his is Lizzy: this is the little girl Daniel
loves." Every day I'd kneel down by that dead lady's chair, and pray to
God to make me fit to be her son's wife. But he's dead now,' drawing
suddenly back, 'and I am going to be--an opera-singer.'

"'Not unless by your own free will,' I said.

"She did not hear me, I think, pulling at the fastening about her throat.

"'Daniel would say it was the Devil's calling. Daniel was all I had. But
he don't know. I know. God means it. I might have lived on here, keeping
myself true to his notions of right: then, when I went yonder, he would
have been kind to me, he would have loved me,'--looking out through the
rain, in a dazed way.

"'The truth is, Lizzy,' I said, 'you have a power within you, and you want
to give it vent; it's like a hungry devil tearing you. So you give up your
love-dream, and are going to be an opera-singer. That's the common-sense
of the matter.'

"I sealed the letter, and gave it to her.

"'You think that?'

"That was all she answered. But I'm sorry I said it; I don't know whether
it was true or not. There,--that is the whole story. I never told it to
Grey before. You can judge for yourselves."

"My dear," said Mrs. Sheppard, "let me go with you to see your sister in
New York. Some more coffee, please. My cup is cold."

* * * * *

A clear, healthy April night: one of those bright, mountain-winded nights
of early spring, when the air is full of electric vigor,--starlight, when
the whole earth seems wakening slowly and grandly into a new life.

Grey, going with her husband and Mrs. Sheppard down Broadway, from their
hotel, had a fancy that the world was so cheerfully, heartily at work,
that the night was no longer needed. Overhead, the wind from the yet
frozen hills swept in such strong currents, the great city throbbed with
such infinite kinds of motion, and down in the harbor yonder the rush of
couriers came and went incessantly from the busy world without. Grey was a
country-girl: in this throbbing centre of human life she felt suddenly
lost, atom-like,--drew her breath quickly, as she clung to Paul's arm. The
world was so vast, was hurrying on so fast. She must get to work in
earnest: why, one must justify her right to live, here.

Mrs. Sheppard, as she plodded solidly along, took in the whole blue air
and outgoing ocean, and the city, with its white palaces and gleaming
lights.

"People look happy here," she said.