"But he did not show it to you—because he wanted me to be the first to see it."
"Neal's a dear," replied her mother. "So that was why? I thought perhaps he was bashful."
"No, mother," answered the girl, "no—we're both so proud of it." She kept her hand over the ring finger, as she spoke, "You know those 'Short and Simple Annals' he's been doing for the Star—well, he got his first check the day before Christmas, and he gave half of it to his father, and took the other twenty-five dollars and bought this ring. I think it is so pretty, and we are both real proud of it." And then she took her hand from the ring, and held her finger out for her mother's eyes, and her mother kissed it. They were silent a moment; then the girl rose and stood with her hand on the doorknob and cried: "I think it is the prettiest ring in all the world, and I never want any other." Then she thought of mother, and flushed and ran away.
And we should not follow her. Rather let us climb Main Street and turn into Lincoln Avenue and enter the room where Martin Culpepper sits writing the Biography of Watts McHurdie. He is at work on his famous chapter, "Hymen's Altar," and we may look over his great shoulder and see what he has written: "The soul caged in its prison house of the flesh looks forth," he writes, "and sees other chained souls, and hails them in passing like distant ships. But soul only meets soul in some great passion of giving, whether it be man to his fellow-man, to his God, or in the love of men and women; it matters not how the ecstasy comes, its root is in sacrifice, in giving, in forgetting self and merging through abnegation into the source of life in this universe for one sublime moment. For we may not come out of our prison houses save to inhale the air of heaven once or twice, and then go scourged back to our dungeons. Great souls are they who love the most, who breathe the deepest of heaven's air, and give of themselves most freely."
CHAPTER XXIII
The next morning, before the guests were downstairs, Barclay, reading his morning papers before the fireplace, stopped his daughter, who was going through the living room on some morning errand.
"Jeanette," said the father, as he drew her to his chair arm, "let me see it."
She brought the setting around to the outside of her finger, and gave him her hand. He looked at it a moment, patted her hand, put the ring to his lips, and the two sat silent, choked with something of joy and something of sorrow that shone through their brimming eyes. Thus Mary Barclay found them. They looked up abashed, and she bent over them and stroked her son's hair as she said:—