the thorough-bred, made women, down in the town yonder, his friends, in
her secret soul she knew she was his peer,--she only! And he knew it.
Not that she was not weak in mind or will beside him, but she loved him,
as a man can be loved but once. She loved him,--that was all!

She hardly knew if he cared for her. He told her once that he loved her;
there was a half-betrothal; but that was long ago. She sat, her work
fallen on her lap, going over, as women will, for the thousandth time,
the simple story, what he said, and how he looked, finding in every
hackneyed phrase some new, divine meaning. The same story; yet Betsey
finds it new by your kitchen-fire to-night, as Gretchen read it in those
wondrous pearls of Faust's!

Surely he loved her that day! though the words were surprised,
half-accident: she was young, and he was poor, so there must be no more
of it then. The troubles began just after, and he went into the army.
She had seen him but once since, and he said nothing then, looked
nothing. It is true they had not been alone, and he thought perhaps she
knew all: a word once uttered for him was fixed in fate. _She_ would not
have thought the story old or certain, if he told it to her forever. But
he was coming to-night!

Dode was one of those women subject to sudden revulsions of feeling. She
remembered now, what in the hurry and glow of preparing his welcome she
had crushed out of sight, that it was better he should not come,--that,
if he did come, loyal and true, she must put him back, show him the
great gulf that lay between them. She had strengthened herself for
months to do it. It must be done to-night. It was not the division the
war made, nor her father's anger, that made the bar between them. Her
love would have borne that down. There was something it could not bear