|WHEN he had disappeared down the street, Margaret sat staring at the ground, her color still high, her eyes holding a delicate, spiritual effulgence, her breast rising and falling under stress of fiercely contending impulses, my Christian duty to forgive,” she argued. “I know he has repented, and he couldn't have been wholly to blame. His grosser nature was tempted. He fell, but he loved _me_ in a different way. He loves me still, or he wouldn't want me now. He showed it in New York. He has suffered enough, and I ought to take him back. But can I? _Can_ I? How could I forget, with her and his child right under my eyes? Perhaps, if I went to see her, that might help me decide. I ought to have gone, anyway. She really has had a hard life.” With her hand on her breast, as though the thought had given her actual physical pain, she bowed for a few minutes; then she calmly rose, fastened the strings of her graceful hat under her pretty chin, and walked deliberately down to Mrs. Barry's. Lionel was playing with some colored building-blocks on the porch, and looked up in vast surprise. “Where is your mother?” Margaret asked, timidly. “May I see her?” “She is in the studio,” the child said. “She is making a picture.” At this moment Dora stepped out into the hall from a room on the right, and with a look of undisguised and almost perturbed surprise she came forward. “Oh, she _is_ beautiful--beautiful!” ran like a dart through the visitor's brain. “She is a thousand times more now than she used to be; she has grown, developed. Such hair, such eyes, such color, such a perfect figure!” “I think I heard you asking for me,” Dora said, calmly, something--perhaps it was the sheer immunity of genius and conscious purity of purpose--lifting her above the embarrassment of the situation. “Yes, I came to see you,” Margaret said, bewildered by Dora's appearance and the growing sense of her wonderful and forceful personality. “I ought to have come before, I am well aware; but I hope you won't turn me away.” “Why should I, Margaret?” Even in the unruffled voice of the recluse there was a mellow hint of oblivion to the social degradation the outside world had draped her with. “Would you mind coming into my workroom? It is about as cheerful as our stuffy little parlor.” “Oh, you still paint?” Margaret cried, as she stood in the doorway and saw the pictures leaning here and there and tacked to the wooden partition. “Yes, I had to have some occupation,” Dora responded, quite frankly, “and I took it up. I think I should have died but for my art.” “And did you really do all these?” Margaret stared in admiration. “Oh, they are lovely, lovely!” “I'm glad you like them,” Dora said, appreciatively. “I am sorry I happen to have only these. Just last week I sent a box of the best away. I may as well tell you that I sell them--or, rather, have them sold for me.”