The High Calling

"Die Uhr schlagt keinem Glucklichen?" Helen smilingly observes.

Bauer starts in surprise and leans over towards her.

"You speak German?" he asks with a strange look on his face.

"I have had plenty of time to learn it since you left us."

He looks up and sees that the other members of the family have in some way become much interested in Walter's new plans of electrical dock openers which are spread out on the dining room table.

"You mean since I left you sitting on that log at Tolchaco?"

"Maybe that is what I mean," Helen says, and she is more agitated than she has for years thought she could be.

"Then you know what 'Loben ist nicht Lieben' means now?"

"Yes, I know that and—

"The world has praised me much since that time, but it is an empty thing. I am a lonesome man, sitting alone with honour. 'Loben ist nicht lieben?' Is it not so?"

The tears are in Helen's eyes. This man will win her yet. Bauer mutters again.

"Was vonHerzen kommt, geht zu Herzen," and then forgetting that Helen understands he says as if talking to himself, "'What comes from the heart goes to the heart.' May I come to-morrow or soon and—tell you what is in my heart?"

Helen smiles as she notes the old sign of distrust in himself that used to mark the old young Bauer she used to know. But she says with a new note of life in her own voice: "Yes, come to-morrow."

"There will be much for my heart to tell thine," he says dropping inevitably into the endearing pronoun.

And as he rises and goes away Helen follows his stalwart figure out of the doorway and then goes and sits down by the fire again.

Her mother finds her there.

"Mr. Bauer, Felix, is coming here to-morrow, mother. I know what he is coming to say."

Esther pauses. Helen answers her unspoken question.

"I am going to find my happiness, mother. It is the highest voice I have heard. I am not afraid to answer it."

So with all who have fought and prayed and yearned for the overcoming life in this story, may they all say, "I am not afraid to answer the call when it sounds to me, the sound of 'The High Calling.'"

THE END