r each man deems his own sand-house secure.'"

Then, tossing the book aside, she burst out wildly, all the pent-up
patience, all the insulted and outraged womanhood within her, breaking
bonds at last. She lifted up her hand as if calling down from God a
curse, or offering at His register an oath. It might have been an oath,
indeed; who knows? Thinking of her since I think it _was_ an oath, made,
in that moment of her frenzy, betwixt her soul and God, and registered
with Him.

"Gertie," she said, "to-day a man offered me money. Offered me all I
asked, offered to make me his mistress. Do you hear? Do you? or has your
soul gone deaf as mine has? His mistress! I meet it everywhere. Yet why?
Because I am respectably poor. To-morrow the roof tumbles about my ears.
The mortgage closes. You and I alike are homeless. I went to him, my
father's friend, to whom, in dying, he entrusted me for guidance. I
begged of him that guidance, or, at the least, a little longer time upon
the mortgage. He laughed. 'Don't worry,' said he, 'and don't soil your
pretty hands with ink stains any further. Leave that for the printer, or
the devil. You and I will make an _easier_ trade.' Ease! ease! I tell
you 'tis these flowery beds of ease on which poor suffocated women wake
in hell. 'Soil' my soul and leave that for the 'devil,' too, his trade
meant. He put it in plain words, that gray-haired _guardian_ of a dead
friend's honor. Ease! _I_ did not ask for ease, but work. I am strong,
and young, and willing; but my 'sand-house' trembles with the lashing of
the tide on its foundation. O my God! what fools we women be to kick
against the pricks of fate."

"Each man deems his own sand-house secure."

I repeated the words when she had left me there with the echo of her
bitter rebellious words still ringing in my ears. I felt no anger and no
fear for her, only sorrow, sorrow. My poor, proud darling. Her father's
house had sheltered many; his hand had been open and his bounty free.
And yet not one reached out a hand to her. She might have begged, or
held a hireling's place. She was 'not too good for it,' the old friends
said (so few are friends to poverty), but yet none found such a place
for her.

Through my tears I saw her go down the garden walk, stopping to pluck a
handful of the large Jack roses growing near the gate and tuck them in
her belt, so that the dullish red blooms lay upon her heart, like blots
of blood against her soft white dress. I