hallowed love and damning desire. This dream was to end. For months
those two beings faced their little world with only a nod as they
passed by; not even as much as a hand-clasp. Who can tell what the man
thought, or if he cared? But the woman wept out her sorrow in my arms.
Confession is good for the soul, so it is said; there is joy in a
heartache sometimes, and sweet content in tears. She told me how she
lay awake and listened for his footsteps. If he came into the room her
heart would almost cease beating. She almost fainted once when she met
him coming in with his fiancee... but in silence she suffered; pride
and duty ruled.

"How exquisitely he tortures me," she said. "He uses roses as his
weapons.... But what think you of this my friend? I shall bear his
image into life! What matter laws and customs, and sins forbidden....
I shall be happy again when I hold my baby in my arms"....

So terribly shocked was I that I could only gasp in amazement, but
when I looked into the face of the woman, behold.... the Madonna!

There seemed to be a spiritual light illuminating her face and she was
far away in the land of dreams, looking into the face of her blue-eyed
baby; born of a great, great Love, sacrificed to Duty. Life.... What a
tragedy! Fate, did you say? Thank God for Time, the healer of all
wounds. As someone has said: "Never a lip was curved in pain that
could not be kissed into smiles again!"

Just half an hour before she was leaving Reno, as we were dropping the
last of the little silver toilet articles into her small traveling
bag, and gathering up the odds and ends here and there, the telephone
rang. At Eileen's request I answered. A manly voice said: "Mr.