“This woman must be, shall be put away from every thought and wish and hope.  And the word FINIS must be written at the end of the one brief chapter where our life-stories seem to have run along together in a false harmony and a fictitious peace!”

Thus pondered Gabriel, in the gloom of his harsh cell, branded with crime and writhing in the agony of soul that only those who love hopelessly can ever know.

And Catherine, what of her?  What were her thoughts, emotions, inspirations as—­seeming to live in a dream, with Gabriel’s eloquence and the new vision of a better, saner, kindlier world shining through her soul—­she made her way back to the dingy hotel where now, shabby as it was, she felt she had no right to stay, while others, homeless, walked the brutal streets?

Who shall know them?  Who shall tell?  A blind man, suddenly made to see, can find no words to express the wonder and bright glory of that sudden sight.  A deaf man, regaining his lost sense, cannot describe the sudden burst of sound that fills the new, strange world wherein he finds himself.  So, now, this cultured, gently bred woman, for the first time in her life understanding the facts, glimpsing the tragedy and grasping the answer to it all, felt that no words could compass her strange exultation and enlargement.

“It—­it’s like a chrysalis emerging into the form of a light, swift butterfly!” she pondered, as, back in her room once more, she prepared to write two letters.  “Just for the present, I can’t understand it all.  I don’t know, yet, whether I’m worthy to be a Socialist, to be one of that company of earnest, noble men and women striving for life and liberty and joy for all the world.  But with the help of the man I trust and honor and believe in, and—­and love—­perhaps I may yet be.  God grant it may be so!”

She thought, a few minutes more, her face lighted by an inner radiance that made its beauty spiritual and pure and calm.  Then, having somewhat composed her thoughts, she wrote this letter to Maxim Waldron: 

     My Dear Wally: 

I am writing you without date or place, just as I shall write my father, because whatever happens, I insist that you two let me go my way in peace, without trying to find, or hamper, or importune me.  My mind is fully made up.  Nothing can change it.  We have come to the parting of the ways, forever.

Though I may feel bitterly toward you for what I now understand as your harsh and cruel attitude toward the world, and the role you play as an exploiter of human labor, I shall not reproach you.  You simply cannot see these things as I have come to see them since my feet have been set upon the road toward Socialism.  Don’t start, Wally—­that’s the truth.  Perhaps I’m not much of a Socialist yet, because I don’t know much about it.  But I am learning, and shall learn.  My teacher is the best one in the world, I’m sure; and added to