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 get 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
immobility and was between Paul and me as we rubbed the thin, icy hands
and forced brandy between the placid lips. We all three thought her dead