fe _shall_
give me something of its best; if not of love, then of fame! and I will
work and persevere until I gain it!"

Yet, for all of her resolution, Nattie sobbed herself to sleep. Not so
easy is it to renounce love, and look forward to a life barren of its
best and sweetest gift.

And after this there was a change in her observable even to the
undiscerning Quimby. Shadows had fallen over her face, lurked in her
gray eyes and around the corners of her mouth. The old restlessness had
given place to a settled gloom. She was less often seen among the gay
circle that gathered in Cyn's parlor, pleading every possible excuse for
staying away, and when with them, to his surprise and delight, and to
Celeste's dismay, she devoted herself to Quimby, to Jo--to any one
rather than to Clem. For most of all had she changed to him. Afraid of
betraying her secret, and unable to control the pain that overpowered
her when in his presence, now she knew her own heart, she avoided him in
every practicable way, and seldom, even over their wire, talked with
him. She was always "tired," or "busy," when he called her now.

Clem, surprised and puzzled by this unaccountable change, at first
endeavored to overcome her coolness, but ended by becoming cool in his
turn, and talked and joked with Cyn more than ever. And if a touch of
the shadows on Nattie's face sometimes crept over his own, she, in her
self-engrossment, did not observe it.

If Quimby's hopes burned brighter at this state of affairs, and he was
consequently happier, Jo, for some reason unexplained, was not. In fact,
he was decidedly queer; now gay, now horribly cynical, not to say
morose.

Truly, Cupid, viewed in the character of a telegraphist, was far from
being a success; for he had switched everybody off on to the wrong wire!

Cyn, gay unconscious Cyn, no more dreamed of Clem being supposedly in
love with her, than she did that Jo was so filled with thoughts of her,
that, had he been a different kind of a man, one would have called him
desperately in love. But Cyn, unconscious of all this, saw, and with
sorrow, the ever-increasing coldness between Nattie and Clem. For she
had quite set her heart on the romance that had commenced in dots and
dashes culminating in orange blossoms--a Wired Love. But now, to her
vexation, she saw her anticipations liable to be set at naught, and
herself unable to obtain even a clew to the trouble. Like the "line
man," who goes up and down t