Now the dull red coals turned to ashes and lay crumbling in the grate. And into the waiting stillness, into the majesty of the silence there breathed something divine. It radiated in the soft white light and filled the room with its presence; and in sweet devotion before it knelt Humility and Meekness and Loving-kindness; and all power was in its hands of shining light, and all wisdom was in its star-pierced crown, and all truth in the stillness of its utterance. Into the soft white stillness, into the holy of holies, breathed this rarest gift of God--Love. The mystic glory of it hung about the dreamer, and quivered in the air, and throbbed and pulsed through the universe, and all things fell into place and became part of the endless plan of the Creator.
Every unholy thought and every vagary of false belief fell away. The iniquity of the ages, and all the crime and passion and suffering of men became a cloud of vapor, like the misty foam on the ocean waves; but beneath the foam-flecked waves lies the mighty volume of the sea, and above them the limitless reach of the heavens. Now the mortal dream of the Dust man and his short-lived Eden and subsequent suffering receded into a shadowy delusion, and the reality of Life, and the substance of eternal things unfolded and encompassed all creation.
Mrs. Thorpe stirred in her chair and felt the yielding of its cushioned depths and the pressure of the pillow at her head. She heard the door open and Pauline come into the room. She sat erect in her chair and drew her hand across her forehead.
"Have you been asleep, dear?" Pauline asked.
"Perhaps, asleep and dreaming--it was a dream--yes, a dream, it was all a dream." She brushed the hair from her temples, and again: "Was it all a dream?"
CHAPTER V
DR. ELDRIGE JR.
Dr. Eldrige Jr. was a very different man from Dr. Eldrige his father. What the elder man lacked in courtesy and kindness was abundantly present in the son. He had studied under his father, practiced and consulted with him; yet in the finer issues of life, its amenities and its culture, their lives might be likened to the branches of a stream: one followed a gorge of clay between banks of rocks and barren soil; the other flowed quietly between green banks, over white sand and shining pebbles.
The elder man had been known to remark that the rub and wear of life, actual life as he had seen it, would change the color of his son's views. If any man could practice medicine as many years as he had practiced it, and not pronounce the whole human race a disgusting sham and a blasted humbug, he pitied that man, for there must be considerable of the fool in his make-up.
The son, however, was well content to go his way, seeing life as it appeared to him, and doing what lay in his power to make rough places smooth and ease the sufferings of humanity. He never undertook to modify his father's views, and on all occasions when it was possible for him to do so, he evaded crossing swords with him.