marriage. That's the worst thing you could have told me; that ends all
hope; if they once get hold of a woman like Susanna, they'll never let
go of her; if they don't believe in a woman's marrying a good man,
they'd never let her go back to a bad one. Oh, if I had only known this
before; if only you'd told me, Louisa, perhaps I could have done
something. Maybe they take vows or sign contracts, and so I have lost
her altogether."

"I don't know much about their beliefs, and Susanna never explained
them," returned Louisa, nervously, "but now that you've got something to
offer her, why don't you write and ask her to come back to you? I'll
send your letter to her."

"I don't dare, Louisa, I don't dare," groaned John, leaning his head
against one of the pillars of the porch. "I can't tell you the fear I
have of Susanna after the way I've neglected her this last year. If she
should come in at the gate this minute, I couldn't meet her eyes; if
you'd read the letter she left me, you'd feel the same way. I deserved
it, to the last word, but oh, it was like so many separate strokes of
lightning, and every one of them burned. It was nothing but the truth,
but it was cut in with a sharp sword. Unless she should come back to me
of her own accord, and she never will, I haven't got the courage to ask
her; just haven't got the courage, that's all there is to say about it."
And here John buried his head in his hands.

A very queer thing happened to Louisa Banks at this moment. A
half-second before she would have murmured:--

"This rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I!"

when all at once, and without warning, a strange something occurred in
the organ she had always regarded--and her opinion had never been
questioned--as a good, tough, love-tight heart. First there was a
flutter and a tremor running all along her spine; then her eyes filled;
then a lump rose in her throat and choked her; then words trembled on
her tongue and refused to be uttered; then something like a bird--could
it have been the highly respectable good-as-new heart?--throbbed under
her black silk Sunday waist; then she grew like wax from the crown of
her head to the soles of her feet; then in a twinkling, and so
unconsciously as to be unashamed of it, she became a sister. You have
seen a gray November morning melt into an Indian summer noon? Louisa
Banks was like that, when, at the sight of a man in sore trouble,
sympathy was born in her to softe