n amazed whisper:

"What! You don't love me any more?"

Still he was silent.

"You--don't--love--me," she said, as if repeating some astounding fact,
which she could not yet believe.

He seemed to gather his courage up.

"I have--" he tried to speak; faltered, broke, went on: "I have--the
kindliest feelings toward you, 'Thalia"--his last word was in a whisper.

"Stop!" she protested, with a frightened look--"oh, stop!--don't say
THAT!" He did not speak; and suddenly, looking at his fixed face, she
cried out, violently: "Oh, why, why did I go up to the graveyard that
day? Why did you let me?" She stared at him, her forget-me-not eyes
dilating with dismay. "It all came from that. If we hadn't walked up the
hill that morning--" He was speechless. Then, abruptly, she sprang to
her feet, and, running to him, knelt beside him and tried to pull down
the hands in which he had again hidden his face. "Lewis, it's I--Tay!
You don't 'feel kindly' to ME? Lewis, you haven't stopped loving me?"

"I am a Shaker," he said, helplessly. "I can't give up my religion, even
for you."

He got on his feet and stood before her, his empty palms hanging at his
sides in that strange gesture of entire hopelessness; he tried to speak,
but no words came. The lamp on the table flickered a little. Their
shadows loomed gigantic on the wall behind them; the little hot room was
very still.

"You think you don't love me?" Athalia said, between set teeth; "_I know
better!_" With a laugh she caught his arm with both her shaking hands,
and kissed him once, and then again. Still he was silent. Then with
a cry she threw herself against his breast. "I love you," she said,
passionately, "and you love me! Nothing on earth will make me believe
you don't love me,"--and for one vital moment her lips burned against
his.

His arms did not close about her,--but his hands clinched slightly. Then
he moved back a step or two, and she heard him sigh. "Don't, sister," he
said, gently.

She threw up her hands with a frantic gesture. "SISTER? My God!" she
said; and left him.

* * * * *

There was no further struggle between them. A week later she went away.
As he told her, "the house was there"--and to that she went until she
should go to find some whirl of life that would make her deaf to voices
of the past.

As for Lewis, he did not see that miserable departure from the Family
House in the shabby old carryall that had been the Shakers' one
vehicle for m