come.

It was not the income that tempted her, he was clearly aware, and he did
her and himself the justice to perceive that it was the inclination
which prompted the invitation--but the inclination could now feel itself
supported by an approving worldly conscience.

He wondered now at the long struggle of his senses. He wondered at the
death pangs of infatuation.

Once more he looked at the picture in a puzzled way as if to make sure
that the thing he felt--and the thing he didn't feel--were indubitably
real, and then he rose with a curious sense of lightness and yet
sobriety, and, straightening his shoulders as if a burden had fallen
from them, he retraced his steps towards the cabin.

At the doorway he paused, for he heard Maria Angelina singing. Then he
spoke her name.

The song stopped. Maria Angelina turned towards him a face of flushed
surprise. He discovered her quaintly with a jar of pickled frogs in her
hand.

"Maria Angelina, what are you doing?"

"But these, Signor--what are these?"

"These? Oh--not for food, Maria Angelina--even in my most desperate
moments. . . . Maria Angelina, are you going to marry him?"

She did not drop the frogs. Very carefully she put them back but with a
shaking hand. All the rosy sparkle was swept out of her. Her eyes were
averted. She looked suddenly harassed, stubborn, almost furtive.

No quick denial came springing from her.

"I do not know," she told him painfully.

"You do not know?"

There was something in the young man's voice that made her glance rise
to his.

"Oh, it is not that I care for him!" said Maria Angelina ingenuously.

"Then why think of marrying him?"

"It may be--needful."

"Not after this story," Barry Elder, insisted.

"It is not that--now." She forced herself to meet his combative look.
"It is because of--Julietta."

"Julietta! . . . Who the deuce is Julietta?"

"Oh, she is my sister, my older sister. I told you about her last
night," Maria Angelina reminded him. "She is the one I love so much.
. . . And she is not pretty, at all--she is anything _but_ pretty,
though she is so good and dear--yet she will never marry unless she has
a large dower. And there is nothing in her life if she does not marry.
And there is no money for a large dower, but only for a little bit for
her and a little bit for me. So they sent me on this visit to America,
for here the men do not ask dowers and what was saved on me would help
Julietta--and now----