUESTIONS.

“Too weak to change, though a mental hell
To me the rôle of clown;
A coward bound by a self-wrought spell,
I wait the sound of the prompter’s bell
Which rings the curtain down.”

Sunday’s restfulness was in the air. Miss Hill and Westfield sat in the shade of the great tree in the yard, with books and newspapers about them. Nothing was more delightful to Westfield than to hear her read aloud. She had a voice of great natural sweetness, with no artificial notes in it. In truth there was no artifice in her character.

The man beside her to-day was one of whom poor Kendall had often been bitterly jealous, a man of finer fibre than his rival, greater charm and graver defects. Older, he was also wiser, particularly in melancholy wisdom.

“Read me something,” he said, “some wild wail from a tortured poet. There are always plenty, and I like ’en, no matter how woful they are. God bless the poets every one, high and humble. They help us out in the dreary business of life.”

She read:

“White-footed the snow comes,
O’er the hills of beauty,
Treading like a penitent
Rough paths of duty.”

“What an exquisite figure,”—he interrupted,—“the personification of the snow, with white feet, like a penitent.” He had once made a bright mark in the world of letters, then ceased to strive and later ceased to care, so it might be supposed that his commendation was of some value.

“Miss Hill,” he said, with sudden animation, “what are you going to do with your life?”

“Live it, if I am permitted.”

“How?”

“I have my dreams.”

“Of what?”

She smiled, looking far away, but kept silence.

“I can’t make you out,” he said, a little peevishly. “I believe you have genius for literature, yet you seem to be perfectly indifferent about cultivating it. Were you like others one might suppose that love and marriage made up your dreams; but you are as indifferent to lovers as to possible fame. I don’t understand you.”

“Well, it isn’t worth while to bother about me,” she said. “I shall be gone some day.”

“I fear you will,” he answered, with feeling; “I have thought of it a thousand times, and dreaded to enter the house, lest I should not find you there. A sense of your impermanence is always with me. You don’t belong here in any sense, and I fear that Fate will not let you stay much longer. There is an unreality about your being here at all that is like the experiences we have when we sleep, real enough while they are occurring, but unreal to remember. Yes, you will be gone some day. Therefore, I shall take Fate by the forelock and go first, that I may not be here when you leave. I could not endure that. The very sight of the old house and this tree would then be intolerable to me.”

His face and speech were impassioned, but the girl saw it not. That was what made her so exasperating to those whom she fascinated. She seemed incapable of seeing that she could fascinate. The truth was she was self-absorbed.

“You would miss me, I am sure,” she said, in the most matter-of-fact tone, “and I should miss you greatly, if you were gone.”

“Where will you go to when you leave here?” he asked.

“To my own people, I hope,” she answered, dreamily, her eyes wandering away to the horizon.

“Tell me about them,” he begged. “I have often tried to lead you to talk of them, but you never would. You are a tell-all, tell-nothing sort of person. Others do not notice that, but I do, and have woven some theories about it.”

“I dare say they do me great honor, but in all probability they are far from true.”

“Well, then, why will you not tell me about yourself?” he asked, in an injured tone.

“You talk as though I have been making history on this planet for ages. I am young; what could I have to tell that would satisfy your expectation of the extraordinary. You have known me here in this house for more than two years. As the Indians in the old story-books say, we have ‘eaten salt together daily,’ and we have walked and talked together with the freedom of children. What is there of me still unrevealed?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I feel there is something—a part of you and your experiences from which I and others are shut out, and that part is the greatest part of you. I argue that, because, although you attract many, myself, poor moth, among them, no one gets near to you. An invisible but formidable wall surrounds you, from which all our attempted gallantries rebound like arrows which strike rocks. And there you are behind it, always smiling and agreeable, but entirely unmoved and secure. Now, somebody or some experience built that wall, for it is not in the nature of things for it to be there without cause.”

“Go on,” she said, smiling, as he waited for her to speak. “You will end by being a great architect yet. How like magic you put up that wall.”

“You may chaff as much as you please,” he said, a little savagely, “but I am not to be put off that way. Now that I have begun I am going to say some things seriously and you must hear them seriously.”

“I told you to go on,” she said, composedly.

“And so I will,” he grumbled, “though I know perfectly well that it would be manlier if I kept silence. As you say, we have eaten and walked and talked together as freely as children for more than two years. In that time we have become well acquainted—not the poor, shallow acquaintance of formal society, but the near, intimate association of two human beings who honestly express themselves to each other. The result of this comradeship is that I love you. I will not say I have learned to love you, for something of the fact was clear to me the very first time I saw you. In all probability you don’t remember the incidents of that day at all, but I do. Brooks, our good host, as you know, is my old friend. I had drifted to this city in an aimless way, as I had been drifting for years. He met me and brought me home to dinner with him. I have always adored intellect in man or woman. One look into your eyes told me that you are of uncommon endowments. Then, along with a beautiful but simple stateliness of manner, you have certain childish graces of which you are unconscious. You have never put your childhood entirely away from you. I particularly noticed the correct school-girlish arrangement of your knife and fork at the end of the dinner, and was charmed by it. After we left the table I said to Brooks that you had wonderful eyes. He agreed with me, but warned me not to let them undo me, because he said you were constructed on a novel plan, one man being the same as another to you, and all being as nothing.

