At the window she stood looking out and looking up toward a scene of splendor in the heavens.

It was sunset, the rain was over, the sky had cleared.  She had been tracing the retreating line of sunlight on the hillside opposite.  First it crossed the street to the edge of the park, then crossed the wet grass at the foot of the slope; then it passed upward over the bowed dripping shrubbery and lingered on the tree-tops along the crest; and now the western sky was aflame behind the cathedral.

It was a gorgeous spectacle.  The cathedral seemed not to be situated in the city, not lodged on the rocks of the island, but to be risen out of infinite space and to be based and to abide on the eternity of light.  Long she gazed into that sublime vision, full of happiness at last, full of peace, full of prayer.

Standing thus at her windows at that hour, she stood on the pinnacle of her life’s happiness.

From the dark slippery street shrill familiar sounds rose to her ear and drew her attention downward and she smiled.  He was down there at play with friends whose parents lived in the houses of the row.  She laughed as those victorious cries reached the upper air.  Leaning forward, she pressed her face against the window-pane and peered over and watched the group of them.  Sometimes she could see them and sometimes not as they struggled from one side of the street to the other.  No one, whether younger or older, stronger or weaker, was ever defeated down there; everybody at some time got worsted; no one was ever defeated.  All the whipped remained conquerors.  Unconquerable childhood!  She said to herself that she must learn a lesson from it once more—­to have always within herself the will and spirit of victory.

With her face still against the glass she caught sight of something approaching carefully up the street.  It was the car of a physician who had a patient in one of the houses near by.  This was his hour to make his call.  He guided the car himself, and the great mass of tons in weight responded to his guidance as if it possessed intelligence, as if it entered into his foresight and caution:  it became to her, as she watched it, almost conscious, almost human.  She thought of it as being like some great characters in human life which need so little to make them go easily and make them go right.  A wise touch, and their enormous influence is sent whither it should be sent by a pressure that would not bruise a leaf.

She chid herself once more that in a world where so often the great is the good she had too often been hard and bitter; that many a time she had found pleasure in setting the empty cup of her life out under its clouds and catching the showers of nature as though they were drops of gall.

All at once her attention was riveted on an object up the street.  Around a bend a few hundred yards away a huge wild devil of a thing swung unsteadily, recklessly, almost striking the curb and lamp-post; and then, righting itself, it came on with a rush—­a mindless destroyer.  Now on one side of the street, now in the middle, now on the other side; gliding along through the twilight, barely to be seen, creeping nearer and nearer through the shadows, now again on the wrong side of the street where it would not be looked for.