chair. To her sensitive conscience
the duty nearest at hand seemed always to bark the loudest, and the
precious moments had gone by until she knew that Richard had come,
found the stone before the door, and gone away, and all her sweet
turmoil of hope and anticipation had gone for naught.

Sylvia, lying there awake that night, her mind carrying her back over
all that had gone before, had no doubt that this was the end of
everything. Not originally a subtle discerner of character, she had
come insensibly to know Richard so well that certain results from
certain combinations of circumstances in his life were as plain and
inevitable to her as the outcome of a simple sum in mathematics.
"He'd got 'most out of his track for once," she groaned out softly,
"but now he's pushed back in so hard he can't get out again if he
wants to. I dunno how he's going to get along."

Sylvia, with the roof settling over her head, with not so much upon
her few sterile acres to feed her as to feed the honey-bees and
birds, with her heart in greater agony because its string of joy had
been strained so high and sweetly before it snapped, did not lament
over herself at all; neither did she over the other woman who lay
up-stairs suffering in a similar case. She lamented only over Richard
living alone and unministered to until he died.

When daylight came she got up, dressed herself, and prepared
breakfast. Charlotte came down before it was ready. "Let me help get
breakfast," she said, with an assumption of energy, standing in the
kitchen doorway in her pretty mottled purple delaine. The purple was
the shade of columbine, and very becoming to Charlotte. In spite of
her sleepless night, her fine firm tints had not faded; she was too
young and too strong and too full of involuntary resistance. She had
done up her fair hair compactly; her chin had its usual proud lift.

Sylvia, shrinking as if before some unseen enemy as she moved about,
her face all wan and weary, glanced at her half resentfully. "I guess
she 'ain't had any such night as I have," she thought. "Girls don't
know much about it."

"No, I don't need any help," she replied, aloud. "I 'ain't got
anything to do but to stir up an Injun cake. You've got your best
dress on. You'd better go and sit down."

"It won't hurt my dress any." Charlotte glanced down half scornfully
at her purple skirt. It had lost all its glory for her. She was not
even sure that Barney had seen it.

"Set down.