THE SINGING OF THE SKYLARK CEASES ; CHARTER HASTENS EAST TO FIND A QUEER MESSAGE AT THE GRANVILLE Charter, three years after the foregoing descent into realism, was confessedly as happy a man as the Mid-West held. He accepted his with a full knowledge of its , and according to his present health and habits would not have been excited to find himself still among those present, had the curtain been lifted thirty or forty years away. In the year that followed the sanatorium experience, Charter in reality found himself. There were a few months in which work came slowly and was uncertain in quality. In his entire conception, nothing worse could happen than an of mental activity, but he did not , knowing that he richly deserved the perfect punishment. So slowly and deeply did physical care and spiritual restore the forces of mind, however, that he did not realize an expansion of power until his first long work had received critical and popular , and he could see it, himself, in perspective. So he put off the last and toughest of King Fear—the living death.
 
As for drinking, that had beaten him. He had no thought to re-challenge the champion. In learning that he could become , a creature of paralyzed will, he had no further curiosity. This much, however, he had required to be shown, and what a tender heart he had ever for the Lafe Schiels of this world. There were other vivid animals, strong and , in his quiver of physical passions, but he discovered that these could not become red and without alcohol. Such were clubbed into accordingly. With alcohol, Charter could travel any one of seven sorry routes to the ; without it, none. This was his constant source of thankfulness—that he had refined his elements without their . The forces that might have proved so deadly in mastery, furnished a fine under the .
 
All was sanative and open about him. Charter knew the ultimate dozen of the hundred and forty-four thousand rules for health—and made these his habit. The garret, so often spoken of, was the third-floor of his mother's . Since he slept under the sky, his sleeping-room was also a solarium. There was a long, thickly-carpeted hall where he paced and smoked ; a trophy-room and his study and library. Through books and lands, he had travelled as few men of his years, and always with an exploring mind. In far countries, his was an eye of quick familiarity; always he had been intensely a part of his present environ, whether Typee or Tibet. Then, the God-taught philosophers of Asia and Europe, and our own rousing young continent, were the well-beloved of his brain, so that he saw many things with eyes lit by their prophecies. As for money, he was wealthy, as Channing commends, rather than rich, and for this of late, he had made not a single , or the least of his ideals, selling only the best of his thoughts, the expression of which polished the product and increased the capacity. He fitted nothing to the fancied needs of . His mother began truly to live now, and her external nature manifested below in fine grains and finished services. Between the two, the old Charter formalities were observed. She was royal steel—this white-haired mother—and a cottage would have become baronial about her. Where she was, there lived order and silence and .
 
After this of details, one will conclude that this has to deal with a selfish man; yet his gruelling punishments must not be forgotten, nor the Quentin spirit. It is true that he had emerged unhurt from many dark explorations; but his of the treachery and of events was sound and keen. By no means did he challenge any complication which might strip him to quivering nakedness again. Rather his whole life breathed for the goodly days as they came, and into untormented nights. Next in importance to the discovery that his will could be beaten was this which the drinking so hesitatingly grants—that there are thrilling hearts, brilliant minds, conversations, and lovely impulses among men and women who will not tarry long over the wine. Simple as this seems, it was hard for a Charter to learn.... As he the full promise of his , the thought often came—indeed, he expressed it in one of the Skylark letters—that this was but a period of rest and healing in which he was storing power for sterner and more subtle trials.
 
Such is an intimation of the mental and moral state of Quentin Charter in his thirty-fourth year, when he began to open the Skylark letters with more than curiosity.... He knew Reifferscheid, and admired him with the familiar enthusiasm of one who has read the editor's work for years. Charter, of course, was delighted with the review of his second book. It did not occur to him that it could have been written by other than the editor himself. Reifferscheid's reply to Charter's letter of thanks for the critique proved the key to the whole matter, since it gave the Westerner both focus and dimension for his visioning.
 
I haven't read your book yet, old friend, but I'm going to shortly. Your fine letter has been turned over to Miss Paula Linster, a young woman who has been doing some reviews for me, of late; some of the most important, in which lot your book, of course, fell. The review which pleased you is only one of a hundred that has pleased me. Miss Linster is the last word—for fineness of mind. Incidentally, she is an illumination to look at, and I haven't the slightest doubt but that she sings and paints and plays quite as well as she writes book notices. If she liked a work of mine as well as she likes yours, I should start on a year's tramp, careless of returns from States yet to be heard from. The point that interests me is that you could do a great book about women, away off there in the Provinces—and without knowing her.
 
