"Have you a--a pain?" Ermengarde ventured.

"Yes," Sara answered, after a moment's silence. "But it is not
in my body." Then she added something in a low voice which she
tried to keep quite steady, and it was this: "Do you love your
father more than anything else in all the whole world?"

Ermengarde's mouth fell open a little. She knew that it would
be far from behaving like a respectable child at a select
seminary to say that it had never occurred to you that you COULD
love your father, that you would do anything desperate to avoid
being left alone in his society for ten minutes. She was,
indeed, greatly embarrassed.

"I--I scarcely ever see him," she stammered. "He is always in
the library--reading things."

"I love mine more than all the world ten times over," Sara said.
"That is what my pain is. He has gone away."

She put her head quietly down on her little, huddled-up knees,
and sat very still for a few minutes.

"She's going to cry out loud," thought Ermengarde, fearfully.

But she did not. Her short, black locks tumbled about her ears,
and she sat still. Then she spoke without lifting her head.

"I promised him I would bear it," she said. "And I will. You
have to bear things. Think what soldiers bear! Papa is a