The doctrine that evil experiences are ever of value, or rather that a baptism in sin ever worked a positive good to the recipient, is too dangerous to be received; but it sometimes appears that there is an annealing influence exerted on character by the intense heat of uncontrollable passions, tempering it at last to the highest degree of sensitiveness and susceptibility. Reynolds was aware, in a vague way, of the change so rapidly going on within him. It was as if his nature were putting forth a tremendous spurt of power with which to eject from its tissue the evil of the old life. What a mystery there is in remorse and repentance and reform! But how much greater the mystery of evil, that terrible, invisible acid, combining with all the bases of human nature and disintegrating every crystal of beauty! How shall the stream of a life, once defiled, be purified? The simplest reagent will disclose the presence of sin, but what process will eliminate it? The Hand that made the mirror must remove the spots of tarnish. Love is always the gateway of a new life. When its purple mists and its wafts of heavenly perfumes come upon its victim his whole nature feels as if the ultimate sources of impulse had been cleansed, sweetened and electrified. New needs, new aspirations, fresh hopes and the dewy vigor of morning leap into the heart. Ah, then how bitter is the memory of misdeeds! Just then if Satan would get behind and forever disappear, what a relief! What a joy if all the past could be wiped out, as with a sponge, and existence be left to date from the advent of love! The meeting of Reynolds and Mrs. Ransom was much more than the ordinary contact of life with life, whereby the spark of passion is generated; it was significant of a blending of their past experiences as well as of the creation of a new life for both. Even on the instant when a mutual interest was awakened, their minds flashed back over the past. No doubt love ought to be prospective always; but it can not often be so. Agnes Ransom could not realize that she was a widow. It was more as if a very sweet romance of her experience had ended in sorrow and disappointment. She looked back upon the short space of her wedded life with a vision dimmed by mists and shadows. She was half aware that her nature had gained much and lost little by the experience. It all seemed very sad to her, and yet she felt that the sadness was rather an atmosphere of the past than of the present. It hovered somewhere behind her, it did not affect the future. Still there was a protest somewhere, gentle and weak, but quite troublesome, against this new, strong, imperious, wayward love, now rising in her bosom and anon sinking away almost into the depths out of which it had come. She trembled sometimes with a great fear, at other times she abandoned herself to it with a serene fullness of content.