Though hope still trimmed her lamp, the hand of tragedy beckoned through the hangings of the future. Spring had spread her nets of gold and sapphire in the woods; tree called unto tree under the wakening moon; the sap of youth stirred in the earth’s red heart. In the great city the sky alone shone clear and generous, hanging like a blue pall above the pit of labor and disease. With Joan and Gabriel their store of gold had dwindled like sand in an upturned hour-glass. No harvest had fallen to their lot; no cup had brimmed with the coming of the year. Effort had brought no echo of hope, and the man’s pen seemed to have labored through the nights for naught. Many a package had gone out from the little room; none had returned with the kiss of peace. It was a spring evening, clear and bright. A swift sunset had brandished the crimson banners of romance above the gray and grinding tide of toil. A film of green had spread over the few pools of nature in the living desert. The restless fires of barter were startling the thin gloom. A last quaver of joy seemed to fall from the ensanguined clouds. From the door of a pawnshop in a hurrying highway a man stepped out with his hat drawn down over his brows. He glanced half furtively hither and thither, as one new to the ignominies of defeat. A girl in a green cloak, with red roses in her hat, came to him gray-eyed from the dusk of the streets. The man colored as she drew near, and held out a hand with a scanty store of gold glistening in its palm. “All this?” she asked him, with an eager increase of color. “Three pounds.” “Riches.” He smiled, sadly enough, as she took a faded purse and engulfed the gold. “It was Judith’s gift to me,” he said, “a marriage present. Poor little Judith, if she but knew its fate! To what ends love falls.” “I should have loved your sister.” “Ah, she is soul of your soul, little wife.” They passed on together into a more populous highway, where the flood of life ran strong and eager. White faces flickered by them, gay, heavy, or morose. The tide of toil gushed past on every hand, bearing the galleys of misery or greed. The painted moths of passion fluttered from darkened byways to jig and glitter in the glow of the many lamps. Opulence rolled on in sable and white. From many a street penury and despair rushed like noisome water from some thundering mill. The man and the woman passed from the highway into a quiet square where bare trees and the turrets of an antique inn rose against the colorless sky. A garden lay shadowy under the bleak and arid walls. There was even a suggestion of solemnity in the silence of the place, with the muffled roar of toil flooding from the distance. Joan’s arm rested in Gabriel’s. The warm dusk of the great square was welcome after the turmoil of the streets.