She acted from a single, undivided impulse; it was to do him good and bring to him the final beatitude of life.  She saw as clearly as when the facts about this tragedy were flashed upon her that her presence in David’s life would be a perpetual source of irritation, and that so long as he possessed her he would never be able to face the truly spiritual problems which remained to be solved.

How she acquired those powers of divination is a mystery.  Such women possess a certain prescience that cannot wholly be accounted for.  What Pepeeta did was right because she was Pepeeta.  It does not follow that because such natures see so clearly that they act with less pain than others.  Indeed, the more clear those spiritual perceptions, the more poignant are the sufferings which they involve; life can scarcely afford a situation more pathetic than hers.

Alone in a great city, young and beautiful, capable of enjoying happiness with a singular appreciation, the victim of a complicated set of circumstances for the comprehension and management of which her early life had afforded no training; guilty of a great sin, but if one could say so, innocently guilty, and penitent; consecrated to duty, but torn asunder by conflicting emotions as if upon a wheel—­of what deeper sorrow is the soul capable?

When she extinguished that candle she extinguished the sun of her human happiness; but it happened to her as it has happened to countless others, that in the darkness which ensued she saw a myriad beautiful stars.

The next morning Pepeeta resolutely took up the heavy burden of her life and bore it uncomplainingly, adjusting herself as the brave and patient have ever done, to the necessities of her daily existence.  Her little attic room became a sort of sanctuary, and began to take upon itself a reflection of her nature.  She built it to fit her own character and needs, as a bird builds its nest to fit its bosom.

It may be said of most of us that we secrete our homes as the snails do their shells.  They become a sort of material embodiment of our spirits, a physical expression of our whole thought about life.  Before long flowers were blooming in Pepeeta’s window; a mocking bird was singing in a cage above it; on the wall hung the old tambourine and one after another many little inexpensive but brightening bits and scraps of things such as women pick up by instinct found their places in this simple attic.

She seldom left it for the outside world, except when she went to deliver the work she had finished, and on Sundays when she spent the morning wandering from one church to another.  As a consequence of these brief but regular pilgrimages her beautiful face became familiar to the residents of some of the side streets where the women and children made her low courtesies and the men doffed their hats by that divine instinct of reverence which we all feel in the presence of the beautiful and the good.