presently she addressed him again.

"Leon, I must talk. I must tell. But don't call me mother."

"Why not?

How frequently in life do we thus rush ruthlessly upon unsuspected
crises in our fates? Leon said these words, with no thought of their
import, and with no foreboding of what would follow. How could he
guess that from the moment of their utterance his life would be
changed, and his boyhood lost to him forever, because of the
momentousness of the reply which he invited?

When the woman spoke again, her voice was so low that the youth leaned
down to hear her words. She said:

"Leon, you have been a good son to me. But--I am not your mother."
Having spoken the words with a sadness in her heart, which found echo
in the cadence of her voice, she turned her face wearily away from the
youth, and waited for his reply. And he, though astounded by what he
had heard, did not at the time fully connect the words with himself,
but recognized only the misery which their utterance had caused to the
suffering woman. With gentleness as tender as a loving woman's, he
turned her face to his, touched her lips with his, and softly said:

"You are my mother! The only mother that I have ever known!" Oh! The
weakness of human kind, which, at the touch of a loving hand, the
sound of a loving voice, yields up its most sacred principles! This
dying woman had lived from birth till now in a secluded New England
village, and, imbibing her puritanical instincts from her ancestry,
she almost deemed it a sin to smile, or show any outward sign of
happiness. She had been a mother to this boy, according to her bigoted
ideas; she had been good to him in her own way; but she had kissed him
but once, and then he was going upon a journey. Yet now, as overcome
by his intense sympathy, his long-suppressed love welled out from his
heart toward her, with a happy cry she nestled close within his arms,
and cried for joy, a joy that was hers for the first time, yet which
might have illumined all her declining days, had she not brushed it
away from her.

A long silence ensued, presently broken by the woman, as she slowly
related the following story.

"Years ago, no matter how many, I was a pretty woman, and a vain one.
I had admirers, but I loved none as I loved myself. But at last one
came, and then my life was changed. I loved him, and I began to
despise myself. For the more I saw and loved him, the less likely it
seemed that he could love me. I use