The One Woman

had been its own justification. Wealth had robbed her of the mystery and charm of accident. The future was fixed; there could be no unknown. The m

her finger tips. Her days were full of sweet surprises or sudden revelatio

ate, and she was consumed with longing for the moment of bliss when her whole being would so burn with s

most becoming to her beauty, and she used these with the ease and assurance of an expert. She was proud of h

Gordon was teaching her. Slowly and unconsciously she was clothing this powerful, athletic man with every attribute of her ideal. His steel-gray eyes seemed to pierce her very soul and say, "I understand you; come with me." His eloquence and emotional thinking were more and more to her the voice of a prophet seer. His face, that flash

ith and cheering flattery were dra

at that Gordon determined to stay at his post and take his vacation in the fall. Mrs. R

ead horses blocked traffic at almost every hour. A drought threatened the water-s

p of the other, like so many dead flies. Down every tenement-walled street the white ribbons fluttered their tragic story from cellar to attic. At night tired mothers walked the pavements, hot and

She chartered a steamer and took a thousand of them for a day up the Hudson as an experiment, and asked Gordon to go with them. They

of the floor space. She was moving about among them, while they gazed at her in admiration no words in their vocabul

ling that, for all her magnificently huma

learned to laugh or smile or play; little pinched faces with weak eyes that had never seen God's green fields; little dirty ears that had been bruised with a thousand beastly no

ft with tears as

en old earth never saw. But the shining figure in the c

doesn't it?" she answered, looking at them tender

ready?" Go

Is Mrs. Gordo

de her. She took our c

down its channel strengthened, they sat together on the after deck and watched the dead sou

d try to laugh. They called to one another and listened with mute wonder at the echo among the rock-ribbed hills. Gordon watched curiously in their faces the flash of the inherited memory of

they would learn to

than the children, as he saw her satin skin flush with ple

on a rock be

ever new miracle of regeneration unfold

. "This would never have interested

feel you are indispensable. I wonder if you, to

y answered, looking down at the ground and the

everal minutes and

it?" sh

ld never

the elbow, and felt of the mass of auburn

sacrileg

belt, and ran her hands down the lines of h

round the corners of his eyes. "Sitting here in the woods by your side on this glorious summer day, your eyes looked

illy things," she sa

I worship it for its own sweet sake wherever I find it, in pearl or o

ered he

old legend of the

s pocket and held in the li

beautiful?

rose. Enraptured with the shimmering beauty of a moonbeam, he stood entranced and trembling and could not go. In ecstasy they met, embraced and kissed. The sun sank

made that up,

were poe

dreamed of such r

s. I had a funny dream a

at it was,"

are

ou would dar

ve a curious feeling of awe about sleep and dreams. It's the surest evidence I have of immortality and the reality of a spiritual life. It is to me the prophecy of the ideal wo

even give me a h

eautiful. It was in part a picture from that drea

you to tell me tha

if I dared. I ma

after that, and yet some

ree hours in the woods, returned to the city as the twilig

to-night," she said, as t

return for supper

m household. Mrs. Ransom deemed herself honoured by his visits, and his

the splash of a fountain mingled with the songs of birds in their cages, the gleam of silver and diamond flash of cut glass, gave Gordon's senses a soothing cont

to him. He always felt at home in such surroundings. Beneath his idealism and

and shoulders bare and little ringlets of hair curling about her face as thou

him before enteri

ever had he seen her so charming and so resistless. Always intensely conscious of her sex, she seemed to have the power to-night

articulate exclamations, the turn of her head, the rising and falling of her bosom, the flash of her violet eyes, the subtle perfume of

eam of an ideal life and work wit