of the mad woman about her, that she had retained reason in such a
place, in such a room, with an eating grief to bear, impressed me as one
of the marvels of the brain's endurance, with which nature sometimes
surprises us. It seemed to me that this might be the hour of partial
deliverance to the poor soul who had evidently lived and died so much.

"Why have you stayed here?" I asked. She had now taken the chair
fronting me. We were stiffly seated as if for a business interview. I
had a desire to take the poor figure in my arms, but I felt as if she
were as intangible as a spirit. When mental pain has devoured the body,
as physical pain so often does, there is something thrice as ethereal
about the wreck.

"What difference could it make?" she asked in her slightly husky voice,
with faint surprise. "It is only the old love-story of a village girl
you will hear. My mother was different from these people, but I had
never known anything beside this life, except books. Of course you can
understand how much else than love the man brought me. I was quite
beautiful then. Does it not seem strange that it could have been true! I
burst into real blossom for him--like Aaron's rod, was it not? And now
you see, I am only the bare rod."

She dropped her lids and looked down at herself calmly. The warmth had
curled the short hairs into a light halo around her forehead, the little
neck was bent, she had folded her hands in her lap. The piteous
child-like chest and limbs revealed by the tight white gown, brought
tears to my eyes. There was something solemn, terrible, in this virginal
decay.

"All that I was to be, was forced into growth at once. He made me a new