“Then she is my Helen,” thought Cartice. “How remarkable, too, that she has the very same name I gave her.” “Come, Mrs. Doring,” said her friend, “I want to have you meet her. I fancy you two will be pleased with each other.” When Cartice found herself talking with the incarnation of one of her ideal people of long ago, she had a flash of knowledge of the oneness, inseparableness and unchangeableness of all things past, present and future. Did her new-found, old-time friend recognize her? It would seem so, for she was strongly attracted to Cartice from the first moment. The question under discussion in the little group of whom she was one, was whether art, especially the art of fiction, should exist for art’s sake only--that is to give pleasure--or should it also aim to instruct. “I believe,” said Helen Gardener, “and have lived up to my belief, that fiction which merely entertains, and carefully steers clear of the deep and often dark problems that face all thoughtful minds is pernicious in its effect. The literature of the optimist is the literature of shallowness and selfishness, a bid for surface appreciation, an appeal to a light and superficial taste. Life is tragic. If it be represented in fiction, let the picture be true to nature. The novel should be a tonic, not an opiate. What think you, Mrs. Doring?” “Like Goethe and Schiller I think art ‘no luxury of leisure, no mere amusement to charm the idle nor relax the care-worn; but a mighty influence, serious in its aims, although pleasurable in its means.’ The advocates of art for art’s sake, say that its object is the creation of the beautiful. What is the beautiful? Is it that which pleases the eye only, or has it power to thrill the soul? The great novels have all carried great messages. They have shaken the hearts of men and aroused them to new knowledge; they have broken the bonds of prejudice, and set the bondsmen free. They have effected a movement of the thought-world in the direction of ‘that far-off, divine event toward which the whole creation moves.’ They have spoken the truth as their authors beheld it.” Helen Gardener’s brown eyes glowed and she smiled affectionately, saying: “You and I belong to the same ethical family, Mrs. Doring.” * * * * * That night as she lay down to sleep, Cartice half persuaded herself that she was again a child, day-dreaming under the elm tree, the world unknown and still idealized, and the years that lay between that time and the present obliterated. “Do I wish it were so?” she asked herself. “No. I am glad so much of the journey has been accomplished. The future is always better than the past. It has in it that which we are to become, for life is endless becoming.” Cartice and the new-found Helen became warm friends; but not till their friendship had stood the test of time did Cartice tell her how the creative power we call imagination had found her years before.