You may wonder at this ebullition. Truth is, I'm backing down, firmly, forcefully, an to do an essay on the subject. This is the first chance I ever had to express matters which have come from the in the past year. All that she does has the ultimate feminine touch,—but I'll stop before I get my sleeves up again about this new order of being. Perhaps you deserve to know Miss Linster. You'd never be the same afterwards, so I'm not so sure whether I'd better negotiate it or not. I'm glad to see your book has left the post so . Always come to see me when in town. Yours solid, Reifferscheid.
 
And so she became the Skylark to Quentin Charter, because she was lost in the heights over by the seaboard, and only her singing came out of the blue.... There were fine feminine flashes in the letters Charter received, rare matters which can be given to the world, only through the one who inspires their warm and charm. The circuit was complete, and the voltage grew and mightier.
 
There was a royal fall night, in which Charter's work came ill, because thoughts of her . Life seemed warm and splendid within him. He turned off the electric bulb above his head, and the moonlight burst in—a hunting moon, full and red as Mars. There was thrilling glory in the purple south, and a sense of the of stellar management. He the night with the electric button again, and wrote to the Skylark. This particular letter proved the kind which all sense of separateness, save the animal heaviness of miles, and makes this last, extra carking and pitiless for the time. It may have been that Charter would have hesitated to send this letter, had he read it over again in the cool of morning, but it happened that he for a walk that night—and passed a mail-box, while the witchery of the night still .
 
He felt dry, a bit burned the next morning, and saddled for a couple of hours, transferring the slight strain of nerves to his muscles. There was a note from the Skylark. She had found an old picture of his in a magazine and commented on it deliciously.... "I wonder if you think of me as I am—plain, plain?" she had asked.... No, he did not. Nor was it Reifferscheid's words to the contrary that prevented him. It is not in man to correlate plainness with a mystic attraction. She had never appeared to him as beautiful exactly, but fine, vivid, electric—a of eyes, lips, mind. All the poundage part of a human being was vague in his concept of the Skylark.... Charter naturally lost his perspective and in with his own interlacing emotions.
 
The present letter thralled him. It was in intent, but intuitively deep and keen. In a former letter, he had asked if there were not a strain of Irish in her lineage, so did her temperament play in all that she wrote. "No Irish," she had answered. "Dutch—straight Dutch. Always New York—always Dutch. I praise for this 'monkey-wrench to hang upon my safety valve.'"
 
The "red moon" letter seemed to have caught her on the wing—at her highest and happiest—for she answered it in fine faith and lightness. Though it had carried her up and up; and though the singing came back from golden , yet she had not forgotten her humor. There was a suggestion of world-wisdom here, or was it world-wear?
 
For hours at a time, Charter was now stripped of his capacity for work. This is fine . Mostly there was a sheet in his type-mill, but his fingers only fluttered the space-bar. Let him begin a letter to the Skylark, however, and inspiration came, indeed. His thoughts marshalled like a perfect army then, and passed out from under his hand in flashing review.... He ate little, slept little, but his vitality was . A miracle matured in his breast. Had he not been more than usually stubborn, he would have granted long before, that he loved a woman for the first time in his life—and this a woman he had never seen.
 
By New Year's there was no dissembling. No day passed now in which he did not battle down an impulse to take a train for New York. This was real living. The destiny which had ruled him through so many dark wanderings, had waited until his soul was roused to dominance, before he was permitted to enter earth's true . It was now that he remembered his past, and many a mile and many an hour he paced the dim hall—wrestling to be clean of it. This was a Soul which called. He did not dare to answer while a of the old lingered.... He was seldom troubled that she might prove less inspiring than he pictured. He staked every reliance in that he had lived thirty-three years and encountered nothing comparable with this before. Passions, , infatuations, were long put behind; these were classed now in his mind beneath decent and between men and women.
 
The vision which inspired his romantic loneliness was all that Reifferscheid had suggested, and more which his own dreamings had supplied. She was an adult challenged by the mysteries of creation; often shocked by its revelations, never above pity nor beneath humor, wonderful in her reality of culture, and wise above men with a woman's . But particularly, her ultimate meaning was for him; his quest, she was; his crown, to be. The world had preserved her singing, until he was ready; and though singing, she must ever feel the poverty of unfulfilment in her own breast, until he came. This was the stately form of the whole .
 
That there existed in creation a completing feminine for all his lonely and divided forces; that there lived one woman who could evenly ignite his body, brain, and spirit; that there was hidden in the splendid plan of things, a union of Two to form One; all this which had been............