The One Woman | Page 7

his love.
At length he stood before the old church that had been the arena of his
struggles and triumphs for the past ten years, and was destined to be for
him the scene of a drama more thrilling than any he had known or
dreamed in the past.
He passed into the auditorium, ascended the pulpit, and sat down in the
armchair where but a few hours before he had held the gaze of
thousands. The electric lights glimmering through the windows of the
gable showed the empty pews in sharp outline.
"I wonder if they know when they go they sometimes leave my soul as
empty and as lonely as those vacant pews? I give, give, give forever of
thought, sympathy and life and never receive, until sometimes my heart
cries to a passing dog for help!
"I'd build here to God a temple whose sheer beauty and glory would
stop every huckster on the street, lift his eyes to heaven and melt his
soul into tears. It must--it shall come to pass!"
He sat there for nearly two hours, dreaming of his plans of uplifting the
city, and through the city as a centre reaching the Nation and its
millions with pen and tongue of fire. Gradually the sense of isolation
from self enveloped him, and the thought of human service challenged
the highest reach of his powers.

He opened the face of his watch and felt the hands, a habit he had
formed of telling the time in the dark. It was one o'clock.
He thought of his wife and their quarrel. He had forgotten it in larger
thoughts, and his heart suddenly went out in pity to her. He had not
meant what he said. He loved her in spite of all harsh words and bitter
scenes. She was the mother of his two lovely children, a girl of ten and
a boy of four. The idea of a night apart from her, he, and theirs came
with a painful shock. He felt his strength and was ashamed that he had
left her so cruelly. He hurried to the Twenty-third Street elevated
station and boarded a car for his home.
When his wife recovered from the first horror of his leaving, she was
angry. With a nervous laugh she went into the nursery, kissed the
sleeping chil-dren and went to bed. She tossed the first hour, thinking
of the quarrel and many sharp thrusts she might have given him.
Perhaps she would renew the attack when he came in and attempted to
make up. The clock struck eleven and she sprang up, walked to her
window and looked out.
A great new fear began to brood over her soul.
"No, no, he could not have meant it--he is not a brute!" she cried, as she
began to nervously clasp her hands and turn her wedding ring over and
over again on her tapering finger, until it seemed a band of fire to her
fevered nerves.
As she stood by the window in her scarlet silk robe she made a sharp
contrast in person to the woman whose shadow had fallen to-night
across her life. She was a petite brunette of distant Spanish ancestry, a
Spottswood from old Tidewater Virginia. To the tenderest motherhood
she combined a passionate temper with intense jealousy. The anxious
face was crowned with raven hair. Her eyes were dark and stormy, and
so large that in their shining surface the shadows of the long lashes
could be seen.
Her nature, for all its fiery passions, was refined, shy and tremulous. A
dimple in her chin and a small sensitive mouth gave her an expression

at once timid and childlike. Her footstep had feline grace, delicacy and
distinction. She had a figure almost perfect, erect, lithe, with small
hands and feet and tiny wrists. Her voice was a soft contralto,
caress-ing and full of feeling, with a touch of the languor and delicate
sensuousness of the Old South. About her personality there was a
haunting charm, vivid and spiritual, the breath of a soul capable of the
highest heroism if once aroused.
At twelve o'clock she relighted the gas and went downstairs to stand at
the parlour window to scan more clearly every face that might pass,
and--yes, she would be honest with herself now--to spring into his arms
the moment he entered, smother him with kisses and beg him to forgive
the bitter words she had spoken in anger.
She was sure he would come in a moment. He must have gone on one
of his long walks. She could see the elevated cars on their long trestle,
count the stations, and guess how many minutes it would take him to
climb the hill and rush up the steps. Over and over she