all her views of life, that the girl who had slept there before seemed
almost a stranger to her. One quality they shared in common; there was
one flaming harmony across their sky amid the wind-swept clouds of
discontent and passing griefs and early intolerances, love. The girl
had lain there and dreamed of love, and felt love aglow in her heart;
the woman lay there with heart and brain filled with love--compassionate
love, deep and tender and protective in quality--for her husband, for
the man who loved her as a husband, and for the small life which God had
given her to complete her world.
These three lives, so intimately and closely associated with her own,
asserted each its separate claim. Never could she forget, or cease to
think kindly and with grateful heart, of the man who was the father of
her child. She would love the child more tenderly through her undying
affection for George Sinclair. The child forged a link, as he had said,
between them for all time.
But above and beyond everything, like a sun set in the sky amid the
lesser luminaries, shone her love for Paul Hallam; a great white flame
of love that made the crown and glory of her life.
As she thought of Paul, of his struggle and his suffering, her tears
fell freely. His claim was stronger than the other claims, his need of
her the greater.
With the dawn her mind became more tranquil, less feverishly alert; the
curtain of formless thoughts, of futile striving to understand, hung
away from her weary brain; and sleep came to her, calm and peaceful
sleep, blotting out the sorrows and the joys which go to the making of
every life.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Stronger Influence, by F.E. Mills Young