read again carefully, slowly, as though trying to
discover some loophole from the horror of what was written there. The
note was short--so short--there was not one spark of hope in it for
the man who was reading it, not one expression of feeling other than
selfishness. It was the death-blow to all his dreams, all his desire.

"I've gone away. I shall never come back. I can't stand this life
here any longer. Don't try to find me, for it's no use. Maybe what
I'm doing is wicked, but I'm glad I'm doing it. It's not your
fault--it's just me. I haven't your courage, I haven't any courage
at all. I just can't face the life we're living. I'd have gone
before when he first asked me but for my babies, but I just
couldn't part with them. Zip, I want to take them with me now, but
I don't know what Jim's arrangements are going to be. I must have
them. I can't live without them. And if they don't go with us now
you'll let them come to me after, won't you? Oh, Zip, I know I'm a
wicked woman, but I feel I must go. You won't keep them from me?
Let me have them. I love them so bad. I do. I do. Good-by
forever.

"JESSIE."

Mechanically Scipio folded the paper again and sat grasping it tightly
in one clenched hand. His eyes were raised and gazing through the
doorway at the golden sunlight beyond. His lips were parted, and there
was a strange dropping of his lower jaw. The tanning of his russet
face looked like a layer of dirt upon a super-whited skin. He scarcely
seemed to breathe, so still he sat. As yet his despair was so terrible
that his mind and heart were numbed to a sort of stupefaction,
deadening the horror of his pain.

He sat on for many minutes. Then, at last, his eyes dropped again to
the crushed paper, and a quavering sigh escaped him. He half rose from
his seat, but fell back in it again. Then a sudden spasm seized him,
and flinging himself round he reached out his slight, tanned arms upon
the dirty table, and, his head dropping upon them, he moaned out the
full force of his despair.

"I want her!" he cried. "Oh, God, I want her!"

But now his slight body was no longer still. His back heaved with mute
sobs that had no tears. All his gentle soul was torn and bleeding. He
had not that iron in his composition with which another man might have
crushed down his feelings and stirred himself to a harsh defense. He
was just a warm, loving cre