The moonlight had put a spell of white magic upon the lake. It was a light-flooded world that lay below my window. Summer, finger on lip, had stolen in upon the heels of spring. Dim, shadowy figures dotted the benches of the park across the way. Just beyond lay the silver lake, a dazzling bar of moonlight on its breast. Motors rushed along the roadway with a roar and a whir and were gone, leaving a trail of laughter behind them. From the open window of the room below came the slip-slap of cards on the polished table surface, and the low buzz of occasional conversation as the players held postmortems. Under the street light the popcorn vender’s cart made a blot on the mystic beauty of the scene below. But the perfume of my red roses came to me, and their velvet caressed my check, and beyond the noise and lights of the street lay that glorious lake with the bar of moonlight on its soft breast. I gazed and forgave the sour-faced landlady her dining room; forgave the elderly parties their shawls and barley soup; forgot for a moment my weary thoughts of Peter Orme; forgot everything except that it was June, and moonlight and good to be alive. All the changes and events of that strange, eventful year came crowding to my mind as I crouched there at the window. Four new friends, tried and true! I conned them over joyously in my heart. What a strange contrast they made! Blackie, of the elastic morals, and the still more elastic heart; Frau Nirlanger, of the smiling lips and the lilting voice and the tragic eyes—she who had stooped from a great height to pluck the flower of love blooming below, only to find a worthless weed sullying her hand; Alma Pflugel, with the unquenchable light of gratefulness in her honest face; Von Gerhard, ready to act as buffer between myself and the world, tender as a woman, gravely thoughtful, with the light of devotion glowing in his steady eyes. “Here’s richness,” said I, like the fat boy in Pickwick Papers. And I thanked God for the new energy which had sent me to this lovely city by the lake. I thanked Him that I had not been content to remain a burden to Max and Norah, growing sour and crabbed with the years. Those years of work and buffeting had made of me a broader, finer, truer type of womanhood—had caused me to forget my own little tragedy in contemplating the great human comedy. And so I made a little prayer there in the moon-flooded room. “O dear Lord,” I prayed, and I did not mean that it should sound irreverent. “O dear Lord, don’t bother about my ambitions! Just let me remain strong and well enough to do the work that is my portion from day to day. Keep me faithful to my standards of right and wrong. Let this new and wonderful love which has come into my life be a staff of strength and comfort instead of a burden of weariness. Let me not grow careless and slangy as the years go by. Let me keep my hair and complexion and teeth, and deliver me from wearing soiled blouses and doing my hair in a knob. Amen.”