cold, clear face; you would have thought, looking at it, what a
strong spirit the soul of this woman would be, if set free in
heaven or in hell. The man who held it in his grasp went on
carelessly, not knowing that the mere sound of his step had
raised it as from the dead. She, and her right, and her pain,
were nothing to him now, she remembered, staring out at the
taunting hot sky. Yet so vacant was the sudden life opened
before her when he was gone, that, in the desperation of her
weakness, her mad longing to see him but once again, she would
have thrown herself at his feet, and let the cold, heavy step
crush her life out,--as he would have done, she thought, choking
down the icy smother in her throat, if it had served his purpose,
though it cost his own heart's life to do it. He would trample
her down, if she kept him back from his end; but be false to her,
false to himself, that he would never be!

The red bricks, the dusty desk covered with wool, the miserable
chicken peering out, grew sharper and more real. Life was no
morbid nightmare now; her weak woman's heart found it near,
cruel. There was not a pain nor a want, from the dumb question
in the dog's eyes that passed her on the street, to her father's
hopeless fancies, that did not touch her sharply through her own
loss, with a keen pity, a wild wish to help to do something to
save others with this poor life left in her hands.

So the day wore on in the town and country; the old sun glaring
down like some fierce old judge, intolerant of weakness or
shams,--baking the hard earth in the streets harder for the
horses' feet, drying up the bits of grass that grew between the
boulders of the gutter, scaling off the paint from the brazen