Jack turned, without a word, to his own room, and Barbara heard him throw himself on the bed with a half-stifled moan. She herself opened her bedroom door and went in. Sleep was out of the question. She fell upon her knees beside her couch and prayed,—an inarticulate, broken cry for the help that is beyond human power. Then she lighted her little night lamp, and sat down before her desk with a volume of Emerson in her hand. She turned to the essay on Compensation, and read, her eyes seeking and finding the detached sentences that seemed written for her:— We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. . . . We cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep in vain. . . . The death of a dear . . . brother . . . breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household. . . . But . . . the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden flower with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men. Barbara dropped the book hastily. “There’s no compensation in that!” she said bitterly. Then she picked up a bit of paper, and put the cry of her heart into a few crude words. Her father, coming into the room two hours later, found her there at her desk, her tear-stained face bowed on her arms. The pencil was still in her hand. Dr. Grafton touched her shoulder gently, but the girl did not waken. He hesitated for a moment, hoping for the right words to tell her, and as he did so his eyes fell upon the crumpled paper before him. It read:— THE BANIAN TREE The flower grows beside the wall,— A little, sheltered thing, And over it the sunbeams fall And merry linnets sing. No usefulness it has in life So weak it is, and small, And yet how happily it grows Beside the shielding wall. The banian tree grows tall and straight, It sends its branches wide; Beneath its shade the pilgrims wait, The travelers abide. They praise it, lying on the sward; But what is that to me? Forgive me, Lord; but it is hard To be a banian tree! The doctor’s eyes filled. “Thank God,” he said, “she won’t have to be, this time!” CHAPTER XII THE END OF THE INTERREGNUM THE Grafton children stood in a row, watching their father and Barbara establish David in the big Morris chair, on the occasion of his first trip downstairs. Joy and awe were struggling for supremacy in their hearts, but were carefully concealed after the fashion of young America. “Well, David,” said Jack, jocularly, “you look just exactly like a collapsed balloon. Remember how nice and round you used to be? Now, hurry up and get there again. It was becoming.”