domitable woman as she stood in this pose of vain and helpless waiting, there was yet a spirit in her that would not surrender because it could not.
With eyes mournfully searching the depths of the face before her, she began her last appeal.
"And yet, John, there is a sacrifice that I am willing to make that is all my own and none of yours. I will renounce my own ambition, abandon the stage, cancel my engagements, give up that for which I have bartered everything a woman has to give but one thing. I have kept that one thing for you alone. The name of Marien Dounay shall disappear. I will be Alice Higgins again. I will be not an artist but a wife. I will be the associate of your work. You must go from here, of course. I have made your remaining impossible. But we will find some place where men and women need the kind of thing that you can do. It is a great need. There is a sort of glory in your work which I have not been too blind to see. My bridal flowers shall be the weeds of humble service. I will employ my art to bring cheer into homes of poverty, freshness and brightness to the sick. I will try to be God's replica of all that you yourself are. I say I will try!"
She had raised her face now and was searching his eyes again.
"I will do all of this, eagerly, joyously, fanatically, John Hampstead, if it will make it possible for you to love me—as once you loved me," she concluded, with the last words barely audible and sounding more like heart throbs than human speech.
Hampstead, looking levelly into her face, saw that the woman spoke the truth, that she was absolutely sincere.
She saw that he saw it, and with a gesture of mute appeal threw out her hands to him. But they gathered only air and fell limply to her side.
