"No. But promise, promise on your honor you won't ever."

"I'd rather not _promise_. You see, I might. I shall love you all the
same, Priscilla, all my life."

"No, you won't. It'll all be different. I love you more than you love me.
But I shall love you all my life and it won't be different. I shall never
marry."

"Perhaps I shan't, either," Harriett said.

They exchanged gifts. Harriett gave Priscilla a rosewood writing desk
inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, and Priscilla gave Harriett a pocket-
handkerchief case she had made herself of fine gray canvas embroidered
with blue flowers like a sampler and lined with blue and white plaid silk.
On the top part you read "Pocket handkerchiefs" in blue lettering, and on
the bottom "Harriett Frean," and, tucked away in one corner, "Priscilla
Heaven: September, 1861."



IV


She remembered the conversation. Her father sitting, straight and slender,
in his chair, talking in that quiet voice of his that never went sharp or
deep or quavering, that paused now and then on an amused inflection, his
long lips straightening between the perpendicular grooves of his smile.
She loved his straight, slender face, clean-shaven, the straight, slightly
jutting jaw, the dark-blue flattish eyes under the black eyebrows, the