William Applebaum at this time was a great comfort. He was a whole Christmas, in himself, for he loved every custom associated with the day, German, English, American, and carried them all to Kathleen's home. With Hertha he hung up wreaths of holly in the four windows, and two days before Christmas he appeared carrying a ten-pound turkey. "I bought it myself," he said, as Kathleen glared as though she thought it might have come from the Salvation Army. "I wanted to make sure of my dinner here, and if Miss Hertha will let me, I'll cook it under her supervision." On Christmas eve, which happened to be Sunday, he took them to a concert given by his choral society, and leaving them in the best seats in the house, went upon the stage and sang the choruses in The Messiah with a rapture of happiness and good-will. When the two women returned home, after saying good-night to him at the door, they found within a little tree, not four feet in height, but set out in the regalia of the season, tinsel, cornucopias, candles, and at the top a golden star. They lighted the candles and sat for a time in their radiance until Hertha declared that they must be blown out that they might be lighted again to-morrow. "He's a good man," Kathleen said as she examined the little gilt toys on the boughs, "but he lacks vision." Christmas morning was lowering, but after she had tidied up her room, Hertha went out to church. She walked through the park, a gray and cheerless place to-day, and felt aggrieved that no one was there to meet her. There was, of course, no reason why she should have thought to see her new acquaintance, but she had half expected it both Sunday and now and his absence was a disappointment. And at the library, while she had scrupulously kept to her usual routine, visiting it neither more nor less than usual, she had not seen him either. Her life, whether set in the South, where roses and purple clematis were blooming now over the doorways, or in the North of gray clouds and snow, was just a place into which people entered for a time to play a part, and, at the end of the act, went out and left her to finish as best she could alone.