etherealized,
purified as by fire, and later on were given their babies. Their faces
were queer then, frightened and proud at first, and later watchful and
tenderly brooding.

For three days Edith's struggle went on. She had her strong hours and
her weak ones. There were moments when, exhausted and yet exalted,
she determined to give him up altogether, to live the fiction of the
marriage until her mother's death, and then to give up the house and
never see him again. If she gave him up she must never see him again. At
those times she prayed not to love him any longer, and sometimes, for a
little while after that, she would have peace. It was almost as though
she did not love him.

But there were the other times, when she lay there and pictured them
married, and dreamed a dream of bringing him to her feet. He had offered
a marriage that was not a marriage, but he was a man, and human. He did
not want her now, but in the end he would want her; young as she was she
knew already the strength of a woman's physical hold on a man.

Late on the afternoon of the third day Ellen came again, a swollen-eyed
Ellen, dressed in black with black cotton gloves, and a black veil
around her hat. Ellen wore her mourning with the dogged sense of duty
of her class, and would as soon have gone to the burying ground in her
kitchen apron as without black. She stood in the doorway of the ward,
hesitating, and Edith saw her and knew.

Her first thought was not of her mother at all. She saw only that the
God who had saved her had made her decision for her, and that now she
would never marry Willy Cameron. All this time He had let her dream and
struggle. She felt very bitter.

Ellen came and sat down beside her.

"She's gone. Edith," she said; "we didn't tell you before, but you have
to know sometime. We buried her this afternoon."

Suddenly Edith forgot Willy Cameron, and God, and Dan, and the years
ahead. She was a little girl again, and her mother was saying:

"Brush your teeth and say your prayers, Edie. And tomorrow's Saturday.
So you don't need to get up until you're good and ready."

She lay there. She saw her mother growing older and more frail, the
house more untidy, and her mother's bright spirit fading to the drab of
her surroundings. She saw herself, slipping in late at night, listening
always for that uneasy querulous voice. And then she saw those recent
months, when her mother had bloomed with happiness; she saw her
strugg