o at all
religion because faith had no good soil to rest in. She sat long on the
window-sill of the empty room, looking at an uncultivated patch of
ground that even in May had no beauty save for here and there the
stirring of a weed in the damp scented earth. She was stunned to see her
life limned in such lines, and the truth in the drawing made it at first
seem wholly true.

But Fate had another messenger that morning more potent than the
prophet. A girl came by on the road, stopped, looked at her window, and
by some impulse such as moved the buds and birds, tripped nearer in the
sunshine and offered a flower. It was a sprig of quince blossom, and the
girl stood laughing on the threshold of life just as Susannah had stood
when Ephraim first showed her the flower of the quince. The false lines
in the picture drawn by Smith faded at the touch of the pink winged
flowers. Her heart sprang into the truth.

The girl looked up to see the face of the schoolmistress flushed and
shining with sudden tears.

"My dear," said Susannah gently, "when I was your age flowers were given
to me, but I did not love them half enough."

The maiden tripped away, resolving at heart to heed the admonition,
although she understood it very vaguely.

Susannah knelt down upon the floor behind the sill, pressing both hands
upon her breast lest she should cry aloud.

"No! No! No!" she whispered, "I loved Ephraim, and it was because I left
him that my heart closed up--because in insufferable pride and
impatience I left him. Oh, my love, now I know that you loved me too."
She rocked herself in a passionate desire for Ephraim's presence. The
scene in the cold autumn wood at Fayette came back to her eyes and ears.
She felt the very touch of his hand when he went. "Fool! fool!" she
said, "foolish and wicked. If I Had not been proud, if I had not thought
myself better than you and yours, I should have understood." For some
unexplained reason her mind reverted now to Halsey and the child, and
she wept for them as she had never wept before.

After these tears she stood up and stretched out her arms as if
embracing a new life. Alas! around her were only the ugly walls of the
poor unfurnished room. Susannah, rousing herself from the warm scenes of
quickened memory, felt the contrast.

The hope of Ephraim's reply to her letter came to her smiling each
morning, and, as the days passed, retired from her heart with a sigh
each night.

When six weeks had