gone in and found her
dead.

"Go away! Leave me!" he gasped, rather than said. "Mercy, you can't mean
it!" and the distress in his face smote Mercy bitterly. But she persisted.
"Yes, I do mean it," she said. "You must not ask me to stay. I should lose
my senses or fall ill. You can't think how terrible it is to me to be all
alone in these rooms. Perhaps in new rooms I should not feel it so much. I
have always looked forward to being left alone at some time, and have
thought I would still have my home; but I did not think it could feel like
this. I simply cannot bear it,--at any rate, not till I am stronger. And
besides, Stephen," and Mercy's face flushed red, "there is another thing
you have not thought of: it would never do for me to live here alone in
this house with you, as we have been living. You couldn't come to see me
so much now mother is not here."

Poor Mrs. Carr! avenged at last, by Stephen's own heart. How gladly would
he have called her to life now! Mercy's words carried instantaneous
conviction to his mind. It was strange he had never thought of this
before; but he had not. He groaned aloud.

"O Mercy! O Mercy!" he exclaimed, "I never once thought of that, we have
been living so so long. You are right: you cannot stay here. Oh, what
shall I do without you, my darling, my darling?"

"I do not think you can ever be so lonely as I," said Mercy; "for you have
still your work left you to do. If I had any human being to need me, I
could bear being separated from you."

"Where will you go, Mercy?" asked Stephen, in a tone of dull, hopeless
misery.

"I do not know. I have not thought yet. Back to my old home for a visit, I
think, and then to some city to study and work. That is the best life for
me."

"O Mercy, Mercy, I am going to lose you,--lose you utterly!" exclaimed
Stephen.

Mercy looked at him with a pained and perplexed expression. "Stephen," she
said earnestly, "I can't understand you. You bear your hard life so
uncomplainingly, so bravely, that it seems as if you could not have a
vestige of selfishness in you; and yet"--Mercy halted; she could not put
her thought in words. Stephen finished it for her.

"And yet," he said, "I am selfish about you, you think. Selfish! Good God!
do you call it selfishness in a man who is drowning, to try to swim, in a
man who is starving, to clutch a morsel of bread? What else have I that
one could call life except you? Tell me, Mercy! You are my life: that is
t