Page:Ralph Connor - The man from Glengarry.djvu/379

  But with the bright, joyous little laugh Ranald knew so well, she smoothed back Harry's hair, and kissing him on the forehead, said: "I am sure you will do good work some day. But I shall be quite spoiled here; I must really get home."

As Ranald left the Raymond house he knew well what he should say to Mr. St. Clair next morning. He wondered at himself that he had ever been in doubt. He had been for an hour in another world where the atmosphere was pure and the light clear. Never till that night had he realized the full value of that life of patient self-sacrifice, so unconscious of its heroism. He understood then, as never before, the mysterious influence of that gentle, sweet-faced lady over every one who came to know her, from the simple, uncultured girls of the Indian Lands to the young men about town of Harry's type. Hers was the power of one who sees with open eyes the unseen, and who loves to the forgetting of self those for whom the Infinite love poured Itself out in death.

"Going home, Harry?" inquired Ranald.

"Yes, right home; don't want to go anywhere else to-night. I say, old chap, you're a better and cleaner man than I am, but it ain't your fault. That woman ought to make a saint out of any man."

"Man, you would say so if you knew her," said Ranald, with a touch of impatience; "but then no one does know her. They certainly don't down in the Indian Lands, for they don't know what she's given up.

"That's the beauty of it," replied Harry; "she