“What a girl! What a tragedy should he have learned to love another!”
“But he can’t, King! He may not know it, but he can’t escape a love like that. It will pull him from the end of the world. She is just outside his life and her radiance is across his path. Some day she will just step in and he will recognize her. You believe in that. You said so. Love isn’t just an emotion; it’s a power. Even God wouldn’t try to tear it to pieces. He made it and—well, I guess He knows there wouldn’t be any immortality without it.”
King patted Billee’s shoulder.
“Loyal to your ideals, aren’t you? Good! When our ideals perish, the kernel’s out of the shell, the juice out of the grape!
“And such, then, is the story of the little girl whose face is in the window.”
“Yes, but wasn’t it a miracle that Mr. Church, a very ordinary man, I am told, should have dreamed just such a dream, and have guessed those little faces into it?”
“Mr. Church did not dream it,” said King very gently. The girl’s wondering eyes turned slowly toward him.
“What! Who, then?”
“The design was furnished by Beeker, Toomer & Church, but it was not Church’s work.”
“Whose, then?” And as he hesitated, she repeated the question earnestly, “Whose?” and waited breathlessly. King hesitated and stirred uneasily.