ing aside the past.

She was not so strong as she used to be, yet she must endure it as she
had done for so many years. There was nothing she could do. Her pride
told her this with added emphasis each time the half-formed question
rose in her mind.

She actually fretted herself into a fever which the doctor pronounced
malarial, advising change of air,--a prescription Mrs. Marvin had no
thought of trying at present.

After several days in bed, she was lying on her couch weak and languid
one morning, when she suddenly remembered the March number of _The Young
People's Journal_. She would send for it and read the story.

When it was brought there came with it the swift recollection that Jack
used to take it. She could see him now poring over the puzzle column,
looking up with such a triumphant light in his brown eyes when he
discovered an answer.

She held the paper for a long time without opening it, lying quite still
with a desolate look on her face that was more than Caroline, her
faithful nurse, could stand.

"I declare, if Miss Frances doesn't cheer up, I don't know what I shall
do," she said to the seamstress.

After a while Mrs. Marvin began to turn the pages, till she found the
story of "The Missing Bridge," with the gay little tune for a heading.

It is doubtful if under ordinary circumstances she would have had
patience to read the simple story through, but to-day she found
something soothing in its very simplicity.

"No power can destroy the bridge between true and loving hearts." She
lay thinking of what Frances had said about her quarrel with Gladys. Ah!
many another bridge had been made invisible by clouds of anger and
pride. The paper slipped from her grasp. "I _did_ love him so dearly,"
she cried, clasping her hands; "and I thought he cared for me, but now
he has probably forgotten."

"Faith and courage can find the way--" so said the story.

"But I have neither," sighed Mrs. Marvin.

Her unquiet mind seized upon the words of the little song, and all
through the day she said them over and over:--

"The bridge is broke and I have to mend it."

The clock ticked:--

"The bridge is broke and I have to mend it, mend it, mend it, mend
it."

Even the horses' hoofs on the asphalt street rang out the same refrain.

Mrs. Marvin rose from her couch in some respects a changed woman. It
seemed to her she had lived years in that illness of two weeks. In her
soul a battle had been waged, an