he had shared
much of his strong interest in Rachel, and it was with an unaffected
pleasure that she exclaimed: "Oh, I'm so thankful!" but her next
sentence was one which arrested her husband's attention, and seemed to
him a strange one.

"Then there is nothing to hinder her being married, is there?"

"Why, no," laughed the doctor, "nothing, except the lack of a man fit to
marry her! What put such a thought as that into your head, Hetty? I
don't believe Rachel Barlow will ever be married. I'm sure I don't know
the man that's worthy to so much as kiss the child's feet!" and the
unconscious Dr. Eben hastened away, little dreaming what a shaft he had
sped.

Hetty stood at the open window, watching him, as far as she could see
him, among the pines. The apple orchard, near the house, was in full
bloom, and the fragrance came in at every window. A vase of the blossoms
stood on Hetty's bureau: it was one of her few, tender reminiscences,
the love which she had had for apple blossoms ever since the night of
her marriage. She held a little cluster of them now in her hand, as she
leaned on the window-sill; they had been gathered for some days, and, as
a light wind stirred the air, all the petals fell, and slowly fluttered
down to the ground. Hetty looked wistfully at the bare stems. A distinct
purpose at that moment was forming in her mind; a purpose distinct in
its aim, but, as yet, very vague in its shape. She was saying to
herself: "If I were out of the way, Eben might marry Rachel. He needn't
say, he doesn't know a man fit to do it. He is fit to marry any woman
God ever made, and I believe he would be happier with such a wife as
that, and with children, than he can ever be with me."

Even now there was in Hetty no morbid jealousy, no resentment, no
suspicion that her husband had been disloyal to her even in thought.
There had simply been forced upon her, by the slow accumulations of
little things, the conviction that her husband would be happier with
another woman for his wife than with her. It is probably impossible to
portray in words all the processes of this remarkable woman's mind and
heart during these extraordinary passages of her life. They will seem,
judged by average standards, morbid and unhealthy: yet there was no
morbidness in them; unless we are to call morbid all the great and
glorious army of men and women who have laid down their own lives for
the sake of others. That same fine and rare quality of self-ab