I've heard the world sobbing, you know."

"But a world that is sobbing needs Katie's laughing." He drew her to him with something not unlike a sob. "I need it, I know."

There was a wonderful sense of saving herself in knowing again that the world was sobbing. What she could have borne no longer was drowning the world's sobs in the world's hollow laughter.

"Katie," he cried, after more time had elapsed without finding either the astonishing stone or the astounding flower, "here's a little sunny path!

I want you to walk in it."

Laughingly he pushed her over into the narrow strip of sunshine, where there was just room for Katie's feet.

But Katie shook her head. "What do I care about sunny paths, if I must walk them alone?" And laughing, too, but with a deepening light in her eyes, she held out her hand to him.

But it was such a narrow sunny path; there was not room for two.

So Katie made room for him by stepping part way out of the sunshine herself. Smiling, but eyes speaking for the depth of the meaning, she said: "I'd rather be only half in the sunshine than be--"

"Be what, Katie?" he whispered.

"Be without you."

"Katie," he asked passionately, "you mean that if walking together we can't always be all in the sunshine--?"

"The thing that matters," said Katie, "is walking together."

"Over roads where there might be no sunshine? Rough, steep roads, perhaps?"

"Whatever kind, of roads they may be," said Katie, with the steadiness and the fervor of a devotee repeating a prayer.

They stood there as shadows lengthened across sunny paths, thinking of the years behind and the years ahead, now speaking of what they would do, now folded in exquisite silences.

And after the fashion of happy lovers who must hover around calamities averted, he exclaimed: "Suppose Ann had never come!"

It sent her heart out in a great tenderness to Ann: Ann, out in her mountains, and happy. Nor was the tenderness less warm in the thought that Ann would join with Wayne and the others in deploring. Ann, who was within now, would, Katie knew, grieve over her going without.

But that was only because Ann did not wholly understand. Everything the matter with everybody was just that they did not wholly understand. She grew tender toward all the world.

There rose before her vision of a possible day when all would understand; when none would wish another ill or work another harm; when war and oppression and greed must cease, not because the laws forbade them, but because men's hearts gave them no place.

"I see it!" she whispered unconsciously.

Her face was touched with the fine light of visioning. "See what--dear Katie? Take _me_ in."

"The world when love has saved it!" She remembered their old dispute and her arms went about his neck as she told him again: "Why 'tis _love_ must save the world!"

He held her face in his two hands as if he could not look deeply enough.

And as he looked into her eyes a nobler light was in his own.

"As it has saved us," he whispered.

They grew very still, hushed by the wonder of it. In their two hearts there seemed love enough to redeem the world.