to live through but that white experience with him!

"Dosia! Open the door quickly."

It was the voice of Lois once more, with a strange note in it. She
stood, hurried and breathless, under the gas she turned on as she held
out a telegram--for the second time the transmitter of bad news from
the South. The message read: "Your father is ill. Come at once."

XVIII

There are times and seasons which seem to be full of happenings,
followed by long stretches that have only the character of transition
from the former stage to something that is to come. Weeks and months
fly by us; we do not realize that they are here before they are gone,
there is so little to mark any day from its fellow. Yet we lay too
much stress on the power of separate and peculiar events to shape the
current of our lives, and do not take into account that drama which
never ceases to be acted, which knows no pause nor interim, and which
takes place within ourselves.

It was April once more before Dosia Linden came North again, after
extending months, in no day of which had her stay seemed anything but
temporary--a condition to be ended next week or the week after at
farthest. Her father's illness turned out to be a lingering one,
taking every last ounce of strength from his wife and his daughter;
and after his death the little stepmother had collapsed for a while,
with only Dosia to take the helm. Dosia had worked early and late,
nursing, looking after the children, cooking, sewing, and later on,
when sickness and death had taken nearly all the means of livelihood,
trying to earn money for the immediate needs by teaching the scales to
some of the temporary tribe at the hotel--an existence in which self
was submerged in loving care for those who clung to her; and to cling
to Dosia was always to receive from her. Sleep was the goal of the
day, and too much of a luxury to have any of its precious moments
wasted in wakeful dreaming; besides, there was nothing to dream about
any more. As she crept into her low bed, she turned away from the
moonlight, because there are times, when one is young, when moonlight
is very hard to bear.

The little family, bewildered and exhausted, had come to the end of
its resources, when Mrs. Linden's brother in San Francisco offered her
and her children a home with him--an offer which, naturally, did not
include Dosia. She was very glad for them, but, after all, though she
had worked so hard for them, they were not to b