cried out against this punishment as more than she deserved, and more
than she could bear. No word that she could utter, no protest, no
remorse, could cover a wrongful thing she had said for Lois to recall. So
small the sin had looked then; so great now. She had spoken fairly of
deadly sin just once, and now Lois could not rely on her for any right
estimate, nor abide by her ways of regard.

'Ah, Christ!' she whispered in Christian's words, 'is there no
forgiveness of sins?'

Lois heard that, and it struck her to the heart.

Rhoda took up her burden again.

'Christian loved one Diadyomene. What she was I dare not think: she was
shaped like a woman, very beautiful. Dead she is now; I have seen her new
grave. God have mercy on her soul, if any soul she have.

'I have known this for long, for some months.'

'He told--you!'

'No--yes. I heard her name from him only in the ravings of fever. He
never thought I knew, till the very last: then I named her once; then he
kissed me; then he went.'

She turned back to the earliest evidence, telling in detail of
Christian's mad course with her; then of his ravings that remained in her
memory painfully distinct; she kept back nothing. Later she came to
faltering for a moment till Lois urged:

'And he asked you to be his wife?'

'Yes.'

'And because of this knowledge you refused him?'

'Yes. And he kissed me for joy of that nay-saying. On the very morrow he
went--do you remember? It was to her, I knew it.'

'O Rhoda, you might have saved him, and you did not!'

Rhoda raised her head and looked her wonder, for Christian's sake, with
resentment.

'God smote one,' she said, 'whose hand presumed to steady His ark.'

'O child, have you nothing to show to clear him?'

'Wait, wait! There is much yet to tell.'

Then she sped on the last day with its load for record, and, scrupulously
exact, gave words, tones, looks: his first going and return; the coming
of Philip's kinsmen; that strange vagary of the rowan berries that he had
won her to a bet. Lois had come upon a garbled version of Christian's
escape; Rhoda gave her his own, brief and direct.

'Was it Christian--man alive!--that came to you?'

'It was. It was. He ate and drank.'

Of their last meeting and parting she told, without reserve, unashamed,
even to her kissing the Cross on his breast.

Was ever maiden heart so candid of its passion for a man, and he alive?
Too single-hearted was Rhoda to know how much of