“I paid no attention to his warning, as you see. On the contrary, when he went to the Times office and secured me a situation, I accepted it gratefully, because I could then become a member of his household and see you every day. I have loved you ever since, and have had much quiet joy in it, and it has bettered me in many ways. I know perfectly well—I have always known—that you do not love me, and in my least selfish moments I am glad of it, because I have nothing to offer you that is fit for you to accept. I would not tell you that I love you—never a word of it—were I not sure that it will not hurt you. In the years to come the memory of it may comfort you. It is a great comfort to me now, hopeless as it is. It helps me only to tell it. O my child, my heart has long been sick and sore from bruises the like of which I pray you may never know. We men are set up to be so strong and pretend to be so self-satisfied, but we are only grown-up children after all. When we are sore in spirit we long for some loving woman soul to take us to her arms and pet and soothe us mother-like, yet we often live our lives without it.

“I am fifteen years older than you, and know the world well—better than I wish I did—so well that I should like to protect you from its ugly phases. Yet I am powerless to do it. Never did I so deeply lament my aimless, wasted life as now, when I see myself with nothing to offer you and yet loving you with all my heart. Sometimes, since I have known you, I have dreamed that with your help I could pull myself together and make something of my life yet; but the dream is only temporary—it flees, the reaction comes and I sink back to the rôle of a nobody which I have long been playing, and doubtless shall play to the end—an end that I may make for myself any day.

“To say that I despise myself for being the wretched failure I am is to express myself but lamely. My love has in it an element of the paternal. I am not thinking so much of what you might be to me, but of what I earnestly wish I might be to you. I long to shield you from the infinite horror of the experience we call life, as it is revealed to many. You are like a tall young pine-tree standing alone on a high rugged and rocky mountain side, enjoying the sunshine and swaying gently in the summer breeze, not knowing that the winter of the future will bring storms that may tear its roots from the earth. You know not your own value, that is the danger. Some day you may give your love and have your heart broken. That’s what happens to strong souls usually, and you are one of them. I know the answer to the woman poet’s question:

“‘Is it so, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer most?
That the strongest wander farthest, and most hopelessly are lost?
That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain,
And the anguish of the singer, makes the sweetness of the strain?
“‘I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now.’

“Yes, I know the answer to that, and it makes me anxious about your future. Behold the pitiful spectacle of a man who loves a woman, tells her of it, and yet confesses himself a hopeless failure.”

“But why do you insist upon considering yourself a failure?” asked Miss Hill. “You are not old, you have good health, education, ability, the necessary ingredients for achievement.”

“Child, you do not understand. How could you? the ruin is within, not visible on the outer walls.”

“No; I do not understand,” she said.

“I will tell you,” he said, “how I came to be a loiterer in the race, what

“‘——wrought my woe,
In the diamond morning of long ago,’

as the song says. You see I began by asking you about yourself, and, with the artless art that distinguishes you, with scarcely a word, you have switched me off the track I had taken and set me talking about myself instead. I shall lose in your respect after I tell my story, as a matter of course, but I would rather you knew it.

“Years ago, in the days when the earth was new and sweet to me—in the mountain-moving period of life, the tragedy began. I loved, and like the lover of Annabel Lee I may say that the angels of heaven coveted the love of her and me. I was one of the editors of the most prosperous daily newspaper in the city that was my home, my uncle being its proprietor. He had no children of his own, and had brought up my brother and me, our parents having died, when we were very little.

“A sensational criminal trial was before the courts of a distant city, and it was arranged that I was to attend it and send daily letters to my journal. As it promised to last several weeks, the separation from Emma looked unendurable. I must marry her and take her with me. But when I told my plan to her she said she couldn’t leave her father, who was old, feeble and almost blind, with nobody else to care for him. In my selfishness I had forgotten him. ‘I cannot go with you,’ she said, ‘but I am willing to marry you before you go. It will comfort me while you are gone just to know that I am your wife.’

“So we married, telling no one but Emma’s father. The secrecy was needless and foolish, but when young we are all more or less enslaved by the ways of others, and this was too violent a departure from custom to be proclaimed just then.

“Ours was an unusual but not unhappy honey-moon. We wrote every day, long, glowing letters, and annihilated distance with our thought.