with Jack, could understand him, play with
him, punish him, and make friends with him; but little Sue was
different. She always seemed to him the concentrated essence of her
mother's soul, and when unhappy days came, he never looked in her
radiant, searching eyes without a consciousness of inferiority. The
little creature had loved her jolly, handsome, careless father at first,
even though she feared him; but of late she had grown shy, silent, and
timid, for his indifference chilled her and she flung herself upon her
mother's love with an almost unchildlike intensity. This unhappy
relation between the child and the father gave Susanna's heart new
pangs. She still loved her husband,--not dearly, but a good deal; and
over and above that remnant of the old love which still endured she
gave him unstinted care and hopeful maternal tenderness.

The crash came in course of time. John transcended the bounds of his
wife's patience more and more. She made her last protests; then she took
one passionate day to make up her mind,--a day when John and the boy
were away together; a day of complete revolt against everything she was
facing in the present, and, so far as she could see, everything that she
had to face in the future. Prayer for light left her in darkness, and
she had no human creature to advise her. Conscience was overthrown; she
could see no duty save to her own outraged personality. Often and often
during the year just past she had thought of the peace, the grateful
solitude and shelter of that Shaker Settlement hidden among New England
orchards; that quiet haven where there was neither marrying nor giving
in marriage. Now her bruised heart longed for such a life of nun-like
simplicity and consecration, where men and women met only as brothers
and sisters, where they worked side by side with no thought of personal
passion or personal gain, but only for the common good of the community.

Albion village was less than three hours distant by train. She hastily
gathered her plainest clothes and Sue's, packed them in a small trunk,
took her mother's watch, her own little store of money and the
twenty-dollar gold piece John's senior partner had given Sue on her last
birthday, wrote a letter of good-by to John, and went out of her cottage
gate in a storm of feeling so tumultuous that there was no room for
reflection. Besides, she had reflected, and reflected, for months and
months, so she would have said, and the time had come f