the royal right of love?

But how did she know he still needed her, wanted her? When she had
returned to her own city after long absence she had told of her
present place of residence to but few of her old friends. Her own
sorrow, her own sudden facing of the inevitable and unescapable, had
brought her sharply to a realization of how little she was doing with
the time that was hers, and she had been honest and sincere when she
had come to Mother McNeil's and asked to be shown the side of life she
had hitherto known but little--the sordid, sinful, struggling side in
which children especially had so small a chance. In these years of
absence he had made no sign. Even if it were true, what Carmencita had
said, that he--that is, a man named Van Something--was looking for
her, until he found her she could not tell him where she was.

She had not wished her friends to know. Settlements and society were
as oil and water, and for the present the work she had undertaken
needed all her time and thought. If only people knew, if only people
understood, the things that she now knew and had come to understand,
the inequalities and injustices of life would no longer sting and
darken and embitter as they stung and darkened and embittered now, and
if she and Stephen could work together--

He was living in the same place, his offices were in the same place,
and he worked relentlessly, she was told. Although he did not know she
was in the city, she knew much of him, knew of his practical
withdrawal from the old life, knew of a certain cynicism that was
becoming settled; and a thousand times she had blamed herself for the
unhappiness that was his as well as hers. She loved her work, would
always be glad that she had lived among the people who were so