w there was!"

She seemed to melt against him in her terror, and he caught her in his
arms, held her fast there, felt her lashes beat his cheek like netted
butterflies.

"What is it--what is it?" she stammered; but he had found her lips at
last and was drinking unconsciousness of everything but the joy they
gave him.

She lingered a moment, caught in the same strong current; then she
slipped from him and drew back a step or two, pale and troubled. Her
look smote him with compunction, and he cried out, as if he saw her
drowning in a dream: "You can't go, Matt! I'll never let you!"

"Go--go?" she stammered. "Must I go?"

The words went on sounding between them as though a torch of warning
flew from hand to hand through a black landscape.

Ethan was overcome with shame at his lack of self-control in flinging
the news at her so brutally. His head reeled and he had to support
himself against the table. All the while he felt as if he were still
kissing her, and yet dying of thirst for her lips.

"Ethan, what has happened? Is Zeena mad with me?"

Her cry steadied him, though it deepened his wrath and pity. "No, no,"
he assured her, "it's not that. But this new doctor has scared her about
herself. You know she believes all they say the first time she sees
them. And this one's told her she won't get well unless she lays up and
don't do a thing about the house--not for months--"

He paused, his eyes wandering from her miserably. She stood silent a
moment, drooping before him like a broken branch. She was so small and
weak-looking that it wrung his heart; but suddenly she lifted her head
and looked straight at him. "And she wants somebody handier in my place?
Is that it?"

"That's what she says to-night."

"If she says it to-night she'll say it to-morrow."

Both bowed to the inexorable truth: they knew that Zeena never changed
her mind, and that in her case a resolve once taken was equivalent to an
act performed.

There was a long silence between them; then Mattie said in a low voice:
"Don't be too sorry, Ethan."

"Oh, God--oh, God," he groaned. The glow of passion he had felt for her
had melted to an aching tenderness. He saw her quick lids beating back
the tears, and longed to take her in his arms and soothe her.

"You're letting your supper get cold," she admonished him with a pale
gleam of gaiety.

"Oh, Matt--Matt--where'll you go to?"

Her lids sank and a tremor crossed her face. He saw that for the firs