There were footsteps in the hall. Carrie, ashamed apparently of her ill humor and rudeness, had returned in a better mood. But there was no more conversation. Freeman Vance arose almost immediately, saying that he had but waited to bid her good-night.
"You have made an enemy of poor Freem," Carrie said, trying to laugh, as the outer door closed after him. "He thinks an evening without cards is a dreadful bore. People do say that he plays for something besides amusement. But he has so much money that I suppose he thinks it no harm to throw away some of it if he wants to. They say he never keeps any that he wins. It seems a pity, though, to have him play with those fellows. I always keep him at cards just as late as I can, so that he will not be tempted to go to the saloons."
But Elsie had no answer for this phase of virtuous self-abnegation. She was sore-hearted and disappointed. The world was not the beautiful thing she had thought it. The shelter of home and mother were treasures to be prized. The atmosphere of home was something to look forward to with longing. The week was gone; she was glad of it. On Monday she was going home. But—and here was the place for tears—she had disappointed herself. She was not going back with hands as clean as she had hoped. They were stained. His hands? Yes, but not kept always sheltered in His grasp. And her lips had spoken few words for Him.
Here was this young man, Freeman Vance, in danger, it seemed, and motherless; and she had met him every day for a week, several times a day, indeed, and to-night's stammering sentence had been the first that she had ever spoken to him of Christ. What a servant was she?
It was evening, and it was raining; and in the back parlor there was a fire in the grate, throwing its bright gleams of light over the room and playing gayly with the pictures on the walls.
Two easy chairs were drawn near to the grate, that their occupants might the better enjoy the play of firelight and shadow. In one of them sat Elsie Burton. A trifle over a year older than when you saw her last. Not changed much, unless the brightness on her face has toned into something softer, something which, while it belongs still to the freshness of girlhood, hints of the coming woman.
The parlor is not the same in which you last saw her. It is her father's own.
Elsie graduated a few weeks ago, just a little past nineteen; but she preferred to spend the following months in the quiet of her own home, though Cousin Carrie eagerly urged the delights of the great city upon her.
The other occupant of an easy chair I presume you would also recognize, though he, I think, is more changed than Elsie; but you would like the change. I don't remember whether I told you that Freeman Vance was a handsome man. A year ago, if you are a careful student of human nature, you would have been a little troubled over the face. Handsome dark eyes, but with an unrest about them that made you not sure of his future. Handsome, quiet mouth, but with a look of strength about it, or of firmness; and to be firm in a wrong direction means obstinacy—means danger. And about the whole man there had been a certain something which told you that he thought himself master of himself; and when a man thinks that, wise people know that he is a slave.
But he was changed. What is the change which comes into these handsome, manly faces, when their owners give themselves over, body and soul, into the keeping of the King? Is it a stamp of the King's signet ring? Is it a hint of the coming fulfillment—"We shall be like Him when we shall see Him as He is"? Whatever it is, you saw it plainly on Freeman Vance's face.