The man’s voice dropped lower as he answered her, “Suppose that you were to find this friend of yours that knows you so well, and loves you so truly; do you not think that there might be a chance for you to win this prize of life that I speak of?” Helen did not reply, but sat with her eyes still fixed upon the other’s countenance; as he went on, his deep, musical voice held them there by a spell.

“Miss Davis,” he said, “a man does not live very long in the kingdom of the soul before there comes to be one thing that he loves more than anything else that life can offer; that thing is love.  For love is the great gateway into the spiritual life, the stage of life’s journey when human beings are unselfish and true to their hearts, if ever the power of unselfishness and truth lies in them.  As for man, he has many battles to fight and much of himself to kill before the great prizes of the soul can be his—­but the true woman has but one glory and one duty in life, and sacredness and beauty are hers by the free gift of God.  If she be a true woman, when her one great passion takes its hold upon her it carries all her being with it, and she gives herself and all that she has.  Because I believe in unselfishness and know that love is the essence of things, I find in all the world nothing more beautiful than that, and think that she has no other task in life, except to see that the self which she gives is her best and Inghest, and to hold to the thought of the sacredness of what she is doing.  For love is the soul’s great act of worship, and the heart’s great awakening to life.  If the man be selfish and a seeker of pleasure, what I say of love and woman is not for him; but if he be one who seeks to worship, to rouse the soul within him to its vision of the beauty and preciousness of life, then he must know that this is the great chance that Nature gives him, that no effort of his own will ever carry him so far towards what he seeks.  The woman who gives herself to him he takes for his own with awe and trembling, knowing that the glory which he reads in her eyes is the very presence of the spirit of life; and because she stands for this precious thing to him he seeks her love more than anything else upon earth, feeling that if he has it he has everything, and if he has it not, he has nothing.  He cherishes the woman as before he cherished what was best in his own soul; he chooses all fair and noble actions that may bring him still more of her love; all else that life has for him he lays as an offering at the shrine of her heart, all his joy and all his care, and asks but love in return; and because the giving of love is the woman’s joy and the perfectness of her sacrifice, her glory, they come to forget themselves in each other’s being, and to live their lives in each other’s hearts.  The joy that each cares for is no longer his own joy, but the other’s; and so they come to stand for the sacredness of God to each other, and for perpetual inspiration.  By and by, perhaps, from long dwelling