he choice had fallen upon Sally. She
saw clearly enough now that she was not glad,--that there was no woman
or girl living, however dear, who could come for life between him and
her, without casting on her heart the shuddering sorrow of a dim
eclipse.

But now the truth was plain to herself, her whole force was directed
toward the keeping of her secret. "I may suffer," she thought, "but I
will have strength not to be silly and weak. Nobody shall know,--nobody
shall dream it,--and in the long, long time that he is away, I shall
have strength given me to overcome."

So Mara put on her most cheerful and matter-of-fact kind of face, and
plunged into the making of shirts and knitting of stockings, and talked
of the coming voyage with such a total absence of any concern, that
Moses began to think, after all, there could be no depth to her
feelings, or that the deeper ones were all absorbed by some one else.

"You really seem to enjoy the prospect of my going away," said he to
her, one morning, as she was energetically busying herself with her
preparations.

"Well, of course; you know your career must begin. You must make your
fortune; and it is pleasant to think how favorably everything is shaping
for you."

"One likes, however, to be a little regretted," said Moses, in a tone of
pique.

"A little regretted!" Mara's heart beat at these words, but her
hypocrisy was well practiced. She put down the rebellious throb, and
assuming a look of open, sisterly friendliness, said, quite naturally,
"Why, we shall all miss you, of course."

"Of course," said Moses,--"one would be glad to be missed some other way
than _of course_."

"Oh, as to that, make yourself easy," said Mara. "We shall all be dull
enough when you are gone to content the most exacting." Still she spoke,
not stopping her stitching, and raising her soft brown eyes with a
frank, open look into Moses's--no tremor, not even of an eyelid.

"You men must have everything," she continued, gayly, "the enterprise,
the adventure, the novelty, the pleasure of feeling that you are
something, and can do something in the world; and besides all this, you
want the satisfaction of knowing that we women are following in chains
behind your triumphal car!"

There was a dash of bitterness in this, which was a rare ingredient in
Mara's conversation.

Moses took the word. "And you women sit easy at home, sewing and
singing, and forming romantic pictures of our life as like its