n' Ev'leen Ann is
twenty-eight, an' they've had 'bout's much waitin' as is good for folks
that set such store by each other. I've thought of every way out of
it--and there ain't any. The Lord knows I don't enjoy livin' any, not so's
to notice the enjoyment, and I'd thought of cutting my throat like Uncle
Lish, but that'd make 'Niram and Ev'leen Ann feel so--to think why I'd
done it; they'd never take the comfort they'd ought in bein' married; so
that won't do. There's only one thing to do. I guess you'll have to take
care of me till the Lord calls me. Maybe I won't last so long as the
doctor thinks."

When she finished, I felt my ears ringing in the silence. She had walked
to the sacrificial altar with so steady a step, and laid upon it her
precious all with so gallant a front of quiet resolution, that for an
instant I failed to take in the sublimity of her self-immolation. Mrs.
Purdon asking for charity! And asking the one woman who had most reason to
refuse it to her.

Paul looked at me miserably, the craven desire to escape a scene written
all over him. "Wouldn't we better be going, Mrs. Purdon?" I said uneasily.
I had not ventured to look at the woman in the doorway.

Mrs. Purdon motioned me to remain, with an imperious gesture whose
fierceness showed the tumult underlying her brave front. "No; I want you
should stay. I want you should hear what I say, so's you can tell folks,
if you have to. Now, look here, Emma," she went on to the other, still
obstinately silent; "you must look at it the way 'tis. We're neither of us
any good to anybody, the way we are--and I'm dreadfully in the way of the
only two folks we care a pin about--either of us. You've got plenty to do
with, and nothing to spend it on. I can't get myself out of their way by
dying without going against what's Scripture and proper, but--" Her steely
calm broke. She burst out in a screaming, hysterical voice: "You've just
_got_ to, Emma Hulett! You've just _got_ to! If you don't, I won't never
go back to 'Niram's house! I'll lie in the ditch by the roadside till the
poor-master comes to git me--and I'll tell everybody that it's because my
own twin sister, with a house and a farm and money in the bank, turned me
out to starve--" A fearful spasm cut her short. She lay twisted and limp,
the whites of her eyes showing between the lids.

"Good God, she's gone!" cried Paul, running to the bed.

I was aware that the woman in the doorway had relaxed her frozen