The Summer was done; the book had been ten days out of Morning’s hand; the final rehearsals were engrossing and painful, and the letters from the hill-cabin, though buoyant, were not so frequent.... Service for men—service for men! The words seemed integrated into the life of the man. There was something herculean in his striving. The long Summer had ripened the harvest. Conceptions which had been vague and dreamy in the first letters were ready at his hand now, daily expressions of his work. Helen Quiston, so long dream-fed, trembled at the thought that she had something to do with a giant’s making.
It never occurred to her that the things so real in her mind were at least an age distant from the interests of the world. She did not stop to think that the drama so vital and amazing to her would be out of the comprehension even of the decent doctor who came to the studio day after day. Not once did it enter her mind that the world would regard her as heartless and fanatic for her strength in so ruthlessly holding her closest friend to the sacrifice. Her problem now was what to do with John Morning after the first night of the play, and the report upon his book was in. She was afraid he would come. He would see Betty Berry—see what her giving had done. He would learn that it was she, Helen Quiston, who had given him the peace in which to find the larger consciousness; her letters, in Betty Berry’s hand, that had filled the distances with peace for him.
She had no thought for John Morning except as an instrument. It was something the way Duke Fallows had thought of him at the last. Either one would have sacrificed themselves, but they were not called. Only Betty Berry loved him for himself, and to her was the altar. They loved him for the future, and guarded him as the worker-bees guard the queen because she is potentially the coming race.
And this was the miracle: John Morning at his work had passed the need of the kiss of woman. He had been tided over the grand crossing by the love of Betty Berry. Receiving it now, he did not hold it for himself, but gave it forth in service to men.... There was something cosmic about this to Helen Quiston.
Breathless expectancy in the studio on the early November evening of Compassion’s first performance at the Markheim. Though nothing of the sort had been arranged, Helen Quiston expected a telegram after the Play. It was not yet cold, but an east wind had been rising since dark, and there was tension in the sounds and shaking everywhere. Betty had, for her, a very keen sense of the importance of the night to the man in New York.
“I feel as if I had lived, Betty,” her friend whispered. “Oh, what must it be to you?”
“I feel that I have died,” the other murmured.
Though she rested better and accepted food with less reluctance, (the doctor declaring himself satisfied with the progress of the past six weeks), it had been the hardest period for Helen Quiston. Something was in Betty’s mind that was not confided. Often in the evening she showed a preference for being alone. Helen feared for a time that the other might write a letter without her supervision, but as there was no change in the tenor of Morning’s replies, the outpouring of his thankfulness in no way diminished, the only conclusion was that Betty at least had not mailed such a one. She had taken sudden dislikes to several different nurses in turn. When she wanted anything there was a terrible concentration about it. Helen and the doctor and all concerned were drawn into the vortex.
“It’s the way she used to practice,” her friend said.