She listened in eager and pathetic silence to every detail of John's life
since she had left him which Alfaretta or Gifford could give her. A
little later, she asked them both to write out all that they remembered
of those last days. She dared not trust the sacred memory only to her
heart, lest the obliterating years should steal it from her. And then, by
and by, she gathered up all her power of endurance, and quietly went back
to Ashurst. That last night in the little low-browed parsonage not even
Alfaretta was with her. Gifford left her on the threshold with a terrible
fear in his heart, and he came to the door again very early in the
morning; but she met him calmly, with perfect comprehension of the
anxiety in his face.

"You need not be afraid for me," she said. "I do not dare to be a
coward."

And then she walked to the station, without one look back at the house
where she had known her greatest joy and greatest grief.

* * * * *

The summer had left spring far behind, when Gifford Woodhouse came to
Ashurst.

He could not stay in Lockhaven; the tragedy of John Ward had thrown
a shadow upon him. The people did not forget that he was Mrs. Ward's
friend, and they made no doubt, the bolder ones said, that Lawyer
Woodhouse was an infidel, too. So he decided to take an office in Mercer.
This would make it possible for him to come back to Ashurst every
Saturday, and be with his aunts until Monday.

Perhaps he did not know it, but Lockhaven shadows seemed deeper than
they really were because Mercer was only twelve miles from Lois Howe.
Not that that could mean anything more than just the pleasure of seeing
her sometimes. Gifford told himself he had no hope. He searched her
occasional letters in vain for the faintest hint that she would be glad
to see him. "If there were the slightest chance of it," he said, with a
sigh, "of course I'd know it. She promised. I suppose she was awfully
attached to that puppy."

However, in spite of hopelessness, he went to Mercer, and soon it became
a matter of course that he should drop in at the rectory every Sunday,
spending the evening with Helen after Dr. Howe and Lois had gone to
church.

Helen never went. "I cannot," she said to Gifford once; "the service is
beautiful and stately, and full of pleasant associations, but it is
outside of my life. If I had ever been intensely religious, it would be
different, I suppose,--I should care for it as