hands_.]

Yes! yes! If my mother had died, I should never have recovered from it,
for--[_Glances toward Heaven_.] But Thou art kind, Thou art merciful! I
would that I believed with the Catholics, so that I might offer Thee
something! I would empty the whole of my little box of savings and buy
Thee a beautiful gilded heart, and twine it with roses. Our pastor says
that sacrifices mean nothing to Thee, because everything is Thine, and
one should not offer Thee something Thou already hast. And yet
everything in the house belongs to my father too; and still he likes it
when I buy a piece of cloth with his money and embroider it and put it
on his plate for his birthday. Yes, and he honors me by wearing it only
on great holidays, at Christmas or Whitsuntide. Once I saw a little mite
of a Catholic girl carrying some cherries up to the altar. They were the
first the child had had that year, and I could see how she longed to eat
them. Still she resisted the innocent desire, and, in order to put an
end to the temptation, hurriedly threw them down. The priest, who was
just about to pick up the chalice, looked on with a scowl, and the child
hastened timidly away. But the Mary above the altar smiled gently, as if
she would have liked to step out of her frame and overtake the child and
kiss her.--I did it for her! Here comes Leonard. Oh, dear!

SCENE IV

LEONARD (_outside the door_).

Are you dressed?

CLARA.

Why so polite, so considerate? I am no princess, you know.

LEONARD (_enters_).

I thought you were not alone! In passing by I thought I saw your
neighbor Babbie standing by the window.

CLARA.

And so that is why--

LEONARD.

You are forever so irritable! One can stay away from here for two weeks,
rain and sunshine can have alternated ten times, and, when one does
finally come again, he finds the same old cloud darkening your face!

CLARA.

Things used to be different!

LEONARD.

Correct! If you had always looked as you do now, we should never have
become good friends!

CLARA.

What of it?

LEONARD.

So you feel yourself as free of me as that, do you? Perhaps it serves me
right! Then [_significantly_] your recent toothache was a mere pretext!

CLARA.

Oh, Leonard, it was not right of you!

LEONARD.

Not right for me to seek to bind to me the greatest treasure that I
have--for that is what you are to me--with the firmest of all bonds? And
especially at a time when I stood in danger of los