othing to waken pride in her.
She felt shamed before this man whom she had loved, and who felt shamed
before her. However, after a second the silence was broken. The man
recovered his self-possession first.

He spoke casually.

"Nice day," said he.

The woman nodded.

"Been berrying?" inquired David. The woman nodded again.

David looked scrutinizingly at her pail. "I saw better berries real
thick a piece back," said he.

The woman murmured something. In spite of herself, a tear trickled over
her fat, weather-beaten cheek. David saw the tear, and something warm
and glorious like sunlight seemed to waken within him. He felt such
tenderness and pity for this poor feminine thing who had not the
strength to keep the tears back, and was so pitiably shorn of youth and
grace, that he himself expanded. He had heard in the town something of
her history. She had made a dreadful marriage, tragedy and suspicion had
entered her life, and the direst poverty. However, he had not known that
she was in the vicinity. Somebody had told him she was out West.

"Living here?" he inquired.

"Working for my board at a house back there," she muttered. She did not
tell him that she had come as a female "hobo" in a freight-car from the
Western town where she had been finally stranded. "Mrs. White sent me
out for berries," she added. "She keeps boarders, and there were no
berries in the market this morning."

"Come back with me and I will show you where I saw the berries real
thick," said David.

He turned himself about, and she followed a little behind, the female
failure in the dust cast by the male. Neither spoke until David stopped
and pointed to some bushes where the fruit hung thick on bending,
slender branches.

"Here," said David. Both fell to work. David picked handfuls of berries
and cast them gaily into the pail. "What is your name?" he asked, in an
undertone.

"Jane Waters," she replied, readily. Her husband's name had been Waters,
or the man who had called himself her husband, and her own middle name
was Jane. The first was Sara. David remembered at once. "She is taking
her own middle name and the name of the man she married," he thought.
Then he asked, plucking berries, with his eyes averted:

"Married?"

"No," said the woman, flushing deeply.

David's next question betrayed him. "Husband dead?"

"I haven't any husband," she replied, like the Samaritan woman.

She had married a man already provided with another