they never bloomed!"

The woman rose and walked a step toward the door, and turned her head
away. When she spoke it was after a sob, "Bob, I couldn't bear it--I
just couldn't bear it, Bob!"

He groaned and put his hands to his forehead and rested his elbow on
the chair arm. "Oh, Molly, Molly, Molly," he sighed, "poor, poor
little Molly." After a pause he said: "I won't ever bother you again.
It doesn't do any good." A silence followed in which the woman turned
her face to him, tear-stained and wretched, with the seams of her
heart all torn open and showing through it. "It only hurts," the man
continued, and then he groaned aloud, "Oh, God, how it hurts!"

She sank back into her chair and buried her face in the arm farthest
from him and her body shook, but she did not speak. He stared at her
dry-eyed for a minute, that tolled by so slowly that he rose at the
end of it, fearful that his stay was indecorously long.

"I think I should go now," he said, as he passed her.

"Oh, no!" she cried. "Not yet, not just yet." She caught his arm and
he stopped, as she stood beside him, trembling, haggard, staring at
him out of dead, mad eyes. There was no colour in her blotched face,
and in the moonlight the red rims of her eyes looked leaden, and her
voice was unsteady. At times it broke in sobbing croaks, and she spoke
with loose jaws, as one in great terror. "I want you to know--" she
paused at the end of each little hiccoughed phrase--"that I have not
forgotten--" she caught her breath--"that I think of you every
day--" she wiped her eyes with a limp handkerchief--"every day and
every night, and pray for you, though I don't believe--" she
whimpered as she shuddered--"that God cares much about me."

He tried to stop her, and would have gone, but she put a hand upon his
shoulder and pleaded: "Just another minute. Oh, Bob," she cried, and
her voice broke again, "don't forget me. Don't forget me. When I was
so sick last year--you remember," she pleaded, "I raved in delirium a
week." She stopped as if afraid to go on, then began to shake as with
a palsy. "I raved of everything under God's sun, and through it all,
Bob--not one word of you. Oh, I knew that wouldn't do." She swayed
upon his arm. "I kept a little corner of my soul safe to guard you."
She sank back into her chair and chattered, "Oh, I guarded you."

She was crying like a child. He stood over her and touched her
dishevelled hair with the tips of his fingers and said: