kitchen fire for her, and brought in all the water, and helped her fry
the potatoes, and whistled a little about the house, and worried at her
paleness, and so she said nothing about it.

"I'll wait till night," she planned, making ready for the mill.

"O, I can't!" she cried at night. So other mornings came, and other
nights.

I am quite aware that, according to all romantic precedents, this
conduct was preposterous in Asenath, Floracita, in the novel, never so
far forgets the whole duty of a heroine as to struggle, waver, doubt,
delay. It is proud and proper to free the young fellow; proudly and
properly she frees him; "suffers in silence"--till she marries another
man; and (having had a convenient opportunity to refuse the original
lover) overwhelms the reflective reader with a sense of poetic justice
and the eternal fitness of things.

But I am not writing a novel, and, as the biographer of this simple
factory girl, am offered few advantages.

Asenath was no heroine, you see. Such heroic elements as were in
her--none could tell exactly what they were, or whether there were any:
she was one of those people in whom it is easy to be quite
mistaken;--her life had not been one to develop. She might have a
certain pride of her own, under given circumstances; but plants grown in
a cellar will turn to the sun at any cost; how could she go back into
her dark?

As for the other man to marry, he was out of the question. Then, none