p
entreatingly, but Dahlia stepped back.

"You are not deceitful? You are not cold? You are not inhuman? Inhuman!
You are not? You are not? Oh, my God! Look at her!"

The toneless voice was as bitter for Rhoda to hear as the accusations.
She replied, with a poor smile: "I am only not deceitful. Come, and see.
You will not be disturbed."

"What am I tied to?" Dahlia struggled feebly as against a weight of
chains. "Oh! what am I tied to? It's on me, tight like teeth. I can't
escape. I can't breathe for it. I was like a stone when he asked
me--marry him!--loved me! Some one preached--my duty! I am lost, I am
lost! Why? you girl!--why?--What did you do? Why did you take my hand
when I was asleep and hurry me so fast? What have I done to you? Why did
you push me along?--I couldn't see where. I heard the Church babble. For
you--inhuman! inhuman! What have I done to you? What have you to do with
punishing sin? It's not sin. Let me be sinful, then. I am. I am sinful.
Hear me. I love him; I love my lover, and," she screamed out, "he loves
me!"

Rhoda now thought her mad.

She looked once at the rigid figure of her transformed sister, and
sitting down, covered her eyes and wept.

To Dahlia, the tears were at first an acrid joy; but being weak, she
fell to the bed, and leaned against it, forgetting her frenzy for a
time.

"You deceived me," she murmured; and again, "You deceived me." Rhoda did
not answer. In trying to understand why her sister should imagine it,
she began to know that she had in truth deceived Dahlia. The temptation
to drive a frail human creature to do the thing which was right, had
led her to speak falsely for a good purpose. Was it not righteously
executed? Away from the tragic figure in the room, she might have
thought so, but the horror in the eyes and voice of this awakened
Sacrifice, struck away the support of theoretic justification. Great
pity for the poor enmeshed life, helpless there, and in a woman's worst
peril,--looking either to madness, or to death, for an escape--drowned
her reason in a heavy cloud of tears. Long on toward the stroke of the
hour, Dahlia heard her weep, and she murmured on, "You deceived me;"
but it was no more to reproach; rather, it was an exculpation of her
reproaches. "You did deceive me, Rhoda." Rhoda half lifted her head; the
slight tone of a change to tenderness swelled the gulfs of pity, and
she wept aloud. Dahlia untwisted her feet, and staggered up to her, fell