There was but one flaw in this bliss, and that was the thought of Mildred Averill. Whether she would be glad or sorry that for the minute I was landing on my feet, I could not forecast. And yet when I called her up she pretended to be glad. I say she pretended, only because in her first words there was a note of disappointment, perhaps of dismay, though she recovered herself quickly. "But I can be easy in my mind about you?" she asked, after I had declined to tell her what my new occupation was. "Quite easy; only I want you to know how grateful I am." "Oh, please don’t. If I could have done more!" "Fortunately that wasn’t needed." "But if it should be needed in the future—" "I hope it won’t be." "But if it should be?" "Oh, then we’d—we’d see." "So that for now it’s—" that note stole into her voice again, and with a wistful question in the intonation—"for now it’s—it’s good-by?" "Only for now." She seemed to grasp at something. "What do you mean by that?" "Oh, just that—that the future—" "I hate the future." It was one of her sudden outbursts, and the receiver was hung up. After all, this abrupt termination to an unsatisfactory mode of speech was the wisest method for us both. We couldn’t go on sparring and there was nothing to do but spar. Knowing that I couldn’t speak plainly she had ceased to expect me to do so, and yet... When I say that this was a relief to me, you must understand it only in the sense that my situation was too difficult to allow of my inviting further complications. Had I been free—but I wasn’t free. The conviction that somewhere in the world I had permanent ties began to be as strong as the belief that at some time in my life love had been the dominating factor. There had been a woman. Lydia Blair had seen her. Her flaming eyes haunted me from a darkness in which they were the only thing living. The fact that I couldn’t construct the rest of the portrait no more permitted me to doubt the original than you can doubt the existence of a plant after you have seen a leaf from it. The best I could hope for now was the privilege of living and working in some simple, elemental way that would give me the atmosphere in which to re-collect myself, _recueillement_, the French graphically name the process, and grow unconsciously back into the facts that effort would not restore to me. For that simple, elemental work and life the opportunity came to me at last. I see now that it was opportunity, though I should not have said so at the time. At the time it was only hard necessity, though hard necessity with those products of shelter and food which in themselves meant peace. I had peace, therefore, of a kind, and to it I am able now to attribute that growth and progress backward, if I may so express myself, which led to the miracle.