original vividness. There was no light in the room save such as
the moon made; but that was enough to reveal the passion burningly alive
in either face, as, bending towards each other, she in supplication
and he in a tempest of wrath which knew no bounds, he uttered and she
listened to what I now know to have been a terrible arraignment.

I may have an interesting countenance; you have told me so sometimes;
but she--she was beautiful. My elder by ten years, she had stood in my
mother's stead to me for almost as long as I could remember, and as I
saw her lovely features contorted with pain and her hands extended in
a desperate plea to one who had never shown me anything but love, my
throat closed sharply and I could not cry out though I wanted to, nor
move head or foot though I longed with all my heart to bury myself in
the pillows.

For the words I heard were terrifying, little as I comprehended their
full purport. He had surprised her talking from her window to someone
down below, and after saying cruel things about that, he shouted out:
"You have disgraced me, you have disgraced yourself, you have disgraced
your brother and your little sister. Was it not enough that you should
refuse to marry the good man I had picked out for you, that you should
stoop to this low-down scoundrel--this--" I did not hear what else he
called him, I was wondering so to whom she had been stooping; I had
never seen her stoop except to tie my little shoes.

But when she cried out as she did after an interval, "I love him! I
love him!" then I listened again, for she spoke as though she were in
dreadful pain, and I did not know that loving made one ill and unhappy.
"And I am going to marry him," I heard her add, standing up, as she said
it, very straight and tall.

Marry! I knew what that meant. A long aisle in a church; women in white
and big music in the air behind. I had been flower-girl at a wedding
once and had not forgotten. We had had ice cream and cake and--

But my childish thoughts stopped short at the answer she received and
all the words which followed--words which burned their way into my
infantile brain and left scorched places in my memory which will never
be eradicated. He spoke them--spoke them all; she never answered again
after that once, and when he was gone did not move for a long time and
when she did it was to lie down, stiff and straight, just as she had
stood, on her bed alongside mine.

I was frightened; so frig