stairs"; "Bruce went out with Dr. Markham"; and one evening they ventured to Mrs. Garnier's, where they found Ada quite a little queen, set about with brilliant stones, that flashed, and sparkled, and emitted strange lights as they were rubbed and stirred by the friction in the atmosphere. But to Bruce there came another vision, a fair, sweet girl, a Una, not with her lion, but with her loyal young knights. He thought of her daily, nightly, I was going to say, for she often was his last remembrance. All her sweet, unselfish joyousness, her out-giving, her never saving up bits and choice delights, and oh, never finding any lack. Charlie Darrell was sitting by his reclining chair one evening, while the General and Aunt Ruth had gone to hear a famous singer. "Don't you miss Kathie terribly?" asked Charlie with a sudden irrelevancy. "The house seems so strange and still without her! quite like another place. Kathie is n't ever noisy, but there is a curious sort of pervasiveness about her. She seems to fill every place. She is like the scent of heliotrope. You can tell from ever such a little bit that the real bloom is there." "Yes I miss her- very much," Bruce answered slowly. "Is she coming back, do you know? If not, I must take a run to Cedarwood; I have something of importance to lay before her. Do you mind my telling? Lovers prove bores so often that I have resolved never to be obtrusive." And a bright color flushed his face. "It is about a call. You know I have been doing mission work here in the city and waiting. I promised her mother I would n't really ask for her in two years, and that will be next summer," with a softened, lingering accent, and a dreamy flush of anticipation. "But I have received a call to one of the prettiest towns up the Hudson. The salary is very fair, the society above the average, the church beautiful, and the loveliest rectory imaginable. A Mr. Dinsmore, one of the wardens, does business here in the city. I went up once and exchanged with the clergyman, and now he is going abroad. I think Kathie ought to have a voice in her future home." There was a long silence. Her future home. She had come into his life, but she must go out again. She could not remain the bright, eager friend and companion! "I should think it might be very delightful," Bruce made answer slowly. "It is a lovely place. I wish you were well enough to take a day's journey up there. Perhaps you will be before long. You know we have counted on you for a steady friend, and this episode has brought us all so much nearer together. But for all the terrible suffering to you, I should rejoice that it had happened. And that is just the sphere Kathie could grace so well, though she would be charming anywhere." "You like it; the work, I mean?" Bruce's voice was a little husky and strained. "It will be delightful in many ways, but there is something- See here, Bruce, you are not the one to shirk a square ordeal; help me with a little clear sight. I ought to do this for Kathie. No doubt I shall soon be content and satisfied. But, oh, what of the perishing souls here? What of the young men with no homes, no hope, rushing madly to ruin on every side? There is enough to save them if they would come, but they will not; the way is a strange path to them. And just here comes the Divine mandate, 'Go into the highways and hedges.' They will listen sometimes to youth when they would laugh and jeer at an older person. There are so many ways; and I'm not sure but a man who has had a clean, wholesome, loveappointed home knows better what these have lost. My heart aches for them. My whole soul goes out in strong crying. And yet it is hardly the place or the work in which to take a sweet young girl like Kathie Alston." Bruce placed his hand softly on that of the other, but his face was partly turned away. There was the ring of the true soldier. He could never think Charlie rather weak and idealistic after that certain sound of the trumpet. He had undervalued him. The poetical ideas, the exalted reverence, the diviner life of self-consecration that seemed to stand a little out of the common work, the extreme purity and almost girlish sympathy and tenderness: if it could take its white robes down to the mouth of that seething pit, if it could hold out its clean, dainty hands unshrinkingly to that wretchedness, there was the truth and strength of the Almighty in it. The brave young soldier felt humbled, self-condemned. He longed to ask pardon, to show the other how high he did truly exalt him. 66 'I must think a little of her. There is work to do in the other place as well, and sometimes I believe the rich are as much in need of devoted missionaries. They make their lives narrow and cold, and wrap themselves up in indolent, dreamy music and fine preaching. So I would not need be idle." "Dear friend," and the clasp tightened, 66 can any one answer for another? Ask her. Tell her truly.” 66 mence. There, I have quite stirred you up by all this veheI forgot you were not as strong as Dick or Rob. I feel the excitement in your voice, in your hands. I'll go and play a little while. That is a trick I have caught from Kathie." He seated himself at the piano. He was very fond of improvising, and now it was something in the soft minor chords, tranquillizing rather than saddening. Bruce lis tened. He did not want to think just then. He would wait for that until the lights were out and all was still. They said good night after Rob came in, and, as the young man had not quite given up all his duties, he saw Bruce safely in bed. "Seems to me you look a little pale, old chap!" he said gayly. And then, in the silence of the night, Bruce confronted the phantom he had thought laid forever. He had been fancying, feeding his soul with friendship, and out of it had arisen the old love. But if ever there had been a dream it must be put away, sternly, wholly. The coveting regard was a snare and a delusion; he had called it by another name, but now he dragged it out to the pitiless light. His soul should not be stained with it; even if it took a lifetime of effort, it should be done. He had not designedly gone into temptation. He did not see how any of this could have been helped, but he had overrated his own strength and discipline of mind. The fancied security had been built upon false premises. All the rich and sweet associations, all the deep and tender memories, the past and the present, had been leading his too willing feet over into his neighbor's beautiful fields until he desired, with the mad, passionate desire of covetousness, to gather the fruit, to pluck the blossoms, and carry them quite away. A little more and he might have spoken, or smiled, or looked, and told the whole story. Her infinite pity would have been touched, perhaps won, for people in a moment of mighty temptation do not always consider if it is the true, unflawed pearl they are reaching after. Always there would have been a shadow of wrong and stain on both lives, an uneasy sense, a hiding away in the garden at the voice of the Lord. He prayed a little by snatches; it was so hard just then to desire to be saved, even though he knew it was the right thing. Now and then the other course seemed so possible, so plausible. What was in her soul? If he could know! Had God really joined them together in that completest of all love? "Save me, " he cried. "I am weak and worn with the tempest, but do Thou bring me to the haven where I would be." CHAPTER XXIII. THERE followed a week of warm, rainy, and foggy weather, and with it a pause in the vital forces of Bruce Mackenzie. He could not sleep; his appetite fell to a mere nothing. Yet in his patient submissiveness no one could guess the wearying inward strife, the temptation resisted so silently that its existence was not suspected. He compelled himself to speak of Kathie in the most cheerful of tones; he allowed himself to be lulled and soothed by his mother's playing, so like hers. He fought Rob at chess with no outward diminution of valor, but inwardly it was weariness of soul. “We shall have to send for Kathie again," declared his father," and compel her to disclose the secret of her unfailing panacea." Upon this hint Rob wrote, in a funny, melodramatic manner, quoting from "Lord Ullin's Daughter," on the very first line, with a change of pronoun : "Come back, come back, they cried in grief The house was desolate; Bruce was sinking fast. Charlie was in a state of awful uncertainty about something or other, and he, Rob, would expect to bring her back with him next Monday morning." He said nothing to the others, so again Bruce had no choice. Kathie laughed over the letter. some fun cropping out in Rob. of nature would assert itself. There would always be |