"Is this an ideal, though? Could anything be beautiful to us after we'd sacrificed much of life, and all of love in its attainment? Is not everything that is opposed to love also opposed to the ideal? Is not an ideal, when all is told, nothing but a great love--the great personal love of each individual?" He turned to the woman, and there was that in his face which caused her eyes to drop, and her breath to come more quickly. "I don't know. I'm miserable, and lonely, and tired. I've thought I had an ideal, and I followed it, working for it faithfully and for it alone. I've shown it to myself, glowing, splendid, when I became weary and ready to yield. I've sacrificed, in attempting its attainment, youth and pleasure--self, continually. Still, I'm afar off--and still the light beckons me on. I work day after day, and night after night, as ever; but the faith within me is growing weaker. Might not the ideal I worshipped after all be an earth-born thing, an ambition whose brightness is not of pure gold, but of tinsel? That which I have sought, speaks always to me so loudly that there may be no mistake in hearing. "'I am thy god,' it says; 'worship me--and me alone. Sacrifice--sacrifice--sacrifice--thyself--thy love. Thus shalt thou attain me.' "One day I stopped my work to think; hid myself solitary that I might question. 'What shall I have when I attain thee?' I asked. "'Fame--fame--the plaudits of the people--a pedestal apart.' "'Yes,' whispered my soul to me, 'and a great envy always surrounding; a great fight always to hold thy small pedestal secure.' "Of such as this are ideals made? No. 'Twas a mistake. I have sought not an ideal, but an ambition--a worthless thing. An ideal is something beautiful--a great love. 'Tis not yet too late to correct my fault; to seek this ideal--this beautiful thing--this love." He reached over to the woman and their fingers, as by chance, touching, lingered together. His eyes shone, and when he spoke his voice trembled. "_You_ know the ideal--the beautiful thing--the love I seek." Side by side they sat, each bosom throbbing; not with the wild passion of youth, but with the deeper, more spiritual love of middle-life. Overhead, the night wind murmured; all about, the crickets sang. Turning, she met him face to face, frankly, earnestly. "Let us think." She rose, in her eyes the look men worship and, worshipping, find oblivion. A moment they stood together. "Good-night," she whispered. "Good-night," his lips silently answered, pressing upon hers. A DARK HORSE Iowa City is not large, nor are the prospects for metropolitan greatness at all flattering. Even her most zealous citizen, the ancient of the market corner, admits that "there ain't been much stirrin' for quite a spell back," and among the broad fraternity of commercial travellers, the town is a standing joke. Yet, throughout the entire State, no community of equal size is so well known. It is the home of the State University.