gaze of her deep eyes. I began to believe that a love everlasting, all
enduring, had been given me! But still it was passion that pleaded for
possession, and still it was self-knowledge that looked on in fear.

"Passion bade me plead: 'You love me! You need me! Come to me!' And
fear kept my heart still, in dread of her consent.

"But she looked up into my face with eyes that seemed to widen under
mine, and simply whispered, 'My mother.' The heart that knew and
understood now all that sad history seemed to feel that her act might
re-open the mother's old wound; that the verdict 'like mother, like
daughter' would turn virtue back to sin again.

"Once more I went out into the world with a light heart! Her virtue,
her strength, seemed to be mine. I went back to my work with renewed
spirit, back to my life with no new self-reproach.

"But once more I swung round the circle. With a perversity that,
dreading success, and conscious of fear, yet longs to strive for what
it dreads to win, I returned to her again. The death of her mother was
my new excuse.

"She came to me--here, as usual. But this time she came leading by the
hand her little sister, and I felt her armored against me even before
I spoke.

"You, who used to believe in a merciful God, can you explain to me why
he has left in the nature of man, created--so you believe--in His own
image--that impulse to destroy that which he loves? I loved her for
exactly what she was. I loved her because she had the courage to