id
nothing to that either.

He worked silently, with fierce energy, the rest of the morning. He
had not heard before of Lucina's ill health; she had not been to
church the Sunday previous, but he had thought of nothing serious
from that. Now the dreadful possibility came to him--suppose she
should die and leave his world entirely, of what avail would all his
toil be then? When he went home that noon he ate his dinner hastily,
then, on his way back to the shop, left the road, crossed into a
field, and sat down in the wide solitude, on a rock humping out of
the dun roll of sere grass-land. Always, in his stresses of spirit,
Jerome sought instinctively some closet which he had made of the free
fastnesses of nature.

The day was very dull and cold; snow threatened, should the weather
moderate. Overhead was a suspended drift of gray clouds. The earth
was stark as a corpse in utter silence. The stillness of the frozen
air was like the stillness of death and despair. A fierce blast would
have given at least the sense of life and fighting power. "Suppose
she dies," thought Jerome--"suppose she dies."

He tried to imagine the world without Lucina, but he could not, for
with all his outgoing spirit his world was too largely within him.
For the first time in his life, the conception of the death of that
which he loved better than his life was upon him, and it was a
conception of annihilation. "If Lucina is not, then I am not, and
that upon which I look is not," was in his mind.

When he rose, he staggered, and could scarcely see his way across the
field. When he entered his uncle's shop, Ozias looked at him sharply.
"If you're sick you'd better go home and go to bed," he said, in a
voice of harsh concern.

"I am not sick," said Jerome, and fell to work with a sort of fury.

As the days went on it seemed to him that he could not bear life any
longer if he did not hear how Lucina was, and yet the most obvious
steps to hear he did not take. It never occurred to him to march
straight to the Squire's house, and inquire of him concerning his
daughter's health. Far from that, he actually dreaded to meet him,
lest he read in his face that she was worse. He did not go to
meeting, lest the minister mention her in his prayer for the sick; he
stayed as little as possible in the company of his mother and sister,
lest they repeat the sad news concerning her; if a neighbor came in,
he got up and left the room directly. He never went to t