ling?"

"Who, me dying?" I said, not quite understanding her. "No--I'm all
right--I'll be all right, Rowena!"

She was holding her hands up in the light. They were stained crimson
where she had pressed them to my bosom.

"What's the matter of your hands?" I asked, though I was getting drowsy,
as if I had been long broken of my sleep.

"It's blood, Jacob! You've hurt yourself!"

I drew my hand across my mouth, and it came away stained red. She gave a
cry of horror; but did not lose her presence of mind. She sponged the
blood from my clothes, wiping my mouth every little while, until there
was no more blood coming from it. Presently I dropped off to sleep with
my hand in hers. She awoke me after a while and gave me some warm milk.
As I was drowsing off again, she spoke very gently to me.

"Can you understand what I'm saying?" she asked; and I nodded a yes. "Do
you love her like that?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, "I love her like that."

Presently she lifted my hand to her lips and kissed it. She was quite
calm, now, as if new light had come to her in her darkness; and I
thought that it was my consent which had quieted her spirits: but I did
not understand her.

"I can't let you do it, Jacob," said she, finally. "It's too much to
ask.... I've thought of another way, my dear.... Don't think of me or my
troubles any more.... I'll be all right.... You go on loving her, an'
bein' true to her ... and if God is good as they say, He'll make you
happy with her sometime. Do you understand, Jacob?"

"Yes," I said, "but what will you...."

"Never mind about me," said she soothingly. "I've thought of another way
out. You go to sleep, now, and don't think of me or my troubles
any more."

I lay looking at her for a while, and wondering how she could suddenly
be so quiet after her agitation of the day; and after a while, the scene
swam before my eyes, and I went off into the refreshing sleep of a tired
boy. The sun was up when I awoke. Rowena was gone. I went out and found
that she had saddled her horse and left sometime in the night; afterward
I found out that it was in the gray of the morning. She had watched by
my bedside all night, and left only after it was plain that I was
breathing naturally and that my spasm had passed. She had come into my
life that day like a tornado, but had left it much as it had been
before, except that I wondered what was to become of her. I was
comforted by the thought that she had "thought o