Leaning forward with clasped hands and speaking with melodious pathos while the morning light rested on her tired but interesting face, her confession had the effect of a monologue save for its final question. And Constance, listening understood. In truth, this cry of the soul at bay came as a quickener to her own surging emotions, and she realized that the walls of the temple of beauty had fallen like those of Jericho at the trumpets of Israel. Yet though she understood and saw starkly revealed the limit of the gospel of the splendor of things, with all the purging of perplexities which that meant for her, the claims of gratitude and of unabated admiration no less than pity caused her to shrink from immediate acquiescence in her patron's self-censure. And as she hesitated for the proper antidote, Mrs. Wilson pursued her confession relentlessly--pursued it, however, as one who recites the weakness of a cause to which she is hopelessly committed. "One is spurred to refine and refine and refine,--does not even religion--my religion--so teach us?--the spirit ostensibly, and, in order to reach the spirit, the body; and in this age of things and of great possessions one reaches greedily after the quintessence of comfort until--until one needs some shock like this to perceive that one might become--perhaps is, an intellectual sybarite. Nay, more; though we crave almost by instinct individual lustre and personal safety, reaching out for luxury that we may grow superfine, must not we--we American women with ideals--mistrust the social beauty of a universe which still produces the masses and all the horrors of life? Can it fundamentally avail that a few should be exquisite and have radiant thoughts, if the rest are condemned to a coarse, unlovely heritage?" Not only did gratitude reassert itself as Constance listened to this speculative plaint, but protesting common sense as well, which recognized the morbidness of the thought without ignoring its cogency. "Ah, you exaggerate; you are unjust to yourself," she exclaimed fervidly. "You must not overlook what your influence and example have been to me and many others. I owe you so much! more than I can ever repay. It was you who opened the garden of life to me." Mrs. Wilson started at the tense, spontaneous apostrophe, and the color mounted to her cheeks. Never had so grateful a tribute been laid at her feet as this in the hour of tribulation. And as she gazed she felt that she had a right to be proud of the noble-looking, the sophisticated woman who held out to her these refreshing laurels.