“I’m through now;” and he rose with a promptness most pleasing to her.  His gladness in recognizing old and carefully nurtured friends, his keen, appreciative interest in the new candidates for favor that she had planted, rewarded her abundantly.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, “what a heavenly exchange from the close, fetid air of hospital wards!  Could the first man have been more content in his divinely planted garden?”

She looked at him shyly and thought, “Perhaps when you taste of the fruit of knowledge the old story will have a new and better meaning.”

She now regarded him with a new and wistful interest, no longer seeing him through the medium of friendship only.  His face, thin and spiritualized, revealed his soul without disguise.  It was the countenance of one who had won peace through the divine path of ministry—­healing others, himself had been healed.  She saw also his unchanged, steadfast love shining like a gem over which flows a crystal current.  Its ray was as serene as it was undimmed.  It had taken its place as an imperishable quality in his character—­a place which it would retain without vicissitude unless some sign from her called it into immediate and strong manifestation.  She was in no haste to give this.  Time was touching her kindly; the sharp, cruel outlines of the past were softening in the distance, and she was content to remember that the treasure was hers when she was ready for it—­a treasure more valued daily.

With exultation she saw him honored by the entire community.  Few days passed without new proofs of the hold he had gained on the deepest and best feelings of the people.  She who once had pitied now looked up to him as the possessor of that manhood which the most faultless outward semblance can only suggest.

Love is a magician at whose touch the plainest features take on new aspects.  Helen’s face had never been plain.  Even in its anguish it had produced in beholders the profound commiseration which is more readily given when beauty is sorrowful.  Now that a new life at heart was expressing itself, Martine, as well as others, could not fail to note the subtile changes.  While the dewy freshness of her girlish bloom was absent, the higher and more womanly qualities were now revealing themselves.  Her nature had been deepened by her experiences, and the harmony of her life was all the sweeter for its minor chords.

To Martine she became a wonderful mystery, and he almost worshipped the woman whose love he believed buried in an unknown grave, but whose eyes were often so strangely kind.  He resumed his old life, but no longer brooded at home, when the autumn winds began to blow.  He recognized the old danger and shunned it resolutely.  If he could not beguile his thoughts from Helen, it was but a step to her home, and her eyes always shone with a luminous welcome.  Unless detained by study of the legal points of some case in hand, he usually found his way over to the Kemble