her face with a radiance which if less bright was to him more beautiful than the sparkling energy she had lost.  For the life and the passion of her womanhood were still there, mellowed and ennobled by that shadow of experience without which mere beauty of feature had always seemed to him a meaningless and empty shape.  His belief was justified forever in that instant, and he recognised in her then one of those nobler spirits who in passing through the tragedy of disillusionment drain from it the strength without the bitterness that is its portion.

“I want to work, to help,” she said eagerly, almost with her first breath, and while he listened with a tenderness tinged with amusement, she described to him the elaborate plans she had made for going among the poor.  “It isn’t that the poor need help any more than the rich,” she added, “but the poor are the only ones that I can reach.”

He nodded, smiling, while he watched the animated gestures of her hands.  Her poetry, her groping for love, her longing at last to give help to the oppressed, each phase of thought or feeling through which she had passed, showed to him only as the effort of the soul within her to find expression.  In this passionate search after the eternal upon earth was she not, in reality, only seeking in outward forms the thing which was herself?

“I will help you, of course,” he answered, with a gravity which he found it difficult afterward to maintain, for from that moment she had thrown her heart into the work of uplifting until her whole existence appeared to round presently about this new point of interest.  While he could follow her here, he waited almost impatiently for the reaction of her temperament which would bring her back to him, he felt, as inevitably as the changes of the seasons would bring the spring again to the earth.

On Christmas Eve she had arranged for some celebration among the poor on the East Side, and when they came away together, she asked him to take her to Gerty’s house instead of to Gramercy Park.  Then as they walked along the cross-town blocks from the elevated road, she alluded for the first time to the evening a year ago when he had found her in her deepest misery.

“I thought then that my life was over,” she said, “but to-day I have put my foot upon my old grief and it has helped me to spring upward.  The world is so full for me now that I can hardly distinguish among so many vivid interests—­and yet nothing in it is changed except myself.  Do you know what it is to feel suddenly that you have found the key?”

“I know,” he replied, “for I have found it, too, and it is love.”

“Love for the world—­for all mankind,” she corrected.  “No, don’t look at me like that,” she added, “I am perfectly happy to-day, but it is the happiness of freedom.”

For a moment he did not answer; then he turned his eyes upon the bright pallor of her cheek showing above the dark furs she wore, and there was a smile in his eyes though his voice, when he spoke, was grave.