would be a waste of time," she answered coldly. "It is sufficient
for me to know that you are convicted by general opinion of having
failed where a number of commonplace fellows succeeded. You, yourself,
admit the justice of this verdict by tame submission to it, making no
effort to retrieve your reputation. I can not understand how this
could be so if you had any of the qualities that I fondly imagined you
possessed in a high degree. But this interview is being protracted to a
painful extent. Let us say good night and part."

"Forever?" he stammered.

"Yes."

She held out her hand for farewell. Harry caught it and would have
carried it to his lips, but she drew it away.

"No; all that must be ended now," she said, with the first touch of
gentleness that had shaded her sad, serious eyes.

"Will you give me no hope?" said Harry, pleadingly.

"When you can make people forget the past--if ever--" she said, "then I
will change this dress and you can come back to me."

She bowed and entered the house.

Chapter V. The Lint-scraping and Bandage-making Union.

At length I have acted my severest part:
I feel the woman breaking in upon me,
And melt about my heart: My tears will flow.
-- Addison.

Rachel Bond's will had carried her triumphantly through a terrible
ordeal--how terrible no one could guess, unless he followed her to her
room after the interview and saw her alone with her agony. She did not
weep. Tears did not lie near the surface with her. The lachrymal glands
had none of that ready sensitiveness which gives many superficial women
the credit of deep feeling. But when she did weep it was not an April
shower, but a midsummer tempest.

Now it was as if her intense grief were a powerful cautery which seared
and sealed every duct of the fountain of tears and left her eyes hot and
dry as her heart was ashes.

With pallid face and lips set until the blood was forced from them, and
they made a thin purplish line in the pale flesh, she walked the floor
back and forth, ever back and forth, until a half-stumble, as she was
turning in a dreary round, revealed to her that she was almost dropping
from exhaustion.

She had thought her love for Harry had received its death-blow when her
pride in him had been so rudely shattered. But this meeting, in which
she played the part set for herself with a brave perfection that she
had hardly deemed possible, had