ke
some time, you know, and you might as well make yourself comfortable.
As for me, I'll take the anxious bench." She laughed with a certain
girlishness, which he well remembered, and leaped to a sitting posture
on the table with her hands on her knees, swinging her smart shoes
backwards and forwards below it.

Madison looked at her in hopeless silence, with a pale, disturbed face
and shining eyes.

"Or, if you want to talk as we used to talk, Mad, when we sat on the
front steps at Angel's and pa and ma went inside to give us a show, ye
can hop up alongside o' me." She made a feint of gathering her skirts
beside her.

"Safie!" broke out the unfortunate man, in a tone that seemed to
increase in formal solemnity with his manifest agitation, "this is
impossible. The laws of God that have joined you and this man"--

"Oh, it's the prayer-meeting, is it?" said Safie, settling her skirts
again, with affected resignation. "Go on."

"Listen, Safie," said Madison, turning despairingly towards her. "Let
us for His sake, let us for the sake of our dear blessed past, talk
together earnestly and prayerfully. Let us take this time to root out of
our feeble hearts all yearnings that are not prompted by Him--yearnings
that your union with this man makes impossible and sinful. Let us for
the sake of the past take counsel of each other, even as brother and
sister."

"Sister McGee!" she interrupted mockingly. "It wasn't as brother and
sister you made love to me at Angel's."

"No! I loved you then, and would have made you my wife."

"And you don't love me any more," she said, audaciously darting a wicked
look into his eyes, "only because I didn't marry you? And you think that
Christian?"

"You know I love you as I have loved you always," he said passionately.

"Hush!" she said mockingly; "suppose he should hear you."

"He knows it!" said Madison bitterly. "I told him all!"

She stared at him fixedly.

"You have--told--him--that--you STILL love me?" she repeated slowly.

"Yes, or I wouldn't be here now. It was due to him--to my own
conscience."

"And what did he say?"

"He insisted upon my coming, and, as God is my Judge and witness--he
seemed satisfied and content."

She drew her pretty lips together with a long whistle, and then leaped
from the table. Her face was hard and her eyes were bright as she went
to the window and looked out. He followed her timidly.

"Don't touch me," she said, sharply striking away his pr